It's finally official. Gauteng motorists can now breathe a sigh of relief following the government's official announcement and gazetting of its decision to scrap the disastrous Gauteng e-toll system, more than a decade after it was first launched.

Minister of Transport Sindisiwe Chikunga said stakeholders including Finance minister Enoch Godongwana and Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi had reached an agreement to delink the e-tolls from gantries on midnight of April 11, 2024.

"This will effectively bring the urban e-tolling in Gauteng to an end. However, the ring roads that were part of the scheme shall remain the national roads," she said in a statement released on Thursday afternoon.

For several years the Gauteng government has been under pressure from residents to scrap the system and, over the years, had made many false starts to putting an end to the system.

Key sticking points were the differences on issues related to the user-pay principle of debt related to the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP), past capital expenditure costs and yearly maintenance costs.

Chikunga did not go into the specific details of these issues except to say, "parties agreed to enter into a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) to formalize alternative funding solutions for the GFIP debt repayment and deal with the backlog of maintenance and rehabilitation costs".

Sanral's debt stood at more than R42-billion as of 31 December 2023.

In a previous agreement, the Gauteng government had committed to paying 30%...