The Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance (Outa) has welcomed the move by political factions to pick up the legal fight against e-tolls that it abandoned last month, after the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) rejected its case.
Outa chair Wayne Duvenage says the Democratic Alliance (DA) and Freedom Front Plus (FF+) legal challenges against government's open road tolling scheme will give the legislature another chance to scrutinise the rationality and desirability of e-tolling.
The DA - which submitted an urgent High Court application two days ago to have e-tolls halted - argues that the Gauteng and other provincial legislatures have been wrongfully bypassed in the enactment of the Transport Laws and Related Matters Amendment Bill (the E-toll Bill) by the National Assembly.
Duvenage says Outa's court challenge served to raise issues that were never openly debated at the outset, "because of Sanral's failure to meaningfully consult the public". Outa maintains the legislation around e-tolling in Gauteng lacks ethical legitimacy and formal lawfulness.
"Religious leaders, led by the Catholic Bishops, have already said as much with respect to the morality of e-tolling, while the SCA remained silent about the latter in Outa's application," says Duvenage.
He says the latest legal challenge highlights the lawfulness issue Outa raised - which he hopes will now be assessed. "We have no doubt that, if reviewed on the basis of rationality, workability, efficiency and citizens' rights, e-tolling should be abandoned.
"Outa hopes the judiciary will be prompt in its judgement so that the matter can be expedited before Parliament adjourns for the national and provincial elections. We are confident that, in a free vote, the E-toll Bill will be overwhelmingly defeated. No self-respecting member of Parliament could support e-tolling after listening to what their constituencies are saying."
He says the e-toll saga has the potential to "enable the vital maturation of SA's democratic processes and the mutual accountability that must exist between the executive, the judiciary and the legislature, to exercise their duly separated powers in the best long-term interests of the country".
"Outa lost in the Constitutional Court, because the court found that the judiciary trespassed into the powers of the executive by granting Outa's interdict. We lost our case in the High Court and SCA, because the judiciary was unwilling to make a declaratory ruling on the lawfulness of e-tolling, because so much water had already flowed under the bridge."
Since the anti-toll alliance took the decision to end its legal fight against e-tolls, Outa has been revising its constitution to play the role of a civil action group that will institute social research and act as a support agency and citizen watchdog to concentrate on tolling policy and "to hold the SA National Roads Agency (Sanral) and the state accountable to its citizens".
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