Driver’s licence chaos in South Africa — with a big revelation about the real reason
An investigation by the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) revealed that the delay in issuing driver’s licences is partly caused by a money-making racket at a government department.
Approximately half a million South African motorists will be stuck with expired driving licence cards because the twenty-year-old machine that prints them all has been out of order since November.
Reports of the machine’s breakdown emerged in mid-December after letters addressed to Driving Licence Test Centre (DLTC) managers became public.
Earlier this month, the Department of Transport has confirmed that the machine was still broken. It provided no further update.
The country only has one driver’s licences printing machine, and the DA warned years ago that it was on its last legs. This warning fell on deaf ears.
Because of the breakdown, motorists must now cough up R90 for a temporary driving permit.
The Department of Transport is expected to collect around R45 million from these temporary permits.
Outa CEO Wayne Duvenage said they had contacted the department to find out what was going on, but they have not received a reply.
“Do they have a new machine? Will the current one be fixed? What is going on? Just tell us so that we can all understand the plan and strategy to fix this,” Duvenage told Biznews.
There is no indication when the machine will be fixed or whether the department will get a new one.
Duvenage told Biznews that one of the reasons behind the driver’s licence chaos is that the Department of Transport has become a money-making empire.
“We are unpacking reports and have found very interesting stuff. It is a small department, and it doesn’t need a lot of people — but there is a little empire. It seems to be making quite a lot of money, and there are surpluses there,” Duvenage said.
“What is interesting is the massive increase in depreciation. It would indicate that the department has bought equipment over the last few years: desks, furniture, and computers or something. We need to look into that.”
Wayne Duvenage, Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse CEO
He said the Department of Transport is similar to the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC), which is also a money-making empire.
“The RTMC is doing as much as it can to make more money instead of making life more efficient for its citizens,” Duvenage said.
One example is the high price to renew your car or driver’s license online.
“If you go into the office to renew your car or driver’s licence, it is cheap. However, if you want to do it online, it will cost you R700. That is the reverse of what happens with normal businesses,” he said.
“Can you imagine a bank charging you more to go online and trying to encourage people to go into the bank to do their transactions? It doesn’t work like that in the world, but at the Department of Transport, it appears to be the norm.”
Outa has previously highlighted that top officials are receiving large salary increases, while lower-level are not enjoying the same benefit.
The Driving Licence Card Account (DLCA) is a separate trading entity under the transport department that took over the production of the driving licence cards from May 2015.
For the three years from 2019/2020 to 2021/2022, the DLCA’s lowest-paid employees got an average of R100,000 a year, showing no or minimal increase.
Over the same years, the DLCA’s top four employees started with an average of R800,000 a year each but increased 88% to an average of R1.5 million each.
In 2019/2020, the top four collectively cost R3.3 million — 1.8 times the cost of the bottom seventeen. By 2021/2022, the top four collectively cost R6.1 million, 2.4 times the total cost of the bottom nineteen employees.
To resolve some of the problems with driver’s license renewals, Duvenage called for the renewal period to be extended to 10 years, which is the norm in many countries.
He said changing renewals to 10 years will have an immense benefit to the government, society, and citizens.
“We wrote to the Minister of Transport suggesting this. We also found that in 2013, under Dipuo Peters, a 10-year renewal period instead of 5-years has already been approved,” he said.
“However, this decision was rescinded, and we believe that is because they were going to lose a lot of money.”
“We believe this Department of Transport is not invested in its people and what is best for the country, but rather in what is best for itself, its cronies and its internal empire-building.”
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