{"id":837727,"date":"2025-09-17T09:45:34","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T07:45:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=837727"},"modified":"2025-09-17T09:45:40","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T07:45:40","slug":"one-final-twist-for-south-africas-e-toll-saga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/837727\/one-final-twist-for-south-africas-e-toll-saga\/","title":{"rendered":"One final twist for South Africa’s e-toll saga"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

While Gauteng’s controversial e-tolls are shut down and won’t be coming back, the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) is still trying to exorcise the lingering ghosts of the failed system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group announced a fresh legal challenge against national road agency Sanral and the Department of Transport to compel the state agencies to withdraw thousands of e-toll cases against motorists who rejected the system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the time that e-tolls were in operation, Sanral used many tactics to try to coerce motorists into buying into the system and paying their toll fees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These included threats of credit blacklisting and being blocked from vehicle and driving licence renewals. These threats fell flat, and motorists continued their revolt against the system. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The roads agency eventually upped the ante by issuing thousands of summonses, launching legal cases against individuals and businesses alike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the foundational benefits Outa offered South Africans who joined its cause against e-tolls was protection against Sanral’s legal challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Accepting a mandate from donors, Outa would take on the case and launch a defence on behalf of the targeted motorists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group noted that Sanral had instituted legal action against 2,028 individuals and businesses over unpaid e-toll debt, which the civil action group defended against.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the court was flooded with thousands of cases, Outa and Sanral began preparing a ‘test case’, in the hopes of setting a precedent that could be applied to all other cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, in 2019, Sanral stopped issuing summonses altogether as it became evident that the system had collapsed, and the provincial and national governments went into damage control mode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The e-toll system eventually collapsed completely, with the government officially ending the ill-advised scheme in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the legal front, the test case was never heard, and nothing came of the thousands of other cases in the system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outa now argues that Sanral effectively abandoned the cases, as it has taken no further steps on these cases, and it is now seeking legal finality on the matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fight over costs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

According to Outa head, Wayne Duvenage, the group approached both Sanral and the Department of Transport to get finality on the matter, but was met with silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This prompted the organisation to head to court to force the issue. The main point of contention is costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Duvenage noted that simply abandoning the cases isn’t enough to end the matter, because each of the cases Outa came to defend carried a cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until these cases are formally withdrawn by the issuer, they remain in the system and open, with no way for Outa to recover those costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group has now filed legal action against Sanral and three ministers, asking the high court to declare that roads agency has abandoned the collection of the outstanding e-toll debts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This will remove these matters from court. If Outa wins, Sanral’s claims against the 2,028 e-toll defendants will fall away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outa is also requesting the court to make an order to force Sanral to pay Oouta’s legal costs in the cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The respondents are Sanral, the ministers of Transport and Finance, the minister and director-general of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, and the commissioner of SARS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Outa, Sanral has indicated that it intends to oppose its application, but it has received no other responses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BusinessTech asked Sanral and the Department of Transport for comment on the matter but did not receive a response by the time of publication. Comment will be added once received.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thousands of legal cases against motorists who defied the e-toll system are still open. Outa wants Sanral and the government to finalise things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":709474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[1804,1988,429],"class_list":["post-837727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-e-tolls","tag-outa","tag-sanral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837727","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=837727"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":837732,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837727\/revisions\/837732"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=837727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=837727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=837727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}