What to do with your old e-toll bill
South African motorists with outstanding e-toll debt should not pay as there is no immediate clear benefit nor any suggestion that failure to pay will result in punishment.
That is according to recent feedback from the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse CEO Wayne Duvenage.
Billing from overhead e-toll gantries for the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP) stopped in early April 2024 after most motorists refused to pay for years.
That so-called “shutdown” was the result of a deal between the national government, Gauteng provincial government (GPG), and the South African National Roads Agency (Sanral).
Under this agreement, 70% of Sanral’s e-toll debt would be cleared by National Treasury and the remaining amount would be covered by the GPG.
However, there are still many unanswered questions about this issue, including whether the GPG was successful in securing the bank loans it wanted to use to fund its contribution and how it will be able to afford those loans.
Meanwhile, transport minister Sindisiwe Chikunga and Sanral have continually stressed that motorists still have an obligation to pay their outstanding historical bills.
But Outa CEO Wayne Duvenage has advised that people ignore their historic invoices.
“It was this civil disobedience that gave rise to the outcome achieved, whereby the government was forced to scrap the scheme. Paying now would be a futile exercise,” Duvenage told MyBroadband.
Outa has played a key role in making users of e-toll roads resistant to paying their bills, dating back to the years-long lead-up and eventual launch of the scheme in 2013.
It was initially founded as the Opposition Against Urban Tolling Alliance but broadened its scope to address other tax-related concerns.
Outa has maintained that e-tolls were put in place without proper public consultation and questioned the tens of billions of rand spent on the project, with its initial cost ballooning from R6 billion to around R70 billion.
Only Sanral can chase down defaulters — but it won’t
Chikunga has said that the issue of settling the historical debts would be a focus of future discussions between her department, Sanral, and the GPG.
Sanral CEO Reginald Demana has also said that “policymakers” would still decide on what to do with the old debt.
According to Outa, the only way to collect the outstanding e-toll fees is through a formal summons process.
“Neither the Department of Transport nor the Gauteng Province has any jurisdiction to charge or collect e-toll fees from motorists, as they have no idea who owes how much money for the use of these roads,” Duvenage said. “Only Sanral does, and only Sanral was gazetted to collect these fees.”
Duvenage pointed out that Sanral had repeatedly said it had no appetite to enter into new formal litigation against e-toll defaulters.
While it tried this approach for several years, it was abandoned in March 2019, in part due to a challenge by Outa.
“We can’t see them going down this road again, and if they do, we are ready to assist motorists in their defence, as we had done with over 2,000 defaulters who mandated us to defend them between 2016 and 2019,” Duvenage said.
Duvenage said the existing cases remained in limbo, and Sanral has repeatedly failed to provide feedback to Outa on how they intended to proceed with the matters.
Those motorists who wanted to get a debt-free e-tag for the convenience of driving through a long-distance toll gate without having to stop and pay with a card or cash have been able to do so from around a month after the gantry billing was disconnected.
“We would advise the user to only place a small value of credit into the e-tag account and see what happens before they use the tag on a new trip,” Duvenage said.
“They can check their e-tag balance online. If the tag shows these funds as being consumed prior to travelling on a conventional tolled route, then one could assume the past e-toll debt is in play.
Duvenage does not expect this to be an issue, however.
“Because the e-tag would be seen as a new link to a vehicle registration number, we anticipate that Sanral’s system would probably not debit the account with outstanding bills,” he said.
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