R11-billion driving licence pain in South Africa

South Africa’s alleged manipulated driver’s licence card printer tender could be nullified before the end of the month, preventing South Africans from paying R11 billion in unnecessary payments to the government.
In fact, it could also be a good time for South Africa to reassess whether it needs a physical driver’s licence document at all.
South Africa’s new driving licence card machines will cost the country R334 million each, and when they break down, repairs will be completed locally instead of shipping the machines to Germany, it was announced in September.
Two machines will be used at the primary driving licence card production site, with one reserved for the disaster recovery site. Together, the three machines will cost just over R1 billion.
If South Africa spent roughly R1 billion on printers, producing 60 million licences over their 20-year lifespans, it would cost the government R16 per document or R20 if running costs are included.
This is according to road safety expert and Driving.co.za managing director Rob Handfield-Jones, who highlights that this is far from the R200 card renewal fee.
Handfield-Jones says that producing analogue licence documents is a government cash cow, a belief reinforced by the opaque way the government has gone about this tender.
“On a charitable assessment of the facts, the government stands to make nearly R11 billion in clear profit from driving licence card production every 20 years, probably much more,” he said.
Handfield-Jones advocates for digital driver’s licences that would not require South Africans to pay as much as they do for the identification document, if at all.
“If SARS can collect tax with an app, surely traffic officers could police drivers with an app,” Handfield-Jones argues.
However, Handfield-Jones said he would actually prefer if government didn’t develop a new app.
“We should use technology that already exists. Unless it’s more important to the DoT to generate revenue streams than verify licences easily,” he said.
“All that’s needed to verify a driving licence is the driver’s fingerprint, scanned at the roadside via a terminal like the long-used Morpho-Touch system.”
The suspicious tender
The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) CEO Wayne Duvenage believes enough evidence has been presented to nullify South Africa’s award of the driver’s licence card account to Idemia.
Duvenage said that transport minister Barbara Creecy believes the Auditor General’s findings following an investigation into the suspicious tender would be published by mid-January.
“The minister is going to look at the findings, and she has indicated that the department should have an answer to the way forward by the middle of January,” Duvenage said.
“We believe there is enough evidence to pull the plug on it and start again.”
This follows an extensive tendering process administered by the Department of Transport to replace its sole license card manufacturing machine, which the country should have done in 2009, according to a 2022 report.
Two years and three tenders later, in September 2024, the department awarded the contract to French company Idemia.
However, Outa, which had been gathering information about the tender for some time, noticed several irregularities in the bidding process.
It explained that when bidding for a tender, companies undergo three evaluations.
The first is to ensure they can adhere to the necessary administrative processes, such as having the required tax clearance, competency, and correct management structure.
Once bidders have passed this, their bid undergoes a technical evaluation where they are awarded points based on whether the contract is deemed technically feasible for the company.
Bidders need 24 out of 30 points to pass to the next stage.
Duvenage noted that many bidders were turned down at this phase despite having all the technical requirements to fulfil the bid, and their submissions proved this.
In the final phase, the adjudication panel reviews each bidder’s cost proposals, which should have been concealed until this point in the process.
However, Duvenage said many bidders who were disqualified following the technical evaluation had brought forward evidence that their pricing documents had been opened and tampered with.
“The driver’s licence card account (DLCA) was doing everything in its power to wear down and whittle out people in whichever way they could,” Duvenage said regarding Outa’s findings.
He said that the manipulation was a brazen attempt to ensure that the contract went to only one bidder and that the DLCA was doing everything it could to wear down and whittle out people.
The tender is currently under investigation, with Creecy expected to make an announcement about the findings soon.