CHURCH COMMENDS CONCOURT RULING
JOHANNESBURG: The South African Council of Churches (SACC) is encouraged by the ruling from the Constitutional Court on Thursday 31 March, which has served to restore the faith of the...
Since the J&P Department issued its statement opposing e-tolls after this was approved by the Admin Board in May, the Church has been thrown into the limelight with lots of media coverage. This also frightened the government who urgently called us for a high-level meeting. Their hope was that we could come to a common understanding of the issue but this failed. We made it clear that we were not in agreement. Even if we did not succeed in changing their minds during the meeting (to which there was never likely to be an openness anyway), at least we were able to resist being co-opted by the rosy picture they painted of the e-tolls. This in itself constituted a victory for the Church.
We had decided together with the SACC that we would not deal with the economic technicalities of the issue since they were bound to bring lots of facts and figures which would contradict the figures that our sources had determined, neither of which could be verified in that context. Our main arguments therefore were:
– We are concerned that our constituents are still unhappy with the decision to introduce e-tolls and uncomfortable about the many questions that have been raised about the process and the final decision taken (as stated in our statement).
– Such lack of trust, combined with a perception that Government is not prepared to listen to our concerns, often leads to people expressing their disagreements in ways that are not constructive or peaceful. We are therefore very concerned that this situation, coupled with all the other socio-economic pressures being felt by the people of the province at this time, has the strong possibility of degenerating into negative behaviour.
– We therefore call for
The government showed no sign of acceding to our proposals. However, they indicated an openness to continue engaging with us to find ways to overcome the credibility barriers faced by Government in regard to the decisions taken in respect of this e-tolling project.
In the aftermath of this meeting, we have embarked on the following measures:
A vital issue for us is to realise that the imposition of the e-tolls is not inevitable. It can be stopped especially since the government realises that the implementation and enforcement of it is going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible. To avoid a further accumulation of debt, we have to impress on them the need to introduce immediately the alternative methods being proposed of paying for the roads. If we withdraw from this struggle at this stage, we will be playing into the government’s hands.
Furthermore we have to recognise that there will be attempts to divide us as Church. We managed to resist this when they wanted to meet with us separately. We have to be very vigilant about this and again ensure that we don’t play into the government’s hands.