Driving the e-toll opposition

Wayne Duvenage has not given up his fight to have e-tolls, which will be collected using the gantries along Gautengs highways, scrapped. (Delwyn Verasamy , M&G)

Perhaps it was the comment made to a journalist after a presentation by South African National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral) chief executive Nazir Alli that set campaigner and motorists' friend Wayne Duvenage on his crusade against the implementation of the proposed e-tolling funding mechanism for the Gauteng freeway improvement project.

In those days, Duvenage was chief executive of car rental company Avis and the reporter had asked Alli how the e-tolling funding model would work. Alli apparently replied that "it is far too complicated for you guys to understand".

"As an industry, we had got together to try to understand how the e-tolling model would operate so we could work out a way to adjust our systems," Duvenage said.

"Our industry engagements with Sanral raised a number of questions around the inefficiencies of the system. We realised that some serious transgressions had been made regarding the implementation of e-tolling in Gauteng. Very little consultation and questionable research had taken place and most road users were unaware of its implications and costs. It was their sheer arrogance and poor engagement with business and society which made matters worse."

Since then, Duvenage who started the civil action group Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance at the beginning of the year with other interested parties and left Avis about four months ago has been on a mission to uncover the details of the project's e-tolling plans and put a stop to them. Although he calls himself the spokesperson for the group, Duvenage has been the public face of the battle against the implementation of what he calls an inefficient and expensive system.

The costs will be recouped from road users each time they drive through one of Gauteng's now infamous gantries with their purple lights, which tweeter Gus Silber suggested could be transformed into rugby posts, discotheque catwalks or garden gazebos.

Overturned Duvenage became something of a Clark Kent with motorists when, in April, the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria granted an interdict preventing the project from going ahead.

"We couldn't understand why the road user should foot such an enormous bill when the roads could have been upgraded at a far lower cost to the end user," said Duvenage.

However, the Constitutional Court overturned the interdict last month, opening the door for the government to gazette e-toll tariffs, which are lower than those originally proposed but the same as those gazetted in April.

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Driving the e-toll opposition