COSATU rejects Sanral’s legal bullying of Gauteng motorists

22 March 2016

The latest threat by Sanral that Gauteng motorists, who refuse to pay their e-toll debt, will be issued with civil summons is an extreme form of bureaucratic bullying and arrogance. COSATU rejects and denounces this form of social harassment and condescension and calls on government to reign in their marauding state entity, Sanral.

The Gauteng motorists are not going to be held liable or shoulder responsibility for government’s decision to implement a policy ,which has been unanimously rejected by the overwhelming majority of Gauteng residents. To use legal threats and coercion in an attempt to bully people into submission will not work ,but it will result in the further wastage of our resources.

Sanral will further waste taxpayer’s money to hire a bureaucratic workforce, to engage in this futile exercise of serving summons to the Gauteng motorists. This will strain the relations between the people and their government.

This is defocusing the discourse away from the need to develop an integrated public transport model. This country needs a safe, reliable and affordable transport system that will improve the efficiency of the public transport and make it a mode of choice for everyone.

The apartheid spatial planning has left us with a legacy of the black majority that stays far away from their workplaces. These workers spend more than a quarter of their salaries on transport costs. For Sanral to force them to pay for illegally privatised roads  is criminal both and incomprehensible.

COSATU reiterates its position that our highways are a national asset, which provide a vital public service for all South Africans. We will continue to oppose the insincere and illegitimate efforts to privatise them. The only solution to the e-toll problem is for government to listen to the people and totally scrap them.  

Issued by Sizwe Pamla, National Spokesperson, COSATU, 22 March 2016