South Africa should say goodbye to driver’s licence cards and car discs

South Africa should retire its physical driving licence cards and vehicle licence discs in favour of permanent, digital-only permits that never expire.

That is the view of road safety expert and Driving.co.za managing director Rob Handfield-Jones, who says there is no need for analogue documents for licensing.

“Every driver has fingerprints, and every vehicle has a VIN,” argues Handfield-Jones.

“If SARS can collect tax with an app, surely traffic officers could police drivers with an app,” Handfield-Jones argued.

South Africa had planned to roll out an electronic driving licence (eDL) at the end of March 2025 as a companion to a new physical driver’s licence card.

Former Minister of Transport Fikile Mbalula said in March 2022 that government would introduce an electronic driving licence within three years.

The former minister said that in the 2024/2025 financial year, motorists would begin receiving the option to either get a physical licence card or a digital licence when renewing their document.

Mbalula’s successor — Sindisiwe Chikunga — announced a revised timeline under which the physical card would be piloted from November 2023 instead of October. It would have been fully introduced by the end of March 2024.

Automated driving licence applications and eDLs were set to follow over the next three years up to the 2025/2026 financial year.

However, the tender for procuring the new driving licence card system was only awarded in August 2024, after which its legitimacy was immediately questioned.

The process is now in limbo as transport minister Barbara Creecy weighs whether to cancel the contract awarded to French cryptography and biometrics technology company Idemia, or proceed with it.

While the Auditor-General found procedural irregularities with the tender, Creecy has been warned by her legal advisor that there were no material irregularities that justified the cancellation of the contract.

Material irregularities include corruption, fronting, fraud, contravention of supply chain processes, and acts of impropriety and maladministration.

Advocate Adam Masombuka, the chief director of legal services at the Department of Transport, said cancelling the contract would result in an interdict and a protracted legal review process.

He warned that going this route could take years to resolve, as opposed to appointing the preferred bidder.

The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) disputed this advice.

“The AGSA report clearly stated that the winning bid was non-compliant with supply chain management prescripts, the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA), Treasury Regulations and Driving Licence Card Account (DLCA) policies, amongst others,” it said.

Outa CEO Wayne Duvenage said proceeding with the tender despite the Auditor-General’s finding would be a severe governance failure.

“If Idemia challenges the cancellation in court, Outa and possibly other tendering companies will not hesitate to oppose them,” Duvenage vowed.

Scrap physical permits for drivers and vehicles

Handfield-Jones believes it is possible to side-step the problems with procuring a new physical driving licence card and the printers necessary to produce them by scrapping physical documents entirely.

He said an app allowing traffic officers to check a driver’s credentials or car’s registration could “almost certainly” be developed and launched for a fraction of what government planned to spend on new card printers.

Creecy revealed in September last year that South Africa’s new driving licence card machines would cost the country R334 million each, and that the plan was to procure three of them.

However, Handfield-Jones said the real reason government would not consider an option that excluded a physical card was because it was a money-spinner for the state, and possibly other vested interests.

“There is no technological or practical obstacle to digital licensing and enforcement,” he said.

“Rather, the problem is the Road Traffic Management Corporation’s refusal to give up the revenue streams that go with analogue document production.”

eDLs are still relatively new, with only a handful of US states and countries like Denmark, Iceland, Mexico, and Norway adopting digital documents.

Some of these countries use a proprietary app and QR code for the licence. Traffic officials can scan the code to confirm the validity of the licence, similar to what they would do with a physical card.

In other cases, the licences can be downloaded and stored in a digital mobile wallet — like the Apple Wallet on iPhones.

Handfield-Jones explained that the infrastructure to support digital licences was already available in South Africa and that they could be integrated into the current licensing regime with no issue.

The Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (Aarto) Act requires that all traffic officers carry a digital terminal that can scan licence barcodes — including those shown on a smartphone screen.

In addition, nearly all modern smartphones with a camera and Internet connection can scan these codes.

“It’s nonsense, but the government has somehow been permitted to advance a narrative that a driving licence is different to almost every other official document,” Handfield-Jones said regarding the need to renew the cards every five years.

He said the opaque way government approached the card machine tender reinforced his belief that analogue licence document production is a cash cow.

“Government will milk it ad infinitum unless the citizenry puts a stop to it,” he said.

“After all, a billion-rand machine to produce 60,000,000 cards over its 20-year lifespan works out at R16 a card — let’s say R20 if we include running costs.”

Handfield-Jones said that does not square with the Department of Transport’s over R200 card renewal fee.

“Meaning that on a charitable assessment of the facts, government stands to make nearly R11 billion in clear profit from driving licence card production every 20 years, probably much more,” he said.

“It’s a money-making racket with zero benefit to road safety.”

Revenue over road safety

Handfield-Jones said it was clear that the government was prioritising revenue over interventions that would actually address the root cause of South Africa’s road carnage.

“Before 1998, South African driving licences had no renewal process, and 1998 was the safest year in our history on our roads,” he said.

“The fatality rate has at least quadrupled since 1998, so there is no evidence that card renewals have been of any benefit.”

Handfield-Jones believes the increase in fatality rates since 1998 is mostly attributable to people who bought their licences through corrupt means but lack fundamental driving competence.

“That traces back to the 1996 evisceration of the Instructor’s Test and the implementation of the centralised licence booking system shortly afterwards,” he said.

“No other factors can explain the abrupt doubling of fatality rates from 1998 to 2006 after they had declined in a straight line from 1985 onwards.”

Handfield-Jones said one of the reasons Driving.co.za migrated entirely to online training was that he believed it was only a question of time before a bought-licence driver killed one of their instructors during defensive driver training.

“We are talking about people who cannot brake or steer properly, literally the equivalent of a learner with 3–4 hours of instruction under their belts,” he said.

“It is impossible they could have passed a properly-administered government driving test. But they have a valid driving licence card, properly registered on e-Natis.”

He said the outcome of driving licence corruption is probably over 300,000 excess road deaths over the past 25 years.

“But South Africa seems to lack the will to hold the corrupt licensing examiners — and their corruptors — accountable for these crimes,” he said.

“By which I mean that it’s strange that hundreds of thousands of 18-year-old licence applicants seem to know how to buy a licence, but SAPS and the Hawks don’t.”