OPINION: Dompas, e-Tags more similar than you think. Another reason to resist eTolls.

This powerful opinion piece draws on one of the most shameful parts of South African history to argue against Gauteng's eTolls. In a time when social media has massively changed the dynamics of information and power, you have to wonder why the ANC heavyweights continue to bang a drum that is so unpopular and is being resisted by everyone from the churches and trade unions through to business and civic society. Especially with a National Election just around the corner. – AH

By William Kelly*

It has to be looked at and it has to be addressed. Although it was a little before my time being born in 1971 as I was, the Dompas has a place in our history that had influence on the social fabric and psyche of South Africa in a way that perhaps we have lost sight of.

It bears thinking about because the Dompas had such truly massive implications. Because I never had to carry one, trying to imagine myself in a place where the Dompas was a daily reality is not something I can do with any credibility. But I find it abhorrent that without some piece of paper that reflects my name and my address (and heaven knows what else) that I would be unable to travel freely in the land of my birth.

Take the time to imagine the same piece of paper, this Dompas evil, being used to control where you could and couldn't go – and used to track where you had and hadn't been. Just the sheer thought of having to carry it around meant that control over your own life was eroded. You were anything but free and the Dompas was your shackle. You were being watched and you were being controlled.

The similarities between the Dompas and the stars the Jews wore in Germany circa 1939 are resonances of a history reflecting control by some over others. If we as a human race are to learn anything it is that control of one over another is evil personified. From here it is a slippery slope to the most shameful periods in human history. And it has been shown that every single time it manifests itself it ends in tragedy.

We must resist. It is your human obligation, it is your duty as a result of your birth to stand up and never allow anyone to tell you what to do, where to go or in any way how to live your life. It's called freedom and it comes with great personal responsibility. And freedom is a concept used and abused by others as means to achieve exactly the opposite – suppression.

But freedom is an absolute. It is stark. It is black and it is white – there are no 50 shades of grey used to define freedom. You either have it or you do not. Suppression on the other hand means plunder. Suppression takes from the suppressed and uses it for whatever the suppressor deigns fit.

These days, those doing the oppression have learned. The means by which control over people is exercised has become subtle. Technology is being used extensively secretly and without consent – there is sufficient evidence online from the States that this is simply happening – there are no conspiracy theories here.

And so it is that I have to ask why the Dompas these days, sorry, e-Tag, is being rammed through with such fervent ardour it borders on the criminally insane. We're told it's for our own good. That they know better. It's a social contract because it's the law.

Of course no sane person in South Africa believes for a single second that the entire e-Toll issue is not utterly rotted through with corruption and bribery and I am sorry Mr Ali, putting the blame on the construction companies is not going to pass muster. You signed the cheques and as a civil engineer with 32 years of experience I would expect that you know the cost of things, in particular roads. It is after all, your job and at R100 million per kilometer for roads already built with taxpayers money it's a stretch to suggest it's a reasonable cost, and going further it's a leap to suggest that to think otherwise is somehow a hidden anti government neo fascist agenda.

Making the fairly safe assumption that bribery was somehow involved in putting together the gantries and the electronic monitoring of all and sundry using the system and setting all that aside for now as a motivation for ramming this onto the citizenry, one has to then ask the question why are the gantries being used?

Is there something more sinister at play? Can a correlation be made between the Dompas and the e-Tag? I believe that such a case can be made, and that my rights to freedom of travel within the country of my birth are compromised by being recorded, irrespective of who is doing the recording and what they are doing with that data. I have no idea as to what it may be used for, but the fact that it is there at all is an affront on the freedoms that were hard fought for and won in South Africa. It should be resisted at all costs.

* William Kelly is a forty something Seffer and serial entrepreneur always off doing his own thing. Better than having a desk job according to his way of thinking. He loathes politicians and those who consider themselves beyond accountability and hence is a fervent advocate of personal freedom and free market capitalism. He is a member of the Biznewz community.