E-toll speed cameras missing in action
The Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG) has gone quiet about repurposing cameras on e-toll gantries for average speed over distance (ASOD) enforcement and its crime-combating efforts.
After the province’s e-toll system was shut down in early 2024, the government repeatedly said the expensive infrastructure would not be wasted.
In September 2024, Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi told Eyewitness News that the provincial government had taken over the cameras and integrated them with its broader CCTV network.
“They are part of our portfolio of CCTV cameras. There is some technology that is there on speed and tracking lost cars, we have been given access to that,” he said.
“We have also been given access to their command centre, and we have permanent law enforcement agents that are in the command centre.”
However, in feedback to TopAuto in February 2025, the South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) said that the system was not yet being used for ASOD enforcement.
Sanral traffic engineer Siveshni Pillay explained that the cameras were still recording vehicle data which were being used “road safety purposes.”
Pillay said that details about potential projects and initiatives being investigated for the gantries would be “communicated in due course.”
Five months later, neither the Gauteng government nor Sanral have provided details about the cameras’ current roles.
Considering how many cars are using the highways with e-toll gantries daily, the addition of ASOD enforcement in recent months was likely to substantially increase fine revenues if implemented.
It is difficult to imagine that the government would let an opportunity to boast about cracking down on speeding or improving crime fighting with the cameras slip by.
Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesudid not mention the e-toll cameras in his recent 2025/2026 Community Safety budget speech when touching on the province’s broader CCTV rollout.
MyBroadband’s queries asking about progress in repurposing the cameras have also gone unanswered.
Questions about camera suitability
Sanral has explained that the cameras are already capable of limited ASOD enforcement. This makes sense as the cameras only need to record the exact times a particular car passes under the gantries.
Determining whether it exceeded the speed limit should be reasonably simple — calculate if the time travelled between any two gantries is shorter than what would have been possible at the legal speed limit.
However, whether the cameras can be used for proactive safety and crime monitoring remains to be seen, as this would require the system to capture and transmit feeds quickly.
When the system was originally designed, this was not a required use case for the cameras. All the cameras needed to do was rapidly capture photos of cars’ number plates.
In 2023, Sanral took about three days to process e-toll transactions, suggesting quick turnaround capabilities were not key to the system’s operation.
If ASOD enforcement is currently possible, the Gauteng government could be losing out on critical traffic fine revenue, which could help service the debt it is using to pay off the project.
The province must cough up around R19 billion towards the outstanding cost and maintenance of the system as part of the agreement reached with Sanral and National Treasury for discontinuing e-tolls.
Despite the system being disabled, the government has emphasised that motorists are still obligated to pay their historic e-toll debts.
While it has made vague threats about how it plans to get people to pay, it is likely to face significant resistance from the public and civil society groups, like the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa).
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