South Africa’s Driving Licence Card Account (DLCA) has outlined plans to reduce the average licence card production time to seven working days over the next three years.
The strategy is outlined in its Annual Performance Plan for 2026/27, which Transport Minister Barbara Creecy said the DLCA could achieve by addressing backlogs, fixing cybersecurity vulnerabilities, and addressing customer complaints.
“The Annual Performance Plan details how the entity intends to provide the public with high-quality driver’s licence cards printed efficiently within manageable timeframes,” the minister noted.
As part of the account’s production targets, it set the average number of working days to produce driving licence cards as one of its output indicators.
During 2022/23, the DLCA took an average of 23 working days to produce a card, which improved to 22 days in 2023/24 and to 19 days in 2024/25.
From 2026/27, it is targeting an average production rate of 21 days, before moving to 14 days in 2027/28.
Ultimately, the goal for the DLCA is to reduce production times to an average of seven working days in the 2028/29 financial year.
At the same time, the DLCA highlighted its production targets for the next three years, as it aims to produce 2.6 million cards in 2026/27 and 2.7 million cards each in 2027/28 and 2028/29.
These targets are lower than the production figures reported in 2022/23, when the DLCA printed over 3.4 million cards, and in 2023/24, when it produced over 2.8 million.
The DLCA planned the rollout of a new driving licence card, but this was ruled out when the High Court ruled that the tender process was invalid.
This legal uncertainty has since been resolved, leaving the DLCA in a position to refocus its efforts on stabilising its production environment.
“This will involve initiating the acquisition of new production equipment to replace the current machinery and to modernise the card production process,” it said.
Dealing with printer breakdowns
The acquisition of new production equipment is critical for the DLCA to reach its goals, with the organisation highlighting printer breakdowns as a risk to its production goals.
It does, however, have a backup plan, continuing with its contingency arrangement with the Government Printing Works (GPW), it said.
“This measure provides production support in the event of machine breakdowns, thereby reducing the risk of future backlogs and service delivery disruptions.”
The DLCA added that interventions were anticipated, laying a foundation for a more reliable and efficient production environment.
South Africa has a singular driving licence card printer, which broke in February 2025, leading to a 750,000-card backlog by the time it returned to service in May 2025.
Despite the DLCA extending its operating hours, it took until 9 December 2025 to clear the backlog.
South Africa’s attempt to replace the 26-year-old printer encountered many obstacles over the years before the Transport Department announced that it had appointed Idemia as the winning bidder to print new licences.
The decision sparked criticism, with the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) arranging a meeting with the minister to highlight various irregularities in the tender adjudication process.
One of the issues highlighted was that the tender’s cost had ballooned from the Cabinet-approved budget of R486 million to R899 million.
Following this, Outa submitted a report of its findings, which led to Creecy’s instruction to the Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA) to expand the scope of its investigation into the contract.
AGSA’s probe found various problems with the tender adjudication process, including that Idemia had failed to meet key bidding requirements.
The minister approached the Gauteng High Court for a declaratory order on how to proceed. In early January 2026, it declared the tender irregular and invalid.
The court ordered the department to re-advertise the tender, which it did in early February 2026.
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