How Gauteng’s new “self-destructing number plates” will work

Gauteng is scheduled to receive new number plates within the next year or so, and they have an interesting quirk.

According to details outlined in a recent government gazette, the new identifiers must be able to “self-destruct” when tampered with, as part of a wider initiative to combat vehicle-related crime.

Gauteng’s fancy new number plates

A self-destruct feature may sound rather dramatic, given it may conjure images straight out of a Hollywood film, but the reality is far more mundane.

“Self-destruct” is essentially another way of describing something that is tamperproof, as anyone to attempts to remove or alter the item in question will damage it in such a way that it no longer serves its original purpose.

This is important for Gauteng’s new licence plates because the provincial government is attempting to crack down on the prevalent vehicle-related crime taking place within its borders.

A major contributor to this problem is the use of fake or cloned plates, as the Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG) estimates that around 80% of criminal activity involves a car with falsified markers.

To this end, the GPG and the Department of Transport (DoT) are working on a new set of plates designed with various security measures in mind that will make it much more difficult for transgressors to forge their own.

One of these security measures is a new decal that must be permanently affixed to the number plate, and must meet the following criteria:

• Self-destruct if an attempt is made to remove such a decal
• Have a dimension of 36mm x 16mm with a coloured background of white letters and figures depicting the year of expiry of the number plate
• Have a sequential number containing letters identifying the province and a sequence of at least nine figures
• Have a rectangular two-dimensional barcode of a size 8mm x 8mm, which must be used to link the decal to the unique identification code of that number plate

Unfortunately, the gazette does not elaborate further on how the decal will “self-destruct,” but it does say that it should be engineered in such a way that any attempt to carefully remove the decal will scratch, break, deface, or otherwise disrupt the identifier so that it cannot be stolen by thieves to be placed on another car to be used for criminal purposes.

The barcode will presumably play a big role in this plan, as any tampering that disfigures the shape will render it useless when attempting to scan it.

The GPG has yet to publish an official image of what the new plates will look like, but TopAuto’s multimedia team took the liberty of creating a mock-up of what we can expect, based on the criteria laid out in the gazette:

The new plates should start to appear on our roads very soon, as the GPG is expected to roll out the experimental markers to its fleet of vehicles as part of a new pilot programme.

Transport Minister Barbara Creecy has granted an exemption for motor vehicles used by the GPG to not comply with the provisions of the current number plate regime for the purposes of the trial phase, which should last approximately six months.

Once the testing period is over, the plates should start to be circulated to the public, provided the GPG and the DoT do not encounter any issues with the new system.

What’s more, the tamperproof plates could eventually be introduced nationwide, according to Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi.

The Premier suggested this during his State of the Province Address at the start of 2024, where it was explained that the DoT has developed draft legislation for the new plates that will be applicable to all nine provinces, not just Gauteng.