Cape Town - ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe's pledge to revisit the Gauteng e-toll decision is "disingenuous and farcical", according to the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) on Thursday.
Mantashe told Black Management Forum (BMF) conference in Midrand on Wednesday that the ANC would revisit the contentious tolling system.
"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," Outa chairperson Wayne Duvenage said in a statement.
"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."
"You can't be half pregnant on the e-toll scheme, you either toll or you don't," said 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."
Transport Minister Dipuo Peters told Parliament in May that e-tolls are here to stay.
Peters said the 201km Gauteng Freeway Project is already congested and the province, as the economic hub of South Africa, will require more new roads.
“Government has already created space for public transport operators not to pay e-toll and concessions have been given to deserving cases. We’ve also spent more than R1bn in creating alternative roads in Gauteng,” Peters said, adding that South Africans know there is a “user pays” principle and this policy needs to be implemented.
“We need good quality roads, otherwise people will say they have to drive on what’s left of the road and not on the left of the road.”
Peters said 86% of the budget of the South African National Road Agency Limited (Sanral) comes from the fiscus, while the remaining 14% is the toll component of the budget.