SANRAL and the Borgias
SANRAL are plumbing the depths that bottom-feeding scum can reach. They are liars, extortionists and cheats. They are desperate in the face of mass refusals to register for e-tags. Their behaviour is outrageous.
The big issue is that SANRAL are blatantly and unashamedly guilty of acting like the worst kind of gangland thugs. They are attempting to force everyone to acquire e-tags to save their administration collapsing under the weight of the manual processing of transactions. At current e-tag take-up levels that will be about 2 Million manual transactions per day. SANRAL won't cope, E-Natis won't cope, the Post Office won't cope, the Courts won't cope.
They tried to make e-tags compulsory through legislation - that failed. They tried using road blocks manned by their e-trolls to intimidate road users into getting e-tags. That failed, but they will try again. Their intimidatory tactics include lying – they have claimed at road blocks that e-tags are compulsory. Single women drivers have been terrorised into a state of fear and alarm by these wanabee cops. There are even reports of sexual assaults. All in the name of e-tags.
There are no dispute procedures in place for cloned plates or erroneous billings – pay then argue. They demand payment in seven days, when the industry standard is 30. They are attempting to enforce usage contracts that break the law, even after amendment, in particular conditions that allow them to pillage your bank account with whatever they want, whenever they want it.
Today, two weeks before switch-on, they announce for the first time that there will be fees for non e-tag users that are six times higher than the standard e-tag fee. Clearly, if intimidation and threats don’t work, hit us over the head and steal our wallets.
If you are happy with these latter-day Borgias, then good on you. You and your fellow happy people could probably all get into a Toyota Tazz. The queues inside and outside the e-toll registration offices will tell you just how happy the vast majority of Gauteng and Erkuheleni citizens are.
E-Tolling and the Rule of Law
I’ve written from time to time about the Government’s practice of outsourcing the creation and enforcement of unpopular law to parastatals and other third parties. Two recent examples show the folly of this practice.
Admittedly the Government needs no help in doing bad law itself. Put forward contentious and universally, well almost universally, opposed proposals for compulsory security classification of all state information and make it an offence to have some, and the sheep will dutifully march into the AYE lobby. But that is a story for another day, and another topic, the topic being back to the bad old days with the gradual imposition of a security/police state in SA.
The seem to have a desire to use other organisations as lightning rods though.
A prime example of outsourcing to a bunch of pompous power-mad cretins is the Gautrain rule book. Two seminal statements of National Independence, The Declaration of Arbroath and the Gettysburg address are each less than 300 words long, but Bombela managed to make a folio the size of War and Peace out of their rules and regulations for using the Gautrain. They then compound the felony by implementing it using the sort of wannabe cop security guard who has difficulty in walking and chewing gum at the same time.
To SANRAL and its wee blue-eyed baby boy, e-tolling. SANRAL exhibits boundless executive arrogance and bull-headedness, a complete failure in forward planning and empathy with the population on par with that of a granite boulder.
Apparently about 200 000 of the 4Million vehicles registered in Gauteng have e-tags, i.e. about 5%. I suspect that most of those are Government and parastatal fleet vehicles, and probably hire cars. I drive around Gauteng most days and have yet to see a vehicle with an e-tag. Try to find one yourself if you are in the area. I am willing to bet that the take-up of e-tags by private vehicles is well below 5%.
Administratively this is a disaster for SANRAL. Each vehicle without an e-tag must be recognised by reading the licence plate and identifying the owner through the E-Natis database. At an estimated 2.5 Million requests a day, the bulk during peak hours, can E-Natis cope? No-one is saying.
At the end of the month, SANRAL must issue paper invoices to the registered owners for e-toll charges. How many invoices is that? Potentially over 3Million. In reality probably a lot less, but certainly close to a million. How will the Post Office cope? Remember that to comply with the law, these must be registered letters and signed for on delivery.
There is then pursuit for non payment. Johannesburg has AARTO, Pretoria and Erkulheni does not. A separate summons for each area. Separate summonses must be issued for each magisterial district in which a non-payment offence has occurred. There is a legal view that since each transaction represents a separate event, each must be summonsed separately.
A legal issue and administrative nightmare even before we consider the numbers. If payment, or rather non payment is at the same level as e-tag take-up, that probably means at the minimum over a million summonses each and every month. The courts will not cope.
SANRAL react to the popular outrage against e-tolling and to their sudden realisation of the administrative chaos that will follow implementation by requesting changes to the Road Traffic Acts. They only ask in the month before tolling comes into effect. The requests are that e-tagging is compulsory, punishments (demerit points and fines) levied for not having an e-tag, and “Peace Officers” have powers of arrest for offenders without e-tags. Whether these “Peace Officers” are only SAP and Metro officers, or the category includes directly employed or outsourced SANRAL orcs remains to be seen. There have been suggestions that SANRAL are to set up their own freeway force, so who knows.
Again they seem not to have thought this through. Is the compulsory e-tag regulation to apply to Gauteng registered vehicles only, or are out of province visitors forced to buy an e-tag as they enter Gauteng? Is such an ordinance legal, and if so, can it to be administered?
Even the punishment aspect hangs on a legal thread. Is it lawful that a Pretoria resident only be fined, while a Johannesburg resident subjected to AARTO runs the risk of losing their driving license?
The whole process demonstrates unparalleled arrogance on the part of SANRAL.
Probably about 2Billion rand a year will be remitted overseas to the operators of e-tolling, Kapsch Austria. Is it right that the hard-pressed Gauteng motorist should subsidise the well-heeled of Austria. Most, except elements of Government and SANRAL think not.
For your information, a division of Kapsch, Kapsch Sweden was formerly known as Saab Aerospace, an equal shareholder with British Aerospace in SANIP. SANIP is allegedly the conduit through which multi-million rand commissions were paid to Fanu Hlongwane and Joe Modise in the Gripen fighter portion of the SA arms deal in the 1990s. But it is only speculation that re-use of these payment channels is the real reason for the monomania shown towards e-tolling.
Don’t Mention the Weather
I sometimes wonder about the collective intelligence of our Lords and Mistresses in Parliament. The latest brain-fart is imprisonment for predicting the weather. The latest draft of amendments to the South African Weather Service Act of 2001 provides for fines of up to R10Million and/or 10 years in prison for stating anything that could be considered a “severe weather warning”.
However, if the South African Weather Service issues a “severe weather warning” then that is ok, so the implication must be that the Government is protecting it’s revenue base. The problem there is that weather predictions by the SAWS are about as accurate as my Uncle Jimmy’s of the US national debt, and carry about as much value.
My view is that it is a back-handed swipe at the English, and their propensity for talking about the weather on every possible occasion. Stop Pommies saying, “Fine day, but looks like rain later” and the buggers will will have no conversation at all.
Seriously, quite apart from anything else, this seems to be the latest in a long line of legislation that is unenforceable in practice. Are we therefore to see the emergence of a sinister group of bat-eared individuals who lurk in dark corners, listening for careless talk of impending storm or tempest? Are our phones and emails to be scanned for coded messages warning that the Harvest Festival on Saturday will need to be indoors because of a potential rainstorm?
Are M'Learned friends to make hay while they endlessly discourse on the legal definition of a "severe weather warning" in courts across the land?
Laugh if you like, but we pay for these clowns to come up with this drivel.
Is Rudeness on the Increase?
I have been pestered for the last while by a seeming cloth-eared idiot with only a faint grasp of the basics of customer relations. This mental giant does not realise just how close he is to losing a long-term customer. It goes like this.
My cell phone rings and shows a hidden/private number. I answer, a voice says "Please hold for an important call". The arrogant cheek of it. I don't know who it is that is calling, but they, whoever they are, expect me to stop whatever it is that I am doing and hang on until they get around to actually speaking to me.
I hang up, but they then phone back about 5 minutes later. Same story. This has now been going on for over a week now.
Has anyone in that brain disadvantaged organisation stopped to think just what impression this behaviour is giving to the poor schmuck who answers the phone. “We need to speak to you, but someone else is more important. Hang on a minute”. If a shop assistant did that to you would you continue to use that shop. Probably not, or at the very least be less inclined to make it your first stop.
Especially with the new CPA and the increased ability of customers to shove off without penalty, do you really want to give the impression that you don’t really give a tinker’s curse for the poor benighted fools who give you business.
Rude, arrogant, ignorant fools.
Another punch in the wallet
The Gautrain people must think that we have boulders between our ears. Having achieved their first lot of jollies with their completely over-the-top rule book and the wanabee cops implementing it, they are now sticking it to us with their fare structure.
Simply put, it’s just under R50 to travel between central Pretoria and central Johannesburg. However, if you want to go to the airport, which is on the Pretoria side of Johannesburg, it’s R125. And looking at the map on their website, it looks like travellers will need to go to Sandton and change trains to travel back to ORT.
How, other than pure and simple greed can this be justified.
Politicians have wittered on endlessly about a major benefit of the Gautrain being the reduction in road traffic. Quite apart from the simple question of Mr and Mrs Tourist asking “What Now?” while standing in Sandton wanting to get to Roodepoort, I cannot see any benefit to me to change to the Gautrain when I go to Oliver Tambo Airport.
I had looked at being able to walk out of my office in Pretoria, over the road to the Hatfield Gautrain station, and thence to ORT. On Monday the reverse. At a reasonable fare, that would save me a shed-load of money in travel cost and parking fees. Never mind the mental strain of the R21.
Driving to ORT means R150 to park, plus petrol, wear and tear - probably at least R200-R250. At R250 for a Gautrain round trip the saving is marginal, so I’ll drive.
Take the underground to Heathrow or Metro to CDG, and it's a standard fare, not out of line with fares to the adjacent stations.
This is a rip-off, pure and simple.
Our Smug, Arrogant Government
The ruling party, the ANC, exhibit arrogance, high-handedness, conceit and pomposity of the highest order.
What burns my boat is the smug contempt they have for us lesser mortals.
Parliament is by and large a rubber stamp for policies crafted in Luthuli House. The normal conventions and courtesies of Parliamentary procedure are ignored when inconvenient. The committee structure designed to provide oversight and accountability of Ministers is used to obfuscate and delay enquiries or in the case of Defence, simply dismissed as irrelevant.
There seems to be a general acceptance of abrogation of responsibility for mundane and humdrum business, i.e. the proper business of Governance.
My particular concern is the outsourcing of the creation and enacting of law. Parastatal organisations are now allowed to create and enact rules outside any form of judicial oversight, and without those rules being subject to public review and to scrutiny and approval by Parliament. Those rules then assume the force of law, and are enforced without fear, favour or common sense by the wanabee cops hired by private security organisations.
A prime example is the Bombela/Gautrain rule book, much discussed following the farce around "Trousers Off" day and the arrest of the revellers. I now find that non-payment of toll fees within 30 days is to become a AARTO offence with the issue of demerit points. SANRAL have in effect decided to criminalise a civil debt.
Why are matters that properly lie within the remit of Government being outsourced to parastatals? Are they just too tedious to discuss? Or are they beneath the great and not-so-good?
The real reason is probably that they interfere with the time used to make money.
Officially Gatvol
I am now officially gatvol.
The headlines in yesterdays blatt announced that the various Mrs Zuma are each to receive a luxury imported car for their personal use, despite their not having driving licences. The cost is estimated at R6000 per day per car, i.e. R24000 per day to provide individual transport for each of his four wives. Add in the current fiancé, and the cost rises to R30000 per day. This cost does not include the provision of a driver and security, costs which are again borne by the State, i.e. the taxpayer.
I, like most people have a concept of reasonableness when it comes to paying tax. I have no problem with donating towards what used to be described as the common weal. However, I do draw the line at subsidising wasteful extravagances of this type.
I am taking my cue from the Minister of Transport who has been heard to utter the mantra that taxes must be related to usage.
As a result, I will continue to pay VAT and other indirect taxes related to my consumption of goods and services. However, I will no longer pay direct taxation since in my view it is not being used to provide the basic services that all SA citizens so desperately need. Instead it is being used to support undeserving individuals in a lifestyle that most can only dream of. This car debacle is the last straw.
Parastatals – A Law Unto Themselves
I've been thinking about the role of the parastatals, prompted by the introduction of open road tolling in Gauteng.
I would like to consider the constitutionality of devolving authority to parastatals and private companies in the current manner.
To my mind, it is an essential component of law making that the process is open to public scrutiny and input. That is generally the case in the Parliamentary process, with the possible exception of the so-called "Enabling Acts".
However, Government seems to increasingly be devolving operational control of major areas of governance to either parastatals or private organisations. They in turn develop rules, guidelines, call them what you will for the operation of their remit. In most cases these rules then assume the force of law and are enforced by private security organisations.
The development of these rules does not include public participation and there appears to be no oversight of their operational enforcement by Government or a properly constituted legal body.
We have seen the ludicrous rule book implemented by Bombela relating to the operation of the Gautrain. That those rules are then interpreted and implemented by the sort of police wanabee uniformed security wonk you find in shopping malls is really not acceptable.
I find it extremely disturbing that parastatals can write their own laws and expect everyone to obey them. I find it even more disturbing that they can call on the SAP to help them enforce them. I find it yet more disturbing that there is no constituted legal body overseeing their operations and the manner in which they implement their rule book.
There are other significant questions about the role of parastatals, particularly whether they should be profit driven, or break-even with any surplus ploughed back as investment in their area of work.
To address the Gauteng open road tolling system specifically in this context.
It is a given that roads must be paid for. How that payment is made, through taxation, through tolling, or through a combination of both mechanisms is the issue under question.
I have both structural and operational objections to the tolling system as currently being implemented.
My first objection relates to the constitutionality of a non-Governmental body being able to criminalise individual behaviour and use State resources for enforcement. SANRAL can ask the SAP to pull you over. You can then be arrested, charged and detained for non-payment of tolls. Non-payment of tolls seems therefore to be classed more severely than non-payment of the annual vehicle licensing fee, an omission which usually attracts a ticket.
My second objection is that there was no public participation in the process, neither of the assessment of the need itself, the payment method, nor of the level of payment. The entire process seems to have been carried out (to quote Harold Wilson) in private sessions in a series of smoke filled rooms.
The operator is an Austrian company, who on their website are boasting of the "handsome profits" to be made from their management of the tolling process.
I am quite sure that if public participation had taken place that there would have been a much wider and more robust discussion about the need itself, the level of charges to be paid by the user, and the need for the profits, if any, to remain in South Africa for reinvestment elsewhere in the road network.
On operational issues, one common thread that runs through all discussions is that payment must be related to usage. SANRAL say that is what open road tolling provides. This is a straw man's argument. It is already the case. The more you drive, the more fuel you use, the more tax and levies you pay.
SANRAL also say that the tolls will provide much improved police and emergency services. Again, we already pay for the SAP, Metro police and public health services through direct taxation, and in most cases again through private security companies and medical aid schemes.
A second common thread is that we already pay for the transport infrastructure through direct and indirect taxation, particularly fuel tax and levies. So why therefore, the additional payment of road tolls?
I reiterate as a final thought - why should public infrastructure of this type be run at a profit. Surely SANRAL should operate as a non-profit organisation, and any "profits" (usually called a surplus in Government speak) ploughed back into maintenance and extension of the road infrastructure.
1Time Update
I must have had a rush of blood to the brain, or been otherwise distracted and booked a flight on 1Time again.
I have now come to the conclusion that they do not operate a timetable or a schedule, just a guideline as to when they might be able to get one of their ageing rustbuckets off the ground.
Friday – scheduled to leave at 6.15pm, rescheduled for 6.50, and finally left at 7.15. Monday, scheduled to leave at 06.45, finally left at 07.20. No reason was supplied for Friday’s delay, but the delay on Monday was, and wait for this, the crew. Because the plane had arrived late on Sunday night, the crew would arrive late on Monday morning.
Is there some CAA regulation that stipulates the amount of beauty sleep the crew must have? Please enlighten me.
As an airline for the business traveller, they are as much use as a chocolate teapot.
If I ever try to book a 1Time flight again, please shoot me.
1Time Airlines –That’s how often you fly with them.
If there were Olympic medals for incompetence then 1Time Airlines would be proud holders of the Gold.
We as a nation spend squillions of rand and what seems like aeons crafting complex and all-inclusive nation building programmes and plans. We are then surprised when they don’t work, blaming tenderpreneurs, racism, agents, whatever.
The real reason is that as businesses, we aren’t capable of doing the simple things correctly and assessing and addressing the consequences of failure. Like having planes that actually leave when they should, from where they should.
I sometimes wonder if the nation’s business planners and managers are able to find their own buttocks in the dark, even using both hands. Or give a damn when they can’t.
Consider the following sequence of events.
9pm Sunday - on-line check-in for 6.45 am 1T200 Monday flight to Johannesburg. All is in order.
4.30am, get up, usual stuff, then proceed to King Shaka Airport
5.30 am King Shaka - collect boarding pass. Check it, shows boarding time as 7.20. Apparently the flight has now been delayed to 7.50am for 'technical' reasons. An enquiry at the 1Time desk indicates the flight will actually leave at 08.20. Apparently SMSs were sent to all affected passengers. I'm still waiting for mine.
Discussing the matter with other suffering potential one-time passengers shows the 1Time Durban to Cape Town flights are similarly affected. No food/drink vouchers, no transfers to other airlines. Only apologies.
My business day is completely stuffed before it starts. Not quite as bad as the guy behind me who was on the way to Cape Town to deliver his company’s response to a R40Million tender. The earliest 1Time could get him there is after the tender closes. “Sorry for any inconvenience” doesn’t quite seem to cut it.
Just because you are a budget airline is no excuse for assuming that your passengers are students or holidaymakers to whom an hour or three here or there is not a pressing matter. The two gentlemen with connecting flights at Johannesburg would certainly agree.
Small businesses are under immense financial pressure and are resorting to low-cost carriers like 1Time to manage their business costs. Perhaps the benefits are illusory and SMME travellers should take it on the chin and pay the additional costs of the full-fare carriers.
For me, 1Time are well named. That is how often I will fly with them.
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