Extending the driver’s licence card renewal period to 10 years should be top priority for the South African authorities, following the third breakdown of the country’s only licence card printing machine in less than 18 months and court action initiated by two civil rights groups.
The ruling party has before shown a willingness to budge on the matter, with ex-transport minister Fikile Mbalula in October 2022 announcing that his department will approach Cabinet with a proposition to extend the renewal period from five to eight years.
Since then, however, Mbalula has left his post as transport minister to become the ANC Secretary-General, succeeded by Lydia Sindisiwe Chikunga who served as his deputy minister, and subsequently, there have been no new developments on the eight-year validity period.
The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa), one of the most prominent voices currently lobbying the authorities to lengthen the renewal period on licence cards, argues extending it will be beneficial for both motorists and the government, but that it prefers a 10-year interval over eight years.
“South Africa (more specifically the most populous Gauteng Province) has for some time experienced significant challenges with its driving licence card renewal process,” said Outa.
“The online booking system recently introduced was supposed to alleviate the manual process of phoning or visiting a testing centre to book an appointment and provide greater efficiency to the licence renewal experience. Instead, it has become a problem, and other issues intended to be resolved, have remained.”
The organisation said it is still extremely difficult to book a driver’s licence renewal online, and when visiting the testing centres there are long queues. As a result, many motorists have become dissatisfied and frustrated by the challenge to renew their cards and this often leads to the abandonment of their legal obligations.
10-year licences are the answer
“While there is an obvious need for efficiency in the administration of the driving licence card renewal process, we believe that an immediate solution is one whereby the Department of Transport amends the regulations to stipulate that all driver’s licences are applicable for a period of 10 years,” said Outa.
Extending the driver’s licence renewal period will have many benefits, said Outa, chief of which being that it will “afford government time to rectify some of the major issues currently being experienced in the renewal process, whilst immediately eliminating the current and future backlogs.”
When the machine first broke down in November 2021, it led to a backlog of over 500,000 cards in six months’ time, a pile-up that took the majority of 2022 to recover and which necessitated the initiation of a “grace period” for motorists with expired licences.
“We also believe that our recommendations will bear significant savings for South Africans as well as Government, in both expenditure and efficacy and reduce time wasted,” said the organisation.
Outa contends that there will be no drawback to any party involved if the 10-year renewal period is instated as doing this is “very easy and does not cost a thing” and it will also bring the country in line with international best practices.
“Unfortunately, one can only speculate as to why government is reluctant to extend the renewal period, Outa fails to understand why action is not being taken as this is nothing new,” said Outa.
“In 2013 the then-Minister of Transport, Ms. Dipuo Peters, published a government gazette extending the validity period to 10 years, but for some reason, the decision was rescinded with no apparent documented reasons for this recission decision.”
Another argument for longer licences
Another civil rights organisation, AfriForum, is also heading to the Pretoria High Court to get the country’s five-year driver’s licence validity period declared “unconstitutional.”
AfriForum’s Ernst van Zyl said the organisation has a “solid case” that rests on several legal and practical grounds.
“From a legal perspective, the National Road Traffic Act and regulations are too vague to be enforceable, and then also, the legislation does not clearly distinguish between a driver’s licence and a driver’s licence card, and it also doesn’t explicitly stipulate that motorists must apply for a new driver’s licence card when the card expires,” he said.
“It does not even stipulate that it is a crime to drive with an expired driver’s licence card and does not prescribe any fine, penalty, or sanction.”
Van Zyl said these deficiencies in the legislation, combined with the context of the machine continuously breaking, corruption allegations in the traffic department, and other “inefficiencies”, are serious enough to argue AfriForum’s case that there’s no basis for licence cards to have to be renewed every five years.
The organisation is therefore seeking a declaratory order stating that the five-year driver’s licence and all fines issued for expired licences are unconstitutional.
The court case is being heard in August 2023, and Van Zyl said AfriForum will keep the public updated on the proceedings as soon as they commence.
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