User pays? Okay, why do we need government then?

The user pays principle is not a principle of government; it is a principle of capitalism.

If you have money in this country you send your child to a private school, you put a bit aside to go into your private pension fund, you hire security guards to patrol your streets, you belong to a decent medical aid, you probably drink bottled water, and you have dreams of going “off the grid”.

All of that is "user pays" - because you aren't using government services, you're contracting private ones.

Which means if you are going to govern under a "user pays" principle – there is no actual need for government. People can pay private industry to do the stuff that personally affects them.

In fact when I started writing this column it was going to be a list of things in which it would be ridiculous to say "user pays" - except that the ANC has screwed up so badly that we effectively have that system anyway.

So why is it we don’t do away with the government as a whole? Make our sort of capitalist anarchy official?

Because it is not enough that my child goes to school, that my retirement is assured, that I am secure, that I can go to a decent hospital and that I can power my stuff.

These are things we want everybody to be able to do. It is in our interests to maintain certain basic minimums in which the user doesn’t pay – the people who can afford it pay.

That is not entirely for altruistic reasons - the suffering of others has a nasty habit of becoming the suffering of ourselves. This is the principle the ANC used to tout called “ubuntu.”

The fact that Cyril Ramaphosa, in a bid to smooth over the e-tolls issue, told us that we all accepted the “user pays” principle shows exactly why people will not pay.

The ANC is still not listening with both its ears. It is trying to reach a compromise on issues like cost, but it is failing to understand the emotions involved.

The cost could be reduced to the point of being symbolic – and still people wouldn’t pay it.

People will not pay 33c, they will not pay 5c, they will not pay.

Not because it is unreasonable, but because they are insulted, because it was thrust upon them, because they had people like Dipou Peters talking about pay toilets at them, because they had Vusi Mona telling them to raise their IQs a little, because they had people acting like any objections were to the idea of paying for the roads, rather than the mechanism chosen without their consent for doing so.

Because the ANC does not govern the whole country, it dictates to parts of it and then acts confused when it doesn’t work.

We are one nation – and if you want to do something like e-tolling, you’re going to have to phrase it that way.

You have to put across the idea that Gauteng is helping the rest of the country, that it is of value to the rest of the country, rather than acting like it is peopled by naughty children.

40.1% of the country’s registered income tax payers are in Gauteng according to the treasuries 2013 tax statistics.

We are well aware of that, and we are well aware of the fact that this money does not all go towards our province. This money goes towards the entire country.

That is okay, but it isn’t “user pays”. “User pays” is a slap in the face.

And thus, users will not pay.