Bart Henderson is a leading forensic auditor and CEO of Henderson Solutions, an enterprise risk management firm.

I recall, as a very young child, my pride in knowing my uncle Jannie was working as an electrician wiring the new lights on the Ben Schoeman Highway, back in the ‘60s.

The highway, with its double-decker overpass through town, was in my eyes a modern marvel, considering when I was born, trams and their lines still ran between town and Kensington in the east.

Millions of South Africans have paid since then, over and over through taxes and levies and plain hard labour to maintain and for the luxury of using our highway network.

I live in Cape Town these days, but I spent more than 45 years in Johannesburg and return frequently to visit family, friends and my business network.

There is something obscene in riding the freeways built by my ancestors and paid for by yours and seeing these glowing gantries threatening to tax the generations that are following for the work that was done by those before me and mine.

The gantries stand as a monument to monumental failure, and not the achievement being presented in a tasteless marketing campaign and blackmail.

For 40 years, generations have managed to maintain those roads now being taxed by monstrosities every few kilometres that cost more to recover money than what is to be spent on the upkeep of our roads.

It’s suggested that 95% of the profi t from these tolls will come from the wealthy. How this can possibly be claimed escapes me.

Recent reports indicate that 50% of households in South Africa are buckling under crippling debt. Petrol, it was also recently published, will reach R12.22 a litre in Gauteng.

The vast majority of citizens using the roads are average South Africans struggling to survive in the face of a massive economic downturn and a relentless onslaught on dwindling disposable income.

The “wealthy” constitute perhaps only an optimistic 10% of the entire population, so how this 10% can possibly fund 95% of the cost of the toll roads choking Johannesburg is way beyond my limited capacity to compute.

The true cost of the tolls being sucked from an already beleaguered populace is hidden.

There is absolutely no doubt that those using these roads are not the only ones who will pay, there is also absolutely no doubt that those being taxed to use the roads will be taxed on the tax.

If the billions that are expected to flow from those purple people-eaters flow, everyone in the region and everything will be affect by a knock-on effect that will be felt across the breadth of the country.

People with limited disposable income will be begging for raises and some companies will show mercy and oblige, while some will not.

Those that show mercy will attempt to recoup the costs by pushing up prices.

Johannesburg is far from everywhere and everything flowing in and everything flowing out and everything that sustains the populace moves on the roads being earmarked for taxation.

It is impossible to conceive that these costs will not be passed on to the consumer through additional price increases.

Consequently, those in Jozi will inevitably face being taxed twice for using the roads.

Tens of thousands are going to try using alternative routes to save money, tens of thousands are going to avoid the extra cost just to maintain their standard of living and tens of thousands are going to try and avoid the tolls just to survive.

There will be tens of thousands of cars forced onto alternative routes out of pure need, with no thought of disobedience whatsoever.

This added burden on an already crumbling infrastructure will be devastating to the roads that make up the alternative routes around Johannesburg.

Suburbs are going to find themselves choked with traffic, pedestrian fatalities and road accidents are going to reach levels that today are incomprehensible.

These tolls come at a time when the country, and when I say country, I mean people, cannot afford to place a greater burden on the economic hub that Johannesburg is.

There is callousness, thoughtlessness, a total disconnect between the powers that be and the realities of the ordinary citizen, which reflects in virtually every utterance that emanates from the hallowed halls of power.

Yes, hallowed halls of power, because that is what they have become.

We have replaced one with another. We are becoming beasts of burden to serve those meant to serve us.

Massive mismanagement, massive corruption, massive misappropriation, massive poverty and a massive breakdown in services, healthcare, education to name a few, belie a massive stupidity and betrayal, irrespective of who we vote for.

To me, at least, these gantries I see glowing purple day and night are the defi nitive symbol of the extent to which our leaders have lost touch with the ordinary people.

I have no doubt, through this experiment, that they will discover what is meant by “kak en betaal” being “die wet van Transvaal”.