South Africa’s new driver’s licence cards ostensibly failed to launch by the end of April 2024, missing the deadline set by transport minister Sindisiwe Chikunga.
The minister announced on 10 April that the department was “at the tail-end of the procurement process” for the country’s new licence printing machine and that by the end of the month, her department “will be printing new driving licence [cards] and will launch at least the first 100 per province.”
The Department of Transport has not provided any updates on the licence process since this statement was made, rendering it unclear if the new printer has arrived, if it has been installed, and if production has started on the first batch of new cards.
Another round of delays
This is not the first time that the department has missed its stated deadline, as Chikunga’s predecessor – Fikile Mbalula – previously announced that South Africa would see a pilot programme for the new driver’s licences run from November 2023 to March 2024.
This plan would have seen the old printer decommissioned by 31 March 2024 with the final cards produced by it being valid until 31 March 2029.
However, in January 2024, Chikunga confirmed that the new printer had still not been obtained and that the launch window for the new licences was being moved to the end of April.
Tender document showing South Africa’s new licence card
South Africa is the only country in the world that has been relying on a single printer for more than 25 years, and this device takes an average of 14 working days to produce a single card.
This lengthy turnaround time, combined with its age, has made the current printer highly prone to breakdowns, leading to country-wide backlogs for licence renewals that reached a peak of 1.3 million applications between 2022 and 2023.
The new machine is intended to address these issues with a much faster production time pumping out several cards per day, but the Department of Transport is also using this as an opportunity to introduce updated licences with greater security features.
Responding to the prevalence of fraudulent cards in South Africa, the new driver’s licences feature “Smart Card” technology such as intricate watermarks and user biometrics to store data, which should make it much harder to illegally modify or produce counterfeit cards.
Additionally, these additions are compliant with the International Information Technology Personal Identification Compliant Driving Licence standard, making them recognizable by a greater variety of authentication systems both in and outside of South Africa.
Another matter that has still not been clarified has to do with South Africa’s five-year validity period for driver’s licences, and whether this will be changed.
Various organizations from the Automobile Association (AA) and Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) have called for extensions ranging from 10 years to an indefinite period, and the last update came in August 2023 when Chikunga announced that she would take an eight-year proposal before the Cabinet.
While the new driver’s licence design has been approved for South Africa, the length for which they will be valid has yet to be finalized.
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