The Organisation Undoing Tax abuse (Outa) is heading to the Constitutional Court on Tuesday.
The organization hopes to confirm a Pretoria High Court ruling scrapping the current Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (Aarto) legislation.
The high court in January sent the government back to the drawing board, declaring both the Aarto Act and the Aarto Amendment Act unconstitutional and invalid.
This essentially voids the schedule known as the “Aarto charge book” which sets out the various traffic violations and the accompanying sanctions under the relevant legislation.
The ruling came on the back of a challenge that was originally launched by Outa back in 2020.
It still has to be confirmed by the apex court.
In the high court, Outa argued that the system envisaged by the current Aarto legislation undermined local and provincial governments by ceding their constitutionally vested powers to two national organs of state: the Road Traffic Infringement Authority and the Appeals Tribunal.
Judge Annali Basson – who presided over the matter – agreed.
She found the two acts unlawfully intruded on the exclusive and legislative competence of the local and provincial governments and were as a result unconstitutional.
Her ruling still has to be confirmed by the Constitutional Court, something that Minister of Transport Fikile Mbalula is fighting.
He’s lodged an appeal with the apex court and in his papers insists that the high court got it wrong.
Mbalula said the amended act falls under the ambit of road traffic regulation as stipulated in the Constitution and that the provincial legislature doesn’t have exclusive competence over this.
And even if it does, he said, there are compelling national interests that support the enactment of the legislation.
Arguments are set down for Tuesday.
-EWN
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