Post Number 2

Good day blogosphere!

Yes, it's my second post, and I can't believe I'm still at this. Guess I'm having too much fun. 

Anyway, today's post will start off with a bit of a self-reveal.  As the picture above suggests I'm South African and proud of it. You probably would've picked this up from my profile if you bothered to read it, but yeah it's out there now.  And now you know.

As I mentioned I am proudly South African, but don't let that fool you: I am highly critical of our current government, indeed our entire political landscape, at this point in time.  If politicians aren't out to enrich themselves with taxpayers' money, they are out to two-time their own supporters.  If you don't know what I mean with that link, check this one out.  Thus I will be very vocal when it comes to anything a political party does that harms South Africa's citizens.  

You may have noticed that I didn't give a link to the "enrichment" part of my previous paragraph.  Oh, don't worry, for tonight/today I am going to tackle that very point head-on.  

Suck on my E-tollie!!!

For every Gauteng citizen the above heading will make perfect sense, considering that for the past 2 years (longer if you count the initial concept of the project) the ANC government has been trying to implement a system of tollgates on several of South Africa's main highways in and around Johannesburg and Pretoria in Gauteng, the economic hub of South Africa.
Now, if you haven't heard of the ANC yet, you have probably lived under a rock for the past few decades, or never watched South African politics.  I'm not going to get into that topic of the ANC as it will probably take me all night and cause endless rants and profanity you probably wouldn't want to hear or read.  Needless to say that I have a very negative view of the party that runs the country with an almost two-thirds majority in the voting poles.

Now, let's get back on topic, the tolling system, which is called E-Toll, or the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP).  Unlike toll gantries that most countries know, with attendants in booths collecting the money at stop-booms, E-Toll is an electronic-based tolling system that uses specially designed cameras that are hung over the road to identify and take pictures of the number plates of vehicles traveling underneath it.  The system captures the number plates, connects with the system for the  national registry for vehicle owners, or eNatis (more on this later), then tries to identify who the vehicle owners are so they can be billed.  The system is so designed that vehicles don't even need to slow down in order to be tolled for the use of the road.  Now, I've made it sound all very easy and intelligent, but trust me when I say that this system is not only badly designed, it is also geared towards enrichment of the ANC elite at the expense of the average South African citizen.

Let me show you what I mean.

Then and Now

 

In the past, the Golden Highway, also known as R553, used to be mostly a cement highway. The highway, which forms a circle around Johannesburg, and is made up of various of other important main roads, was one of the technical marvels of the Apartheid era South Africa.  Mainly built as a test to see how durable the road would be, the Golden Highway stood for more than 2 decades without requiring any serious overhaul or maintenance.
It was a success.  

Turn the clock to today, and a new picture starts to appear.  The Golden Highway was increased by 2 lanes, but the road surface was changed to that of your standard tar road, as used by most other highways in South Africa.  This surface, while not as costly to develop initially as that of a cement surface, does have a higher maintenance cost to it.  Don't believe me?  Hit this Wikipedia link to read up more on road surfaces.

So the ANC government, through its independent, statutory company SANRAL, decides that it is best to upgrade a very good road with your standard asphalt.  I'm not sure about you, but to me that is a bit stupid, considering that they would have saved on maintenance costs in the long term, not to even mention that if they stuck to the cement construction they could've used what was there and just added on to it.

But it gets better:  The work that was done was of shoddy quality.  As the article at the link suggests, back in 2011, mere months after that section of the road was completed, motorists started to complain of uneven and warped roads.  SANRAL and the company which was contracted to do the work had a huge fight over who would  pay to fix the problems.  Needless to say, as most ANC-planned ventures go, the taxpayer had to foot the bill for the repairs, and although most of the problems appear ironed out, there is considerable speculation that we might be in for a rough ride on this one, considering that SANRAL is already falling behind in its mandate to maintain other existing roads.

Already paid for!

You read that heading right.  In South Africa, every liter of petrol bought by motorists across the country are taxed by a fuel levy.  This fuel levy, or fuel tax, currently stands at R2,12 per liter of petrol (at time of writing this blog entry).  This, if you have to consider the average South African's salary, is already a huge burden for most South Africans.  Now, add to that the exorbitant costs that SANRAL wants to impose for the tolling and you have an economic disaster waiting to happen.

However, the taxpayer already pays for the roads through the fuel levy.  You see, the roads that will be covered by E-Tolls are existing roads that were only upgraded, not new roads.  They are thus covered by the fuel levy by law, and despite what SANRAL claims, there is enough money to go around in the fuel tax.  Even then, if the fuel tax wasn't enough, the government has enough tax reserve to foot the bill through an extension to SANRAL, even back in 2006.

Now comes the big one.  SANRAL plans to use the AARTO system (not to be confused with the legislation), called eNatis, a system designed to process traffic fines incurred by road users in areas that fall under the AARTO legislation as well as vehicle owner registration, to notify road users of toll fees and to manage the collection of those fees.  However, in an article written by The Star newspaper, the eNatis system itself is already heading for collapse.  This is not only due to motorists not paying their fines, but also because the system itself doesn't appear to channel the funds to the appropriate companies and departments, resulting in the money lying in the coffers of the local municipalities and not going where they are intended.

How will SANRAL ever collect the toll fees it wants through a system that cannot even perform the work it was designed to do in the first place?  It beggars belief that anyone could ever have even thought about something such as this.

Not for the road

To add the cherry on top of the cake, the road surface, which was overcharged for due to construction company collusion, is but a small piece that needs to be paid for.  Apparently, more than 70% of the costs for E-Tolls will be to actually collect the tolls, and not go into repaying for the construction of the road, where it's suppose to go. What buffoon could ever have come up with an idea like that?  Then again, looking at the gantries themselves, and the infrastructure required to run them, it is not difficult to imagine them costing more than the very road that was suppose to be properly upgraded.

Considering that the fuel levy can already pay for the road though, there is something very sinister going on.  It smells like one of many ways that the ANC want to use or are using to steal taxpayers' money.  Some other well-known methods are:

• The South African Arms deal
• The tender scandals of Julius Malema, once leader of the ANCYL
• Luxury vehicle purchases for mayors, in various municipalities
• The sham that is the National Youth Development Agency
• Irregular spending on Hotel stays, PR campaigns, and travel claims
• eNatis and it's blunders
• Eskom's vendors overcharging of power
• The Taxi Scheme
• Our illustrious president, Showerhead Zuma's elaborate spending
• Upgrades to  ministers' homes
• Nkandla, which directly implicates our president

In total, it has been estimated that South Africa lost over R675 Billion due to corruption, from 1994 to 2012, all thanks to our wonderful ANC government.  Imagine how many E-Toll projects could have been paid for.  For that class of money we could've eradicated poverty in South Africa.

Conclusion

It is very clear that the whole E-Toll concept is nothing but a farce, aimed at enriching the ANC elite while taxing honest and hard-working citizens to death.  I can go into more detail on this, but I think my entry has become too long anyway.  You know my stance on E-Tolls now.  I leave you with a very informative video detailing a bit more information on E-tolls and why it is such a scam.