Good news about driving licences as minister promises backup for printer that breaks down

South Africa has announced a plan to create a backup for its sole driving licence printer in case it breaks down again.

This is according to Transport Minister Barbara Creecy, who mentioned the plan in her department’s budget vote for the 2025/26 financial year in Parliament on Wednesday.

During the speech, Creecy highlighted that the printer is fixed and that her department is working hard to clear the backlog.

When the minister announced the machine was back up and running in early May, she also pointed out that the downtime had resulted in a backlog of 747,748 outstanding cards.

This backlog was caused by the machine being out of service for just over three months, costing taxpayers R624,988.10 in repairs and maintenance.

To mitigate the challenges caused by the downtime, the Department of Transport said it signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Government Printing Works.

“To ensure we have a backup solution, we have signed an MOU with the Government Printing Works,” Creecy said.

“We expect that this backup solution will be able to print driver’s license cards within three months.” The minister did not elaborate on what the backup solution entailed.

While the apparent solution to this problem would be to procure a new printer, the country has had some difficulty doing so over the past few years.

The need for a revamped driving licence card system became evident in 2020 and 2021 after the government struggled to clear the significant backlog in renewals caused by the Covid-19 lockdown.

The driving licence card printer broke down in November 2021 after a building adjacent to the Government Printing Works flooded, causing an electrical surge that exacerbated the problem.

While that incident was linked to a specific event, the department has not provided a similar detailed explanation for subsequent breakdowns.

However, these breakdowns were not unexpected, as a report commissioned by the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) found the machine should have been replaced around 2009.

Two years and three bidding processes later, the Driving Licence Card Account (DLCA), five of the 25 bidders were shortlisted by the Department of Transport.

Of the shortlisted candidates, the DLCA awarded the contract to a French firm called Idemia Identity and Security.

Irregularities emerge

During her budget vote speech, Creecy referred to the outcome of an investigation by the Auditor General of South Africa (AGSA), which found several irregularities in the tendering process.

The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) initially brought these irregularities to the public’s attention.

At the time, Outa CEO Wayne Duvenage said, “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.”

In late 2024, only a few days after Idemia was announced as the tender winner, Creecy sanctioned an AGSA investigation into the contract award.

The AGSA eventually published its findings about the tender, finding that Idemia “failed to meet key bid technical requirements.”

It explained that other bidders were not unfairly disqualified as they failed to meet the bid technical specifications, such as the R486 million budget.

The Auditor-General also identified non-compliance within the prescribed procurement processes due to inadequate budget analysis, inconsistent application scoring, and failure to evaluate bids correctly.

It was also found that the bid evaluation committee had deviated from assessing the bids using the criteria set out in the tender’s specifications. However, this was due to the requirements being ambiguous.

Notwithstanding the internal bid adjudication problems, Idemia told MyBroadband that it won the tender legitimately and lawfully.

“The result of the audit carried out by the AGSA highlights irregularities that we take very seriously,” it said.

“While some of the findings pertain to matters beyond our scope, others directly concerning Idemia Smart Identity do not reflect the reality of our operations.”

Based on the AGSA’s findings, Creecy instructed her department to approach the High Court for a declaratory order to cancel the tender.