OUTA response to billboard adverts
When asked for comment on these billboards, Wayne Duvenage the chairman of the Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance (OUTA) remarked “OUTA does not have funds to pay for such advertising and it is not for OUTA to enter into the political arena. It does however bring a thought provoking angle to a highly emotive matter of which there is no doubt that e-tolling is and will remain a political issue”.
Duvenage adds, “during the court hearings, the matter of OUTA’s case as seeking the ‘courts to usurp the executive powers of an elected government’ has been mentioned on several occasions. We now have an election looming and e-tolling is a matter that was forced through the parliamentary process by one political party only, being the ANC. Every other political party voted against the signing of the Transport and Related Matters Amendment Bill. So I guess the billboards are relatively factual, although, personally speaking, I’m not so sure the ANC are proud of what they are doing here and think a more apt line would be: e-tolls, forcibly brought to you by the ANC”.