E-tolling: what will you do?

Jane Smith runs the corporate social investment department for a multimillion-rand company. She places extra focus on her passion for education and directs most of her company's initiatives at schools.

Sanral is counting on the fact that South Africans are too orderly (and my guess is too lazy) to do anything critical about the situation.

Farzana Rasool, journalist, ITWeb

However, I have to mention that this is Jane Smith by day. By night she's a citizen's hoodlum. She arms herself with a wooden-handled axe, a slingshot, spray paint, and a camera. Smith also dons a black mask (sorry, no cape). She gets into her Mini Cooper and heads to the next Gauteng e-toll gantry on her list.

The wooden-handled axe is to chop up the cables leading to the gantry, the slingshot is to knock down the e-tag readers, the spray paint is for the overhead cameras (don't ask how she gets up there, she's got skills), and the camera is just to take a picture of herself afterward, of course.

No, this is not a low-budget version of Catwoman, but rather a dramatic version of what could happen in SA's near future, if the online community that has been screaming in the face of e-tolling is to be taken seriously.

The rightly-hated system has been that little fly that buzzes about around the room and that you hope will just realise its unwanted existence and drop dead.

But since the point of government is to go against everything citizens want, the fly, of course, actually turned out to be a blood-sucking mosquito that keeps taking a little bit of you despite your best efforts to slap it away.

Tariffs for the contentious system were gazetted in February. They were too high. The province yelled for more than two weeks. The fees were suspended later that month.

The Department of Transport then decided that if the drivers who make use of the Gauteng highways surprisingly have so much to say, it would be good to get someone to listen to them. And so a steering committee was formed to hear out individual motorists, industry players, official opposition and labour.

Everyone screamed “fuel levy” and the steering committee listened with an attentive ear, gave in and said: “Alright, alright here's a few cents off the tariffs you initially hated. Sorted.”

Again, surprisingly, citizens have been frothing at the mouth, getting out their cans of Doom and even throwing stones... only online of course.

The outrage that led to the initial suspension of the gazetted fees resurfaced with Cabinet's acceptance of the slight reductions proposed by the committee. It's just as aggressive, if not worse.

There have been screams of how e-tolling was never an accepted principle in the first place, despite the department's claims; of how the reductions are too little; and of how the idea of a “user-pay” principle is undermined by giving free passes to taxis and buses.

The noise then turned to what was going to be done about this silly government and its poor listening skills.

There were calls for the current ruling party to be ousted, for mass disobedience by not paying the toll fees, for protests, strikes and vandalism.

And that's when we started becoming Egypt.

Justice Project SA's national chairperson Howard Dembovsky likened the upcoming action to that taken in Egypt. He meant that the scale of the rioting and insurgence over e-tolling is going to be of the same level.

The only comforting part of this comparison is that maybe e-tolling will do a Hosni Mubarak and step down?

The SA National Roads Agency (Sanral), however, has a completely different opinion. It is counting on the fact that South African citizens are too orderly (and my guess is too lazy) to do anything critical about the situation.

It said most South Africans are not law-breakers and don't want to do anything that will violate the country's rules.

The question then is: are we going to be Robert Mugabe's Zimbabweans or Hosni Mubarak's Egyptians?

Is Sanral right? Are motorists only Internet-aggressive?

It all comes back to the phenomenon of digital activism, or what could be known as “slacktivism”, where people take the easy way out that comes with the Internet and online platforms for airing opinions.

Stating your opinion doesn't make a difference. If it did, Somalian children would not be starving and large corporations would have greener habits. Good sentiment is precious, but I can't remember the last time just “precious” did anything meaningful for anyone.

Are the comments on articles and forums about rebelling against e-tolling and crippling it by not paying or slicing the cables, just a huge balloon?

Will people really take to the streets or will their daily routine suddenly seem too “precious” to give up for toy-toying and stand-taking?

I'm not talking about swinging from the gantries like monkeys, but will SA do anything at all to stop something that is so widely rejected?

Zimbabwe or Egypt, what will it be SA?