**5. Findings**

The leading resisters to urban tolling were clearly of the different approaches that could have been deployed. The shallow and limited consultation process was a major deficiency in the implementation of the GFIP. This finding agrees with OECD [22] conclusion which motivates for a wide ranging consultation. As much as South Africa is not a first world country but internet connectivity is comparatively high and yet this was not sufficiently explored [23] as recommended by others. Instead traditional face-to-face methods were preferred and insistence on, which given the dissonance with the public, were actually a waste of time. Interviewees demonstrated a wide range of knowledge and awareness of viable alternatives, giving an impression that any serious engagement could have yielded a consensus on a suitable financing model. The OECD [22] further suggests that the consultation process should be proportional to the size of the project as intimated by one of the respondents that in a province of 2.5 million motorists (actually the registered cars on the eNatis system are 4, 643 741) that was not enough. However, the poor corporate governance around SANRAL might have encourage this opaqueness. The principal principles of fairness and transparency were not extolled as advocated by Nurlizzah and Binti [25].

Once the initial consultation was concluded there were no far reaching follow-up initiatives, leaving the citizenry not being able to distinguish the GPFIP infrastructure from the soccer world cup developments that were happening at the same time leading up to 2010. If only 85 people at most were engaged with, in a pool of around 4 million and the newspapers selected were not even the ones with the widest circulation then the purpose was a poor tick box exercise. Where there appears to have been a huge success over the years is where there is extensive public consultation [13]. South Africa has to learn and try to engage a lot more with the general populace to avoid a disaster that this project has become. The hype around the world cup and the legacy projects implemented at the time misled the general populace into lumping any major development as part of the legacy developments. However, a very poor marketing by SANRAL led to a major public disappointment when the truth was finally revealed. The perceived 'suddenness' of the introduction of the project occasioned by a lack of platform to mull over this project has compromised the 'psychological contract' the people of Gauteng might have had with the GFIP. The foregoing has made it clear that South Africa is far from deploying international best practice as the consultation programme was a failure. The project is very costly as the compliance rate in paying the e-tolls is very low as it is now estimated at around 20%, and the highest it has ever been in terms of people buying e-tags is put at around 40%. The best approach is to allocate enough time and resources to public consultation and really find what works in the South African context. There is a lot that can be drawn from the political sphere on how to engage with the different communities in the country. It is clear that the challenges are the same despite the advancement of a democracy in question. The level of resistance in South Africa is found in other developed countries and there is a lot that can be burrowed in terms of the best practices based on good democratic principles. The process has to be fair, transparent, adequate, aligned with the local culture and must be legally enforceable. There is not adequate legislative stipulation to put pressure on the officials in South Africa to implement public consultation in a meaningful manner. This poor corporate governance regiment leads to the observed agency problems alluded to by Amitava [26]. Any project that will finally require direct payment from the users is regarded as some form of taxation and robust engagement must be had to clear all the misunderstandings. If that is not achieved the economic viability of the project gets adversely affected. This is pertinently so in a country with very politically restive *South African E-Toll Consultation SAGA: Corporate Governance Lessons for Public… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.103054*

general populace. The main lesson is where a project is massive and it is complex there is bound to be black swans popping up, occasioned by commercial and political considerations. Any project that is oblivious to these cultural and political exigencies is bound to suffer as shown by Biesenthal [27] and Flyvbjerg [33]. Thus a very weak corporate governance has been exposed as direct result of the implementation of this project; epecially, around the issue of public consultation.

### **6. Conclusions**

The Improvement of Gauteng freeways is a very noble endeavour and it was long overdue. It appears as if SANRAL in its implementation of GFIP did not abide by the basic principles of soliciting a "psychological contract" with the residents of Gauteng. However, a very weak corporate governance was potentially a breeding ground for the majority of the problems that were observed. The following have been identified as the concerns and sentiments of the major stakeholders and residents.

The consultation process was woefully hollow and was just a compliance exercise with no genuine intent to elicit public input. There was and still is a lot opaqueness on the financing models preferred and adopted by SANRAL. The widespread noncompliance is indicative of a general dissatisfaction with the transparency around this project. The implementation of the project for then longest time was piggybacked on the world euphoria as it was regarded as one of the legacy project. Even in the aftermath of the world cup there was no concerted effort to spread the true message about the financing of this scheme. The few consultation forums organised before the project was implemented were not well marketed and were held in arkwardly located venues. The hitherto unheard of rolling juristic disputations are a sign of poor communication by SANRAL and adversarial interactions needing the interventions of the courts.

SANRAL has to formulate an extensive public consultation protocol which has to be legislative in order to ensure compliance. Thus, there has to be proper and deliberate bolstering of the corporate governance in public consultation implementation in South Africa henceforth.

#### **Author details**

Nthatisi Khatleli University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

\*Address all correspondence to: nthatisi.khatleli@wits.ac.za

© 2022 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
