Gauteng is supposed to be getting new number plates this year, but the provincial government has provided no recent updates on the project’s status.
The number plates were conspicuously absent from Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi’s State of the Province Address (SOPA) on Monday, 24 February 2025, and the last major development was announced in November 2024.
This is despite the fact that the new plates could appear as soon as April 2025 (assuming the government sticks to the timetable it provided), raising questions as to whether the project has been delayed once again.
In the dark
Lesufi first announced the plan to introduce new, high-tech licence plates in Gauteng as far back as 2023, which were originally meant to launch by the end of that year.
However, the project has faced repeated delays and has missed several of the deadlines set by the Gauteng provincial government (GPG).
The plates themselves were meant to be unveiled in April 2024, though this has still yet to occur nearly a year later.
The last meaningful update came in November 2024, when the GPG confirmed that Transport Minister Barbara Creecy had granted an exemption to vehicles owned by the provincial government from complying with the provisions of the existing number plate policies.
The exemption is intended to allow GPG vehicles to legally be equipped with the new plates as part of an ongoing pilot phase, letting officials test the plates in a controlled manner before they are rolled out to the public.
According to the Gauteng Department of Roads and Transport, the trial phase is set to run until the end of the current financial year.
In its 2023/2024 report, the department stated that “the piloting of the new number plate system will be undertaken with various identified stakeholders in the next financial year, 2024/25.”
This means that the pilot should end by 31 March 2025, which should be shortly followed by the public launch of the new plates.
However, the project’s history of delays, combined with the fact that it was not mentioned in the recent 2025 SOPA, suggests that Gauteng’s new plates will miss another deadline.
In fact, if the GPG intends to launch the new plates at the start of a new financial year in order to minimize its administrate duties, it’s possible that this missed deadline could set the plates back a full year, with a new launch window set for April 2026.
Cost concerns
A number of uncertainties also exist concerning how the new plates will be rolled out and how much they will cost the public.
Lesufi previously stated that the new plates would require that all motorists in the province re-register their vehicles.
“We are starting afresh, all of us; every person that has a car must re-register and get a new registration number that cannot be copied and is reliable so that we know what is happening in our province,” he said.
“Everyone must register their vehicle … If you spend 30 consecutive days in Gauteng, it means your car must be registered in Gauteng.”
This statement was criticized by the Organization Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa), which warned the GPG not to make the licences more expensive or difficult to register than the outgoing ones.
Outa stated that the project is likely to backfire on the GPG if it makes the new plates more expensive, as it would lead to significant revenue losses with fleet operators choosing to register their vehicles in other provinces.
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