South Africa will “definitely” be moving to an eight-year validity period for driving licences.
Acting Department of Transport (DoT) director-general Mathabatha Mokonyama also confirmed the department has a final version of the public transport subsidy policy, which includes a model to convert the taxi recapitalisation programme (TRP).
However, Mokonyama said this policy was found to be unaffordable – “it came out at a cost of 5% of GDP” – and “the economy just cannot accommodate that”.
“So don’t be surprised when we come back and say we are holding back on the subsidy policy,” he told a meeting of parliament’s Select Committee on Public Infrastructure and the Minister in the Presidency last week.
“But this does not mean that the burning issue of subsidising and supporting the taxi industry is not going to happen,” he added.
ALSO READ: Call to extend driver’s license validity
Validity extension revenue hit ‘will be dealt with’
Mokonyama said the DoT has just concluded the issue around extending the validity period of the driving licence card from five to eight years.
“Our analysis and assessment is that South Africans do favour a longer period.
“They don’t want to come back to us every five years to have their licences renewed so we will definitely be moving to eight years soon,” he said.
“We have just done a cost benefit analysis. The public will benefit because they will only come once in eight years [and] no longer every five years.”
In a reference to the Driving Licence Card Account (DLCA), which is responsible for the production and delivering of driving licences, and the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC), Mokonyama said from “the entity side” the department will have to deal with the expected revenue implications of extending the driving licence validity period.
ALSO READ: Why has the questionable driving licence card tender not been overturned?
‘Irregular’ licence card machine tender
Minister of Transport Barbara Creecy confirmed to Moneyweb in July that plans to merge the DLCA with the RTMC were definitely on the table but the DoT could not make a decision “until the court takes a decision”.
This is a reference to the high court process launched by the DoT to apply to review and set aside the award of a tender worth R898 million by the DLCA to IDEMIA Identity and Security South Africa, part of French multinational technology company IDEMIA, for the production of the new driving licence card after the tender process was found by the Auditor-General (AG) to be irregular.
The budget set by the DLCA for the purchase of the machine was R486.385 million.
Mokonyama said this high court application will be heard in January 2026.
Select committee chair Frederik Badenhorst asked what consequence management had taken place for officials involved in awarding the irregular tender.
Mokonyama said the issues that led to the tender award being declared irregular relate to an interpretation by the bid evaluation committee about the specifications for the tender and the bid evaluation committee’s sign off of the tender award.
He stressed that not a single cent has been paid out for this contract and therefore no irregular expenditure has occurred but the DoT has instructed its legal services to look into the tender irregularities to determine “if there was malicious intention or not”.
ALSO READ: France joyride for delegation as driver’s licence backlog soars
Licence card backlog
Mokonyama added that despite the machine that produces the driving licence cards not working from February until May 2025, the DLCA still managed to exceed the target of producing two million cards in the financial year by producing 2.135 million cards.
He said people were claiming the DLCA would only eradicate the driving licence card backlog in another two years but “we can safely say that today, in November, we have dealt with that backlog”.
He said the DoT has also made progress with “the interim solution” to get the Government Printing Works (GPW), which produces South Africa’s identity documents, to produce driving licence cards
“We have just received from the State Security Agency (SSA) security clearance for the prototype cards [to be produced by the GPW].
“We should be ready for mass production from January 2026. That is the interim solution,” he said.
ALSO READ: Driving licences: Decade validity a no-go
Minibus taxi recapitalisation programme
Commenting further on the public transport subsidy policy, Mokonyama said 98% of the permitted and qualifying old taxis have been scrapped.
He said the TRP was a form of capital subsidy but also a way of getting unroadworthy Toyota Siyaya’s off the road.
He noted that the TRP programme is now moving slowly because the prices of new taxis have increased from about R700 000 to R1 million.
“That is the challenge. A person comes and is given R162 000 and that money is not enough even for the deposit for a new vehicle so they stay with the old vehicle,” he said.
Mokonyama said banks also claim the taxi industry is risky but the DoT has covered a lot of ground to derisk and make the taxi industry less risky to enable the industry to obtain affordable finance.
He said the DoT needs to convert the TRP into some form of derisking mechanism to make the financing of vehicles much cheaper for the industry but also to provide some sort of surety so that the industry is “not just labelled a risky group”.
Mokonyama said the DoT has data that indicates which taxi routes are profitable and which routes are not, and banks can request this information and it will be supplied.
ALSO READ: DA demands full AGSA report on R400m driving licence tender
However, he said that will leave the rest of the taxi industry in the hands of other registered financiers, who charge exorbitant interest rates of up to 23% or 25%.
“Nobody can afford that kind of interest.”
Mokonyama said the DoT is working on “the modalities and modeling to ensure it will and could assist the taxi industry” to be able to afford new vehicles.
He indicated that there will be a cut-off date to remove unroadworthy taxi vehicles from the roads.
“Once we put a cut-off date, the law will have to take its course on the other side of the cut-off date.
“But we definitely need to rid the roads of unroadworthy taxi vehicles.”
This article was republished from Moneyweb. Read the original here.
About the Author
