How challenging road tolls led to resisting state capture in South Africa
- Written by Ray Mwareya
- Illustration by Eusebio Linares
- Edited by Tina Lee
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Key strategy: Strategic litigation
Strategic litigation (or impact litigation) refers to legal actions used to bring about broader social change. A lawsuit targets a policy or practice, forcing courts to rule on whether it is lawful, and so setting precedent for all those affected by the policy/practice.
Key tactic: Civil disobedience
Civil disobedience is when protestors refuse to obey a law, or the order of a powerful institution. A form of non-violent protest, civil disobedience aims to send message and raise awareness of an issue of public interest.
Key tactic: Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding involves reaching out to the public to fund a project, cause or campaign – often through small individual donations made via websites that allow donors to remain anonymous.
When the Organization to Undo Tax Abuse (OUTA) was founded in 2012, it was a motley crew of grassroots citizens vowing to oppose high digital gantries (e-tolls) in the Gauteng, South Africa’s wealthiest province, Wayne Duvenage, its chief executive, explains.
But over the years OUTA – which originally stood for Opposition to Urban eTolling in South Africa – has become something bigger: An eagle-eyed community of anti-corruption activists who are giving politically-connected corruption syndicates sleepless nights in South Africa.
Sipping a cup of coffee on a warm Johannesburg afternoon, Duvenage recalls how, as OUTA’s campaign gained traction, South Africans were asking, “Why just e-tolls, why not challenge state capture?”
Contested roads
“None of us were lawyers. We were all businesspeople and activists informed by our conscience and supported by millions of ordinary South Africans."
In 2013, the government of Gauteng – a heavily urbanized province and home to both the megacity of Johannesburg and South Africa’s capital, Pretoria – conceived its plan to collect digital gantries, or road tolls, via mounted hi-tech cameras. The government billed it as a way to recoup expenses for maintaining the province’s 4,200km of surfaced highways.
From the onset, the program met fierce opposition from activists, churches, trade unions and ordinary South Africans who saw the project as a punitive tax on the working class, riddled with corruption, whose revenue would not be accounted for.
A year before the e-toll scheme was rolled out in Gauteng, the South African Vehicle Renting and Leasing Association (SAVRALA), had already challenged e-tolls across the country in court. When the media reported on the case, other organizations – consumer unions, and motor and tourism industry associations – wanted to join litigation to halt the scheme. To bring this court application jointly, OUTA was founded as an association of associations.
Duvenage, a straight-talking 64-year-old with a successful corporate career under his belt, describes OUTA and its “A-team” as “an association of associations of activists and business groups” encompassing diverse skills.
“None of us were lawyers,” he added. “We were all businesspeople and activists informed by our conscience and supported by millions of ordinary South Africans. Our court challenge was guided by our lawyers and senior council.”
E-toll fears
But why were ordinary South Africans suspicious that the e-tolls wouldn’t be used for public revenue? It had everything to do with the companies involved, Duvenage explains.
According to OUTA, Electronic Toll Collection (ETC), the South African company that manages Guateng’s e-tolls, paid a company called ProAsh an inexplicable ZAR10mn (574,000 USD) over a three-year period, beginning in 2009 – three months after the company won a contract to manage e-toll collections across South Africa. “There was no clear business explanation for these payments,” Duvenage says.
OUTA has since accused ETC’s Austrian parent company, Kapsch TrafficCom, of paying R40mn ($2,2mn) to a “dodgy subcontractor” two weeks before winning similar contracts in Zambia. Duvenage and his colleagues also allege that Kapsch laundered a US$5.5m bribe to Zambian officials through a South African bank account in 2017.
The same year, another Kapsch subsidiary, Intelligent Mobility Solutions, won a 17-year contract to design, install and operate e-tolls and other traffic systems on Zambia’s roads. In 2022, the Zambian chief executive of Intelligent Mobility Solutions, and a government minister were both re-arrested on the corruption allegations, but the case has since gone nowhere.
OUTA says it has reported ETC and Kapsch to the South Africa National Prosecuting Authority, the Vienna Stock Exchange and the Kapsch board – but nothing substantial has come of it to date. “It would be devastating for public money in South Africa for companies accused of so many misdemeanors to run our e-tolls,” says Duvenage.
Kapsch TrafficCom told Unbias the News it had “mandated an international law firm to conduct an independent investigation” into ETC’s claims, which concluded, “that the allegations are incorrect”. The firm insists that its business practices “are conducted transparently, legally and in accordance with all practices and state, local and federal laws.”
“It was very clear to us that the criminal justice system had been manipulated to ensure that corruption was not going to be investigated. We had to do our side of things.”
A masterclass in civil disobedience
OUTA didn’t just pursue litigation against these companies. At the same time, it led a public boycott, with drivers refusing to pay e-tolls until the digital gantries were switched off. According to the South Africa National Road Agency (SANRAL), ZAR 28.7bn ($1.65bn) of tolls went unpaid over the course of a decade – until the e-tolls project was finally suspended in 2023. “It was a masterclass in civil disobedience,” Duvenage says. According to SANRAL, these funds may never be recovered, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill.
Guateng’s Minister of Transportation credited “motorists and other stakeholders” for bringing forward their concerns, and leading to the cancellation of the e-tolls in a press conference announcing the move.
Duvenage might seem an unlikely figure to lead a mass protest movement. At the height of his corporate career, he was the chief executive of Avis Car Rental South Africa. He has also served on the board of The Tourism Business Council of South Africa. But he says his business experience has served him well. “My corporate career managing private capital and assets gave me a unique understanding of the mismanagement of taxpayers in the public sector,” he says.
By 2015, OUTA had concluded that state police and prosecutors lacked the political will to challenge corruption. “We knew the criminal justice system had been compromised during Jacob Zuma’s reign,” Duvenage says. Early in his presidency, Zuma went about systematically disbanding the Scorpions, an elite crime-fighting unit that is the South African equivalent of the FBI, while the National Prosecuting Authority was infiltrated by people taking orders from the corrupt leader.
“It was very clear to us that the criminal justice system had been manipulated to ensure that corruption was not going to be investigated. We had to do our side of things.” And so, OUTA began using strategic litigation and public pressure to publicly shame – and force the state to prosecute – cartels and politicians who defraud South Africa’s tax purse.
“Having successfully interdicted the launch of the e-toll matter, we realized that we have power as citizens to challenge state capture corruption – a nightmare in South Africa,” Duvenage says. And that’s “a helluva of a task” according to Tapiwa O’Brien Nhachi, an anti-corruption researcher and former analyst with the Centre for Natural Resources Governance.
State capture
High-level graft is so prevalent in South Africa that Raymond Zondo, the ex-chief justice who headed a damning inquiry into allegations in 2023, described the country as a victim of “state capture”.
In 2022, a judicial commission of inquiry revealed that nearly R500bn ($28.5bn) had been stolen from state coffers between 2009 and 2019, when the government of then-President Jacob Zuma allegedly engaged in a kickbacks-for-favors scheme.
The bulk of the pilfered money was allegedly pocketed by the notorious Gupta Family, a family of Indian nationals who naturalized in South Africa, befriended Zuma, and commandeered in their path state rail, electricity, water, transport, and mining contracts. Even ministerial jobs were reportedly sold to the highest bidder.
The Gupta family is now thought to be on the run either in the UAE or India, with a South African international warrant of arrest and extradition request hanging over their heads. Zuma, now 82 and facing a raft of court charges, denies all accusations of masterminding grand corruption.
A people-driven movement
OUTA only deals with high-level graft, but with corruption an unavoidable feature of daily life, it is a cause ordinary South Africans care deeply about – and to which many are prepared to donate their time and money.
For ordinary South Africans, corruption means depleted state finances. It means knowing that instead of being used to fund vital public services, the money they pay in taxes is being syphoned off into private pockets. But abuse of power doesn’t only happen at the highest levels of government – it happens throughout South African society as a whole.
Sompicy Kekana, 26, a nurse in the sprawling township of Soweto, says it has become normalized. Despite graduating two years ago, Kekana says has never worked because state hospital recruiters demand sexual favors or a R52,000 ($3,000) bribe to secure a permanent job contract.
OUTA only deals with high-level graft, but with corruption an unavoidable feature of daily life, it is a cause ordinary South Africans care deeply about – and to which many are prepared to donate their time and money.
OUTA is people-driven, Duvenage says – citing the thousands of ordinary South Africans who donate to its operations and show solidarity during public protests. It’s everyone from students, mothers, executives, trade unions, factory workers and ‘even the unemployed,’ he says. OUTA has some 12,000 members, but thousands more join its public actions. And while philanthropic grants have helped support OUTA’s campaigns, public donations make up 95% of its funding since 2012, according their website.
Observers like Nhachi question whether betting their future on crowdfunding is sustainable for pro-democracy forces like OUTA – and Duvenage admits it’s a challenge. People’s interests change, or they run into financial difficulties and cancel debit orders set up with OUTA. “We are working to get more new supporters,” he says. “It’s not easy. You’ve got to find your way, as well as international funding for specific projects, and corporate support.”
But so far, the generosity of thousands of individuals who contribute small sums has underpinned OUTA’s dozens of victories against corruption. “It’s everything, quite frankly,” Duvenage says.
Win after win
Over the last decade, OUTA has taken on over 300 campaigns. It has revealed systemic abuse of power endemic to South African state bodies and chalked up dozens of court victories. Its investigations have exposed the inner workings of the fugitive Gupta Family and the dodgy dealings of state-owned electricity provider Eskom, which was saddled with ZAR 444bn ($25.4bn) debt thanks to years of internal corruption.
In 2020, OUTA won a high court case declaring Dudu Myeni, the late chief executive of South Africa Airways a “delinquent director for life” over her role presiding over the bankruptcy of a state-owned company that had become so run down it could barely afford to own a dozen planes.
OUTA was also behind a court order forcing the education ministry to hand over records of a suspicious R163mn ($9m) contact, and it managed to stop the energy ministry awarding a shady 20-year contract to three Turkish power ships lined up to supply 2,000 megawatts of gas power to South Africa from ships anchored onshore.
“It’s the win after win that makes me take time off work, stand outside courts, show solidarity with OUTA,” says Kimberly Dala, a part-time activist and bakery owner in Johannesburg.
Speaking up for whistleblowers
Challenging corruption in South Africa can be deadly. In 2023, Clote Murray, a top liquidator of state-capture-acquired assets was driving home with his son after interviewing corruption suspects when the pair were killed in broad daylight. Two years earlier, Babita Deokaran, a senior civil servant in Gauteng province, was gunned down after blowing the cover on a R985MN ($51mn) corruption deal in state hospital supplies.
OUTA’s members haven’t faced physical violence. “We don’t feel threatened in any way,” Duvenage insists. But there has been public blowback from influential government figures. Blade Nzimande, an education minister named in allegations of “grand looting” of the South Africa state student financial aid fund, and Museveni Zwane, a former minerals minister implicated in the Zuma-era abuse of a farm subsidies fund, like to preach that OUTA is “anti-government and anti-transformation.”
“Our response is always that we are anti-poor governance and corruption within government – and every matter we tackle is backed by facts and evidence secured from whistleblowers or investigative journalists and others,” Duvenage says.
Duvenage appreciates what he sees as South Africa’s robust courts, media and laws on freedom of speech – without which OUTA wouldn’t be able to do its work. But he stresses that not everyone can face down corruption with impunity. “We feel safe because we are not whistleblowers,” he says frankly. Which is why it’s up to him and other activists to amplify the voices of whistleblowers and get their “findings out into the public domain as a movement.”
Defending democracy
"If we don’t stop the disaster at all levels, democracy fails, the country fails its people and that can spiral down into anarchy, into chaos.”
In this way, OUTA works to “preserve workers jobs, channel taxpayers’ monies into stuff that matters like public health, or clean water security” – the very things government should be doing – meaning that OUTA would be redundant in a properly functioning democracy. “Unfortunately, that is not the case,” Duvenage says.
Just ask South Africans on the streets of Pretoria. “Corruption erodes the amount of government money that needs to be spent on infrastructure maintenance, healthcare, education,” says import-export trader Dennis Juru as he unloads a consignment from his lorry. “If we don’t stop the disaster at all levels, democracy fails, the country fails its people and that can spiral down into anarchy, into chaos.”
OUTA isn’t alone in fending off the chaos. Dozens of grassroots anti-corruption movements in South Africa – Afriforum, Solidarity, Corruption Watch, Section27 and many more – are also demanding accountability. “We are at a critical time where corruption syndicates have systematically infiltrated and destroyed police and state prosecution agencies,” Afriforum chief executive Kallie Krie. “This is why our pushback as Afriforum and OUTA are even more critical now than before.”
With so many organizations pushing back, might the South Africa anti-corruption activism space be considered overcrowded? Duvenage, who found himself called to activism from a far more conventional career, doesn’t think so.
“There can never be too many civil activists on the ground – we all focus on different areas,” he says, gulping down the last of his coffee. “There is space for more.”
About the Author
Ray Mwareya is a recipient of the UN Correspondents Association Media Prize. His work has appeared in the Telegraph, Reuters, Fast Company and Coda Story.
