Everyone in Gauteng is weighing in on e-tolling - at least, everyone who uses the highways. There appear to be two camps emerging. One who thinks that middle class South Africans are already over taxed and pay far too much for everything service related and this is just another way of raiding their wallets, and one who thinks people should cough up, that it's inevitable, and that there are more important things to scream and shout about. Both, it seems, miss the point.
It's undeniable that in general, private car ownership levels (everywhere in the world, and South Africa particularly) should be much lower. Right now, instead of people paying for the cars they drive, people feel the affects of climate change, and that's a crummy system. I'm all for making cars (and various other manifestations of the petrochemical industrial complex) unaffordable for most people. But that's not what the tolling system does. Gauteng commuters aren't going to give up their cars because they have to pay to use the freeways. They're just going to grumble a bit. Everyone will insist it's because there isn't adequate public transport, but mostly people don't know what public transport there is. As The Dad says - no middle class South African takes public transport.
The new tolling system isn't going to change this. It's not going to create financing for transport (since, allegedly, most of the money involved is going to Austria). It's not going to do anything to combat the environmental and social damage that private cars cause. As far as I can tell, the real problems are:
- corruption (from lack of transparency to South Africa's wealth being shipped off to Europe)
- a development path that is increasingly privatized and exclusionary, moving the country closer to the military industrial complex and farther from social inclusion and environmental sustainability
But you find these two things in many, many moves by government these days. Why single out toll roads? We could just as well scream and shout about banking regulations, various government decisions around equating 'progressive realisation' with 'privatisation'; the list is long. The unions are being opportunistic my hitting on an issue that will get a rise out of a pretty wide swath of the middle class; but I'm afraid they're just making a point of flexing their muscles within the alliance, instead of actually working for meaningful change.
It's undeniable that in general, private car ownership levels (everywhere in the world, and South Africa particularly) should be much lower. Right now, instead of people paying for the cars they drive, people feel the affects of climate change, and that's a crummy system. I'm all for making cars (and various other manifestations of the petrochemical industrial complex) unaffordable for most people. But that's not what the tolling system does. Gauteng commuters aren't going to give up their cars because they have to pay to use the freeways. They're just going to grumble a bit. Everyone will insist it's because there isn't adequate public transport, but mostly people don't know what public transport there is. As The Dad says - no middle class South African takes public transport.
The new tolling system isn't going to change this. It's not going to create financing for transport (since, allegedly, most of the money involved is going to Austria). It's not going to do anything to combat the environmental and social damage that private cars cause. As far as I can tell, the real problems are:
- corruption (from lack of transparency to South Africa's wealth being shipped off to Europe)
- a development path that is increasingly privatized and exclusionary, moving the country closer to the military industrial complex and farther from social inclusion and environmental sustainability
But you find these two things in many, many moves by government these days. Why single out toll roads? We could just as well scream and shout about banking regulations, various government decisions around equating 'progressive realisation' with 'privatisation'; the list is long. The unions are being opportunistic my hitting on an issue that will get a rise out of a pretty wide swath of the middle class; but I'm afraid they're just making a point of flexing their muscles within the alliance, instead of actually working for meaningful change.
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