As South Africa tries to follow the rest of the modern world into the hi-tech age, it is becoming abundantly obvious that we are not ready for certain transitions and should perhaps consider abandoning some of the ambitious plans that have little hope of succeeding.

Not that we are incapable of holding our own, where technology is concerned. One only needs to look at our advancements in mobile banking, for instance – in many cases driven by sheer necessity – to realise that we do not lack the vision and brains to compete with the world’s best.

But then there’s law enforcement. Sadly, in this area, technology seems to have had the exact opposite effect, especially when it comes to our traffic authorities. Unfortunately, the hi-tech (and expensive) eNatis system is now coming back to bite our traffic cops in the butt.

From the start, the eNatis system was criticised by ICT experts as a flawed concept and government was urged to hold off its implementation until all its peripheral issues could be ironed out. As usual, government did not listen.

Predictably, the collection of traffic fines and any other projects running off the eNatis system are well and truly screwed. While national figures for traffic fine collection rates are not available to the general public, it is widely accepted that they mirror the collection seen in the pilot project for the highly-ambitious, but very shambolic Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (Aarto) Act.

This horrid piece of proposed legislation would have seen the introduction of the demerit system, where drivers earn demerit points on their licence until it eventually gets suspended. More than anything else, the pilot project for Aarto – conducted over several years in Johannesburg and Pretoria – proved that the mess that is the eNatis database has made traffic fine collection all but impossible. In all, the Aarto pilot came back with a fine collection rate of just over 5%.

It is suspected that the national fi gures for fine collection would be somewhere in the same ballpark.

It is thus not surprising that the controversial Gauteng e-tolling system seems to have hit the same stumbling block and I suspect that the polluted database – which would have a potentially catastrophic effect on toll collection – is the key reason why president Jacob Zuma" rel=tag>Jacob Zuma has yet to sign the so-called e-toll Bill, giving Sanral the go-ahead to milk us dry.

At this rate, it would appear that the e-tolling system is on a collision course with the eNatis database. Personally, I won’t lose mush sleep over it.

We take an in-depth look at the problems experienced by the eNatis system in this issue’s cover story.

Happy reading!

Martin Czernowalow