Sanral goes after roadside businesses

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JIMMY MOYAHA: The South African National Roads Agency, Sanral, has put forward a draft policy looking to amend its mandate and amend its powers, especially where it relates to rest and service facilities along national roads. Among other things, Sanral is looking to have its mandate expanded to include the ability to earn additional revenue and to participate in the businesses providing charging stations along national routes.

Read: Sanral wants a piece of roadside business

We are going to be taking a look at this in more detail with the chief executive officer of the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse, Outa, Wayne Duvenage. He joins me on the line now to see what we make of these developments.

Wayne, lovely having you on the show, as always. Thanks so much for taking the time. This seems like a bit of a stretch from a mandate perspective. What do you make of what Sanral is proposing here?

WAYNE DUVENAGE: Look, it really is crazy. We have seen the adverts out and their plans and intentions. We have seen the Fuel Retailers Association people getting up in arms about it, and I don’t blame them.

Sanral gets billions of rands from government in grants. Its mandate is to tar roads, ensure road infrastructure, to build, construct roads, off-ramps, on-ramps, bridges and so forth; to meet the needs of the travelling public and the goods that are crossing our roads.

And really, when it starts to seek additional revenue streams from entities that are struggling to make ends meet, and provide services – rest services, refuelling services – along the routes, it just doesn’t make sense to us.

So it’s again a matter of greed.

And then you ask Sanral – and we have asked them: ‘By the way, what are you doing about your current internal expenditure?’

I’ll give you one example.

A few years ago Sanral, which has no competitors as a state entity, had an annual spend of R150-plus million a year on advertising and marketing; so it’s not competing with anyone, but it has these expenses.

One year later in this process just before Covid, it shot up to over R300 million a year for a state entity on advertising and marketing.

That amount the past financial year was over R600 million. You have to ask yourself, what are [they] spending this money on?

We have asked for detailed information. They refuse to give it to us, or they give us the runaround.

And now you can see they are going after other service providers along these routes, trying to scrounge and dig and earn more money when we don’t believe it’s necessary. They should be looking at the expenditure.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Now, Wayne, when we look at the specific elements of the Draft Policy on Rest and Service Facilities, this would effectively encompass everything from EV-charging stations to the fuel stops that we find on national roads – or alongside national roads – already. Many of those are on private land. How then do we reconcile this proposal with the fact that typically, if a fuel station is on private land, that franchise has to negotiate with the owner of that private land, and that type of commercial agreement doesn’t include or impact the national road in any way.

How do we reconcile Sanral’s need for wanting to get involved in this?

WAYNE DUVENAGE: You can’t reconcile that. It doesn’t make sense.

They’re just being greedy. I can assure you that when it came to building the off-ramps and on-ramps to those areas, the service providers and service stations have had a lot to do with ensuring that they have met the traffic needs and contributed towards those – in many cases, not all of them.

Some of them are completely off the road. You’ll take an off-ramp, a bridge, and then get to a service facility. It really has nothing to do with Sanral.

And yet here they are, overreaching and, quite frankly, gouging and putting pressure on an industry that is really running tight, making minimal margins – and trying the travelling public.

This to us is gross overreach and something that we hope the industry and service providers are going to challenge and win. Hopefully they really do stand their ground.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Wayne, we know that the draft policy is currently out for comment, and we have quite a bit of time to get comments and thoughts and suggestions in.

You have already provided alternative suggestions about looking at potential cost reductions as opposed to new revenue streams from Sanral’s perspective. What would be a motivation for them to see this through?

WAYNE DUVENAGE: Well, I guess they are looking at all avenues to extract revenue. This is our concern. We see this in many government departments where you pay fuel levies. Government allocates funds to Sanral to manage our roads infrastructure. We pay toll fees.

I think government has this extractive mindset towards these departments like Sanral.

Like the driver’s licence card, the Road Traffic Management Corporation, the Road Traffic Infringement Agency.

Everybody is trying to find an extra buck – and we are overtaxed as a nation.

I don’t know how Sanral justifies this one.

I guess they are looking at every avenue. They’ve taken some legal advice and they’re going to try and fight for it.

But I think as civil society we need to stand up. We need to support the entities that are challenging this and say ‘No, enough is enough!’

JIMMY MOYAHA: Enough is enough as the South African National Roads Agency puts forward a new draft proposal to get a piece of the pie alongside the national roads that it maintains.

We’ll see how this unfolds and whether or not the draft policy gets approved. For now, we’ll leave the conversation on that note. Thanks so much to the chief executive of the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse, Wayne Duvenage, for joining us to look at this and try to make sense of it.