{"id":50432,"date":"2013-12-03T15:08:42","date_gmt":"2013-12-03T13:08:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=50432"},"modified":"2013-12-03T15:12:03","modified_gmt":"2013-12-03T13:12:03","slug":"e-tolls-wont-affect-anc-elections-analyst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/50432\/e-tolls-wont-affect-anc-elections-analyst\/","title":{"rendered":"E-tolls won\u2019t affect ANC elections: analyst"},"content":{"rendered":"

A political analyst believes that the Gauteng e-tolls will not have any affect on the African National Congress<\/a>\u00a0(ANC) when it comes to the elections in 2014.<\/p>\n

The e-tolling project\u00a0went live on Tuesday (3 December) <\/strong>on Gauteng’s freeways, amid severe\u00a0criticism\u00a0from public and rival political parties.<\/p>\n

Anti-tolling lobbyists include\u00a0the\u00a0Congress of SA Trade Unions<\/a>\u00a0(Cosatu) in Gauteng, which has been protesting against the project to \u201cirritate politicians\u201d, while the\u00a0Democratic Alliance<\/a>\u00a0also promised to continue to fight to have e-tolls scrapped.<\/p>\n

In an interview on Radio 702<\/a> on Tuesday (3December), Professor Stephen Friedman, political analyst at the Centre for the study of Democracy, said that anti-tolling lobbyists were chiefly from middle class groups with\u00a0mini-bus taxis being exempt from having to pay to use the e-tolled roads.<\/p>\n

“If you look at middle class suburban people who are protesting, obviously this has reinforced views that government has it in for the middle class, that government wants to take money from middle class people, to line the pockets of politicians,” the analyst said.<\/p>\n

He warned that the\u00a0crunch for people threatening not to get e-tagged, or paying e-toll bills, may come when they renew their vehicle licences.<\/p>\n

He suggested there might be a case where people would not be able to have their licences renewed until they paid for e-tolls. \u201cI would expect that to be the time in which \u00a0people start coughing up because I don\u2019t think there are too many people who would drive around without a licence in order to not pay tolls.”<\/p>\n

Friedman\u00a0said he didn\u2019t expect people to vote against the ruling party in 2014 because of the implementation of e-tolls.<\/p>\n

\u201cA fair amount of the protest is coming from people who are opposed to the ANC anyway. They will obviously vote against the ANC, but they were always going to vote against the ANC.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big question mark, and really the organisation which has turned this into a different sort of protest, is Cosatu, and I really don\u2019t think that Cosatu\u2019s members votes are going to change as a result of this (anti e-toll rhetoric),”\u00a0Friedman said.<\/p>\n

He noted that Costu\u2019s members were not unused to a scenario in which they went against the ANC on policy issues, but continued to vote for the ruling party regardless.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think this is going to affect the ANC\u2019s standings at the polls. It certainly may make its relationship with middle class groups and Cosatu more difficult, but its not going to affect the electoral outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

More on e-tolls<\/h3>\n

Buy an e-tag and retrain yourself: ANC<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

E-tolls are cheap for users: Sanral<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

E-tolls: pay up or else<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

DA launches new anti-e-toll billboards<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A political analyst believes that the e-toll will not have any affect on the ANC when it comes to the elections in 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":47119,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3549,1875,7119,1804,26,429,7118],"class_list":["post-50432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-african-national-congress","tag-anc","tag-congress-of-sa-trade-unions","tag-e-tolls","tag-headline","tag-sanral","tag-stephen-friedman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50432"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50440,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50432\/revisions\/50440"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}