The man who stopped e-tolls

Wayne Duvenage is the co-founder and chief executive officer of the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa), the civil action group largely responsible for the failure of the controversial e-toll system in Gauteng.

Duvenage was born in Harare, Zimbabwe, in 1960. However, he has almost no recollection of the country as his parents left for South Africa when he was five years old.

His first four years of primary school were spent in Pinetown, KwaZulu-Natal, before his family moved to Newcastle in the heydays of Iscor’s expansion.

He described himself as very adventurous, outdoors, and independent in his early childhood years.

Duvenage said he was not a good learner during his mid-teens and generally churned out grades just good enough to pass.

“I was a rather disruptive student and questioned the status quo too often, ending up in the headmaster’s office on many an occasion,” he said.

However, he managed to pull up his socks in matric and achieved a university entrance pass.

He enrolled at the University of KwaZulu-Natal where he initially studied geology for a year but switched to industrial psychology after discovering he had a strong interest in human behaviour.

Following his graduation in 1985, Duvenage’s first job was as a dispatcher for Avis car rentals at Durban Airport, where he worked shifts preparing and cleaning cars with a team of drivers.

He initially thought of this job as gap-filler while scouring the market for a role in the personnel recruitment industry.

“However, Avis was an extremely dynamic company with a lot of opportunities for growth and development in the space of business leadership,” he said.

“Over the next 10 years, I took up various operational management positions within the company and became head of Avis’ operations in Southern Africa in 1996.”

“I took a few years out of Avis to develop a family hospitality venture from 2001 to 2005, which is when I was asked to also manage the Car Rental and Leasing Industry Association (Savrala),” he said.

“Thereafter, I was recruited back to Avis in 2005 and assumed the chief executive position in 2006,” he said.

During his tenure as Avis CEO, Duvenage continued to play a role on the Savrala and Tourism Marketing South Africa boards.

Around August 2010, the industry became aware of Sanral’s decision to introduce the e-tolling system and studied its implications.

“From an industry perspective, our research showed the scheme to be irrational, with all the hallmarks of gross inefficiency and potential corruption,” Duvenage said.

Savrala decided to challenge the e-toll decision in court, and Duvenage acted as chair of the initiative, which was initially named the Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance (Outa).

Duvenage said a business-led initiative to challenge the government on one of its policy decisions was very rare at the time.

“Until then, only Cosatu and the DA were challenging the e-toll issue,” he said.

“After a few months at the helm of the newly formed Outa, the demands of time required to engage with lawyers, the media and the public was becoming pressing and personally, I couldn’t fulfil the duties of two jobs of heading up Outa and being the Avis CEO.

“I had to make a personal choice and having achieved a lot of what I had wanted to do at Avis over the past five years, I felt it was time for change and made the decision to engage with my team and resign in 2012, to move into this new role.”

Duvenage was not paid for the “almost full-time” part but was earning an income through a few consulting roles at the time.

Duvenage said the early days of Outa were tough as he and the initial other two board members of the organisation — Paul Pauwen and Michael Tatalias — were kept very busy addressing the court challenge and creating awareness around their cause.

“The court case costs went from what we were initially told would be around R1 million to over R9 million in the space of two years,” he said.

“Government had employed a strategy of attrition through law-fare, with interlocutory challenges brought into the mix, whilst at the same time they leaned on business by approaching the various boards of the holding companies of the car rental companies, to stop funding Outa.

“Our income dried up overnight, and our call on support from the public did not achieve the outcomes we needed to pay the lawyers, let alone the creditors who were assisting us. We came close to closing the doors of Outa a few times.”

“However, had we done so, the public would have been left stranded to fend for themselves against Sanral and a host of connected cronies and Kapsch TrafficCom, who stood to become the beneficiaries of a very deceitful scheme. We had to stay the course.”

Big court loss not enough to stop conviction

Outa lost its case calling for the e-toll scheme to be declared unlawful in the Supreme Court of Appeal in 2013.

However, even though it respected the court’s decision on legality, it maintained that the e-toll scheme was ethically and practically questionable.

“In 2015, we managed to get the crowdfunding scheme right through the introduction of a monthly debit order and our promise to the public that we would defend every e-toll summons the public received from Sanral for non-payment,” he said.

“It was then that the organisation transformed and we could start employing a team of people at market-related salaries to become the effective civil intervention organisation that we are today.”

“We stuck to our word and took Sanral on with over 2,000 summonses mandated to us to defend.”

“By the time Sanral abandoned their summons strategy in March 2019, we had moved well beyond tolls in February 2016, and with our new memorandum of incorporation, we were tackling many cases of corruption and maladministration in government.

“To date, we have taken on over 300 projects and achieved an 87% success rate.”

Duvenage said Outa’s continued existence was thanks to its supporters, many of whom have been with the company since its early focus only on e-tools.

Positive signs for the future

While the e-toll scheme was officially shut down in 2024, Duvenage said there was “no shortage of work” in challenging the waste of taxpayer money at all levels of government.

Duvenage said the organisation had recently seen a few ministers and government departments seeking its input on solutions to gross maladministration and corrupt activities.

“This is very encouraging for us, and we believe OUTA’s role will grow in this regard.”

“For this reason, we will look and expand our skill set in the forensic analysis and investigations space, as well as whistleblower hotlines and communications, to shine the spotlight on corruption and maladministration.”

Duvenage’s advice for civil activists was to “stay the course, remain resilient, and respect and protect whistleblowers all the time”.

“It’s difficult work and more often than not, very thankless, whilst chasing the never-ending shortage of funds to do this work. But you can’t give up.

“This country, with all our diverse cultures, flora, fauna, minerals and scenic beauty is worth fighting for.

“Never allow the populist politicians to divide us, which is something they love to do. We are more united as a people than the divisive populist politicians would like us to believe we are.”