OUTA fund raising campaign gets underway

“At the outset of our plan to take this matter to the courts, we had estimated a cost of around R1 million” say Wayne Duvenage, Chairperson of OUTA “but as the work and legal battle developed during the two months of March and April 2012 period, we realised the gravity and size of this case was far greater than we had imagined”. Additional legal resources were appointed to tackle the sheer volume of work required, with the Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance (OUTA) and the legal teal working day and night, seven days a week for several weeks. In the end, it was worth every minute as the tight deadlines were met and the application for the interdict was successfully granted.

By the time the court case was underway, this matter had gone beyond the cause of a few business entities and had become a case for the people. Consequently, over the past few months we have received hundreds of calls and e-mails enquiring about where and how the public and businesses could contribute to funding these legal costs. “This was obviously extremely encouraging” says Duvenage “which I guess enables the public to connect even closer to the cause, giving them a feeling of being personally involved in what has become the people’s case”.

We have received the outstanding legal notes and the full costs of this case has amounted to approximately R3,9 million. After deducting the initial eight hundred thousand rand sponsorship raised from SAVRALA supporters, we now have a target of approximately R3,1 million to raise.

OUTA would like to thank all who have supported the cause to date and urges all Gauteng road users to contribute to the OUTA Legal costs fund raising drive through one of the following three options:

Our website has all the details for payment. We also give assurance that we will be open and transparent in our communication of funds raised and allocated. Once we have achieved the target, we will turn off the payment channels to negate an oversubscription.