The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) was warned that there is a serious risk that South Africa’s new driving laws have been compromised by corruption.
The Road Traffic Infringement Agency (RTIA) recently closed a tender for a “turnkey” contractor to implement and operate the core services of the incoming Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offence (Aarto) system.
Aarto, which is scheduled to go live in key municipalities across the country on 1 July 2026, will overhaul South Africa’s driving laws, including the way traffic fines are handles.
It will separate traffic violations into two categories for minor infringements and more serious offences.
Serious offences are effectively unchanged, as they will continue to be subject to criminal procedure.
Infringements, on the other hand, will be handled administratively by the RTIA once the new system goes live.
Additionally, Aarto will introduce a new demerit system where drivers will accumulate points on their licence for traffic violations.
Once a person receives 15 or more points on their licence, it will be suspended, and motorists who have their licence suspended three times will lose it and be required to retake their learner’s and driver’s exam.
However, Outa CEO Wayne Duvenage recently told Business Times that the Aarto tender is cause for concern, saying it has “all the hallmarks of a potentially corrupt, deliberate money-making scheme.”
The organisation flagged the outsourcing of Aarto’s key functions to a private entity as a conflict of interest, stating that it could turn the issuing of fines into a for-profit venture.
“The RTIA makes little money if infringers pay on time, and a lot more when the public misses the fine payment deadlines and must pay a higher penalty,” Duvenage explained.
“This is where the potential for system manipulation creeps in. In our view and that of Treasury, it is taboo for private companies to earn revenue from such systems.”
The RTIA defended the tender, stating it does not have the money to operate the system itself and that the successful contract bidder’s payments won’t “necessarily” be linked to the number and value of fines issued.
RTIA spokesperson Emmanuel Tshekhla told Business Times that the RTIA’s internal management will undertake the core functions of revenue collection, communications, and adjudications.
“The functions being outsourced are the operational and system development functions, which will require a lot of capital to implement,” Tshehla said.
A rushed tender process
Beyond the conflict of interest, Outa also raised concerns over the haste with which the tender process was conducted.
It was first published on 8 December 2025 and was initially set to close on 3 February 2026; however, the deadline was later extended to 13 February.
A total of 47 companies are currently bidding for the contract.
Outa said it doubts whether the late extension meaningfully mitigated the risks created by the brief tender window.
It warned that the process was rushed for a procurement of this scale with seemingly little regard for fairness, competition, and transparency.
The organization also said that the tender could risk duplicating state capacity by outsourcing functions already managed by other government systems, ultimately racking up high costs for taxpayers over the long term.
“The Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC), through the NaTIS platform, already manages national traffic administration systems that interface directly with Aarto processes,” Outa said.
“Duplicating this capacity through a private contractor risks higher costs, operational complexity, and weakened institutional capability.”
Adding to these concerns is the fact that the RTIA has achieved very little since its establishment in 2014, despite receiving approximately R2 billion in taxpayer money.
The RTIA’s sole purpose is to role out and run Aarto, which was supposed to launch nationwide over a decade ago.
However, the system has only existed as a pilot programme in the Johannesburg and Tshwane metros since 2008, and still lacks key aspects like the demerit system.
The Department of Transport has announced and missed numerous deadlines to rollout Aarto across the country, most recently delaying the launch date from late 2025 to July 2026.
In the last two financial years alone, the RTIA has received over R300 million in government funding for the Aarto rollout, as well as the standard R18 million government grant awarded for basic admin functions.
At the same time, the RTIA has come under fire for the inappropriate use of funding, with the Auditor-General of South Africa identifying R27.3 million in irregular expenditure over the last financial year.
One example is a decision to enter a five-year lease for an office in Midrand in 2024, costing it R52.6 million per year.
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