OPINION | Constant chaos - the driving licence deadline needs another extension

 • The South African driving licence system continues to be problematic.
 • Motorists continue to battle to renew driving licences and Outa calls for an extended deadline.
 • Outa believes Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula should extend the validity of licence cards to 10 years.

Deadlines have come and gone and been extended several times for driving licence renewals. To make matters worse, the country's only licence card printing machine came to a complete standstill at the end of November and exerted the monumental backlog even further. 

Yet, the latest deadline for expired driving licence renewals looms at the end of March. Motorists are scrambling to be lawful citizens but are met with closed doors, no available appointments, or the occasional offline Natis system making it impossible to get a slot for a licence or renewal booking. 

READ | SA's driving licence renewals now digital, but you still have to visit a testing centre

Another problem is the Road Traffic Management Corporation and the Transport department claim senior citizens over the age of 60 in Gauteng need not book any online appointments for licence renewals and can just show up at any driving licence testing centre, yet Wheels24 readers reported they are constantly turned away due to the "slots" being too full. 

One Wheels24 reader says: "My mom was 80 last year, and since August 2021, she has been trying to get her driving licence card renewed. When we went to the Randburg Licence Department on various Wednesdays (and we went early) they told us the over 60s were full and the majority of the over 60s that were there were turned away too.

Administrative chaos and backlogs are not resolved by giving those who have no control over these an unreasonable deadline, says the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa).

Hundreds of thousands of motorists are still struggling to renew their expired driving licence cards. Outa believes the Minister of Transport, Fikile Mbalula, is trying to deflect the administration chaos onto the public instead of taking ownership within the department.  

READ | How government can fix the driving licence mess right now: Make cards valid for 10 years

Outa calls for the Minister to extend the deadline for all those who have expired driving licence cards, as this is an administrative problem, and to speed up the decision to extend the validity period for the cards from five years to 10 years or not. "We believe the Minister needs to extend this 31 March deadline and take into account that he has to consider the 10-year licence renewal period and its impact on the current situation," says Advocate Stefanie Fick, Outa's executive director. 

South African driving licence

Facebook Safely Home by Western Cape Government

"We strongly feel that a 10-year licence renewal period should apply to all driver's licence cards in current circulation, meaning that all driver's licence cards should have five years added onto the current expiry date. If this were the case, then the 31 March expiry date becomes obsolete, and the country can move on without having to attend to the current mess unfolding." 

The Minister has said there is still a backlog of 534 000 driving licence cards waiting to be printed and that there have been 3 641 transactions over the last 16 days. 

Read the original article here.

Although the Minister says the backlog will be cleared in time, Outa is sceptical of the administration's capacity to do this. Furthermore, Outa believes that there is an unknown number – believed to be hundreds of thousands – of more motorists with expired licence cards who have been unable to access the renewal system and will not meet the deadline of 31 March 2022. This deadline applies to licence cards that expired between 26 March 2020 and 31 August 2021 during the pandemic lockdown period. There is also the question of those motorists whose cards expired after 1 September 2021 who have also been caught up in the current chaos of the backlog and receive no help. 

In Gauteng in particular, motorists have struggled to access the electronic system to book a slot to get their licences renewed. Furthermore, this week protests by driving schools over the failed system gave rise to centres being shut down, and staff feeling threatened. 

"These protests have added another dimension to the problem which the Minister cannot ignore, being that motorists have been unable to renew their licences under these dangerous conditions," says Fick. 

In August last year, the Minister said there were 2.8m expired licence cards with 1.2m of them not renewed. There is no current update on the number of expired cards which have not gone through the renewal process. 

Outa calls on Minister Mbalula to extend the current 31 March 2022 deadline for expired licence card renewals and to apply his mind to a change in the regulations to have all driver's licence card expiry, and renewal dates extended to ten years as a matter of urgency.

Additional commentary: Wheels24 editor Janine Van der Post