Billboard anarchy a sign of our leaders' arrogance
Stephen Mulholland
Another Voice
A sort of anarchy is being loosed on our country which threatens to festoon our roads and suburbs with environmentally destructive signs and massive, garish billboards. All this flows from the greed and total disrespect for the law of local authorities, aided and abetted by national legislators who treat the Constitution with contempt.
Draft regulations of the National Roads Act call for the removal of environmental impact assessments in the licensing of advertising billboards. This is in direct conflict with the National Environmental Management Act 107 of 1998. This provides for the delegation of environmental functions to individuals and communities, according to the Preamble and Chapter One Principles.
It gives communities the right to Public Participation (Section 23) and powers of enforcement (Section 17). According to environmental and constitutional experts, the Act is a powerful instrument if used within the ambit of the rights of Access to Information and Administrative Justice Provision of the Constitution.
According to press reports, the SA National Roads Agency removed the environmental impact assessment requirement when its attention was drawn to the fact that conservation remained the responsibility of local authorities.
This was a cynical attempt to deprive citizens of their Constitutional rights. A harbinger of what was to come was seen in the sale for a reported R80-million of billboards to promote the All Africa Games last year by the Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council. This was done in clear contravention of by-laws by the very body charged with implementing and upholding these regulations. It boggles the mind that adult politicians and bureaucrats can behave in this cavalier manner in a democratic society which is supposed to be run by the rule of law.
Listen to this from Ian Dixon, building control officer for the Eastern Metropolitan Council, quoted in the Sunday Independent: "I said our by-laws don't permit third-party advertising on council property. They (presumably councillors) said to me: 'You're out of your league, little boy: these things are going to go up'. "
So this is what our politicians say when they are advised that they are going to break the law: bugger the law, we will do as we please. Perhaps they will sing another song if they are hauled before the Constitutional Court to answer for their behaviour.
Another municipal officer, Hendrick d'Amico, the Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council's roads and stormwater acting executive, has admitted that the GJMC has lost control of billboard advertising.
It seems we learn nothing from history. During the presidency of Lyndon B Johnson in the 1960s, his wife, the feisty Lady Bird, embarked on a campaign to bring under control the awful proliferation of advertising billboards on the roads and highways of the US. As a result of her efforts, the Americans cleaned up their act. Over many decades I have often driven on America's highways, and the impact of the legislation which Mrs Johnson inspired is obvious. No longer is the countryside littered with row after row of intrusive and unsightly billboards. Yes, there are billboards on America's national roads. But they are strictly controlled, properly spaced out and set well back from the traffic to which they can be an obvious and dangerous distraction.
There is at work in our country a lethal combination of grasping outdoor advertisers with scant regard for the environment and politicians bent on squeezing every last cent out of every possible source. But maybe we can take comfort from the fact that the communist Jeremy Cronin is chairman of the National Assembly portfolio commmittee on transport. Perhaps we can rely on him, of all people, to stand up against rampant capitalism and profligate politicians.
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