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| The bigger the tyre, the harder they want to tax it. |
THERE is another state capture happening and for
once the Gupta brothers are not involved.
This attempt sees the state aiming to take over tyre levies — worth
close to R600 million a year — that up to February flowed into Redisa’s coffers.
Redisa is officially known as the Recycling and Economic
Development Initiative of South Africa.
This organisation can boast of being at the cutting edge of
establishing a greener form of consumerism — often called a circular economy —
and it has been recognised for doing the right thing by organisations ranging
from the Institute of Race Relations to the Global Economic Symposium.
The aim of a circular economy is to make things with materials that
can be recycled and to enable people to do the recycling. The problem is that
our entire consumer model requires people to throw away stuff.
To change the ingrained habits of both sellers and buyer requires
help from the government. When it pitched the circular economy concept to the
government in 2012, Redisa promised to turn waste into worth and create 10 000
jobs by the end of 2018, if the government could but help by legislating a levy
on tyres to fund the exercise.
Redisa likes to call this a “self-funding” model, but consumers
call it just another form of taxation, a tax that the government last year
realised it is seeing nothing of. Hence the Finance minister (still Pravin
Gordhan at that stage) announced in his February Budget speech that the
government will in future take all the tax on tyres, thank you very much.
That was the first part of the state capture of the tyre levy. The
second part came in April last year, when the Department of Environmental
Affairs announced it would investigate if Redisa spent the R1,1 billion it had
received up to then prudently.
In June, Redisa said it had run out of its reserve funds and as it
had not been allocated any funds after Gordhan’s Budget speech, it has no choice
but to cease tyre collections and dissolve the initiative if the government
insisted on holding on to the new tyre tax.
Should we care that the tyre levy is going to the government
instead of some private company that has not delivered on its promises as fast
as it said it would? Absolutely, for the same government last year “irregularly”
spent (read stole or wasted) R500 million per hour and no responsible voter
should allow funds for a good cause to go into the same deep dark hole as the
plastic bag levy and the fuel levy.
By comparison, Redisa received clean audits from KPMG and it states
openly that 18% flows from Redisa to Kasuga Taka Consulting, a management
company in which Redisa directors are also members. This 18% slice of the pie
may be what is really at stake in this particular state capture, as one does not
need President Jacob Zuma’s counting abilities to grasp that R2,30/kg of every
tyre sold in South Africa quickly adds up to many “millionnities”.
Redisa is trying to oppose the state’s capture of the tyre levy in
court, but all the signs are this is a wasted effort.
This is lamentable, for while Redisa and its sly 18% consultancy
fee may not be the best way to recycle tyres, the system it put in place is
admired by other organisations that are also trying to stem plastic pollution,
and it deserves to survive.
What should happen next is for our current Finance minister to
ring-fence the various levies charged on plastics, tyres and fuel and for the
relevant departments to ensure the money is spent on creating a circular economy
that will see plastic and rubber recycled and our roads repaired. Rubber crumb
from old tyres makes a shock-absorbing filler for any size pothole, to cite just
one example of how this can work.
Ring-fencing the tyre, fuel and plastic levies we pay and spending the funds on programmes to recycle the used products is the only way for South Africa to become a country in which waste really has worth, as Redisa envisaged.
Can we as citizens stop government from running off with yet
another hefty slice of our income?
The best opportunity is in 2019, when we get to vote again.
Meanwhile, all tyre shops and affected people can contact the Waste
Management Bureau at the Department of Environmental Affairs for further
information on legally disposing of waste tyres at 012 399 9803, or the
Environmental Affair’s call centre at 086 111 2468.
Good luck getting through.
