Traffic fine change problem in South Africa

The Department of Transport (DoT) has gone silent on the implementation of the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (Aarto) and the Aarto Amendment Act, which are already many years behind schedule.

Road laws and driver training expert Rob Handfield-Jones recently highlighted that the government has failed to implement the legislation in nearly three decades.

“The Aarto Act was passed in 1998. Twenty-seven years later, it’s unimplemented, mainly because it’s just too complex for the ANC [government] to get their heads around,” he told MyBroadband.

“They’ve wrecked the core principles of the Act with legislative tinkering. At this point, they may as well scrap it and just rework the current enforcement system to include proper document service and demerit points, like what is done in the UK.”

The contentious legislation is intended to reduce road fatalities and improve driver behaviour by penalising serious traffic violations, putting the worst motorists at risk of having their licences suspended.

However, road safety experts and organisations have raised concerns over whether it will achieve these outcomes, particularly in light of corruption and bribery among traffic officials.

As it stands, violations of traffic laws in most parts of South Africa are considered criminal offences, which means that they can be challenged in court.

Aarto and its Amendment Act separate violations into two categories — infringements and offences.

Under the new legislation, less serious violations are decriminalised and labelled as infringements. These are handled administratively by default.

Civil society organisations, including the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa), Fines SA, and the Automobile Association of South Africa, have raised serious concerns over this change.

The Aarto opponents have argued that the real purpose of the leglislation is to expedite the collection of traffic fine revenues and make it difficult for those accused of violating traffic laws to challenge traffic authorities for invalid fines. Ins

Outa took the department to court over the legislation in July 2020, but after a protracted legal battle, lost its case at the Constitutional Court in July 2023.

While the challenge was ongoing, then transport minister Fikile Mbalula announced several phases in the rollout of Aarto from 2021 to 2022.

All of these targets were missed, and the department revised the full implementation date to July 2024 after the Constitutional Court’s ruling. Despite the lack of legal uncertainty, it also failed to hit that target.

While the department itself has been coy about the legislation in the past year, the National Automobile Dealers Assocation of South Africa (Nada) said that the latest revised implementation date was scheduled over the next few months.

According to Nada chair Brandon Cohen, the transport department only believed it would complete the rollout of Aarto to all outstanding municipalities by the end of 2024.

The points demerit system was anticipated to come into effect sometime between April and mid-2025.

However, Outa and Nada did not believe this timeframe was realistic, as several steps remained outstanding.

That included the transport department’s appointment of members to the Appeals Tribunal, which will need to be fully functional for the system to work.

In November 2024, Road Traffic Infringement Agency (RTIA) spokesperson Monde Mkalipi told Moneyweb it was engaging the transport department to finalise documentation for the Aarto Amendment Act’s proclamation.

The department has not yet confirmed how many municipalities have implemented Aarto nor provided an update on any of the other required steps.

Aarto is also facing resistance from several municipalities, which will have to surrender 50% of their traffic fine revenue to the RTIA.

Municipalities are already facing major revenue losses as many households and businesses switch to self-generation and reduce their grid electricity consumption.

MyBroadband asked the transport department for an update on the progress made in Aarto’s implementation, but it had not provided feedback by the time of publication.

The table below summarises the history of the Aarto and Aarto Amendment Act and all the previous dates on which the legislation was set to come into effect.