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Sticking it to Sanral

DID YOU know that 90% of Botswana’s horticultural products (veggies, fruits, nuts and so on) are imported? I found this out at a conference in Pretoria last week where a feisty female farmer, Diane Sibanda, provided this info.

And call me a cynic, one of my first thoughts was, “Ha. No wonder the Swartruggens toll fee is so high. Sanral sees a chance to coin it.”

When you holiday in the Groot Marico a few kilometres from town, as we’ve done, the cost really hits home. Anytime you want to pop in to town to get some milk, you have to fork out R150 – R75 each way. And yes, there are lots of trucks thundering along the road (Class IV: R267 toll fee), which of course takes its toll (ha ha) of the road surface.

But the whole route, from Quagga to Swartruggens, costs about R500 in tolls for trucks (a distance of around 200km); compare that to the N3 to Durbs, a busier truck route, which costs over a thousand for over 500km.

It’s apparently been the subject of local protest since 2011. “Local government had agreed to reduce the toll fees from R75 to R58 during a meeting in March, but that it had not been implemented, [local provincial secretary Solly Phetoe] said. ‘The minister of transport has made empty promises to us.’ [...] Phetoe said protesters wanted the national transport department to address residents, lower the fees and repair alternative roads in the area. ‘Several of the roads are in a bad condition and have potholes,’ Phetoe said.”

Where there’s a road, there’s a broken promise, it would seem.

A recent story in Groundup explored the contentious issue of the N2 in the Eastern Cape. The author, activist Mzamo Dlamini, took a group of villagers who’d been made promises by Sanral to visit people near Mthatha affected by the building of the N2. And a whole slew of complaints burst forth, including:

• In several cases, the drainage pipes from the new N2 road had been placed so that excess water flooded into the house and/or into the garden, destroying crops. All attempts to make Sanral or its contractors address these problems had been in vain.

• Tons and tons of gravel had been sourced from land nearby that belonged to a man whose approval was never sought – his ancestral land, where his family had grown food for a hundred years, was transformed “into a stone landscape”. He refused to accept R11 000 proffered as compensation, and challenged it in court, but he could not afford good lawyers to fight his case.

• Sanral had promised that there would be many jobs for locals during construction. The visitors found just two locals among hundreds of workers on the site.

• Sanral had promised to pay for the higher education of children and to improve schools and health facilities, but these promises had not been kept.

• One underpass for cattle was built by Sanral in a place chosen by the engineers, not by the locals. Locals said it was too small and dangerous for cattle.

• No bridges had been built for pedestrians, so it was impossible for children and old people to cross during some periods; parents were hiring bakkies to transport their children to school. Locals said if they had been consulted they would have suggested robots.

Sanral - the South African National Roads Agency - created by The South African National Roads Agency Limited and National Roads Act, 1998, has just one shareholder, the state. It acts as if it is a private corporation, but it is supposed to be a servant of the people. A curator and creator of essential infrastructure. Instead, its signature style is arrogance and lack of consultation.

A whistleblower from e-toll partner, Austrian company Kapsch, this year described Sanral in an affidavit to Public Protector Thuli Madonsela as having “an extremely authoritarian, command-and-control leadership approach by Sanral executives in taking major normative and strategic decisions.” They were arrogant, with an “inability to listen to any form of advice”.

Hmm. A 2003 Financial Mail article which I came across said Sanral CEO Nazir Alli “brooks no criticism or opposition to his plans”.  So no learning there, right?

No. That’s self-evident: “Outa’s research into international examples begs the question: Did Sanral’s own internationally based research take cognizance of the single biggest and obvious requirement for the success of an e-tolling scheme - a committed consent and acceptance by the people?

"It is also interesting to note that Sanral was warned of this important issue by their own advisors; however, it would appear their contemptuous attitude and arrogance has blinded them to rights of the very people they rely on to make the system work.”

Every time Sanral fails to listen to the concerns of the people, fails to consult, makes promises it doesn’t follow through on, destroys land and livelihood, fails to get the “consent and acceptance by the people”, it weakens public trust. But it staggers on, shedding the occasional board member (“Sanral chair resigns after questions about qualifications”, City Press, 3 August 2014).

Surely the time is way overdue for fresh and citizen-centric leadership?


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