Mantashe's e-toll comments are farce

"This will not be the first time that the ANC will be revisiting and pontificating on the irrational e-toll scheme, since the public uproar began in early 2010," says Wayne Duvenage, the chairperson at the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA). "We met with Mr Mantashe and many other officials soon after OUTA interdicted the launch of the scheme in 2012, and pointed out numerous issues that would eventually bring the scheme to its knees."

Now that the scheme's compliance is less than 20% and virtually unenforceable, with debt mounting to over R8bn, it's time to stop the rhetoric of revisiting and make the only decision possible – cancel the scheme.

"You can't be half pregnant on the e-toll scheme, you either toll or you don't," says Duvenage. "Our research and paper presented to Premier David Makhura's e-toll Panel in 2014 (another talk shop), highlighted eight critical success factors for e-tolls schemes to work. SANRAL's scheme failed to tick a single box, all of which has given rise to the schemes failure."

Today, the bulk of the 20% road users paying are corporate fleets and rental companies, who have no appetite to cross swords with government and merely pass the costs on to their customers. If the corporate entities exercised moral courage as the general public have done, the few million rand trickling to the companies connected to the e-toll scheme would dry up, and the ANC led e-toll decision would be easier to make.