Chief Justice rules South Africa’s new traffic fines and demerit points system is constitutional and lawful
The Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (Aarto) Act won’t be scrapped, chief justice Raymond Zondo has ruled.
According to a Times Live report, South Africa’s highest court overturned a Pretoria High Court judgement that deemed the Aarto Act invalid and unconstitutional.
“In a unanimous judgment written by me, the Constitutional Court has upheld the contentions advanced by the minister of transport, the Road Traffic Infringement Agency [RTIA] and the Road Traffic Management Corporation,” said Zondo.
“This court has concluded in this judgment that Parliament had the competence to pass the Aarto Act.”
Therefore, the scheme — which aims to penalise traffic violations, legalise the serving of fines via email, and introduce a demerit system that could strip repeat offenders of their driver’s licences — has the green light to go ahead as planned.
The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) brought the case against the Aarto Act to the Pretoria High Court, and it says that just because the ConCourt has declared the act constitutional doesn’t make it practical.
Outa says the scheme is impractical due to its inability to address the root cause of accidents, the risk of corruption, and “administrative cumbersomeness”.
“Remember, e-toll was legal, yet failed spectacularly,” it stated.
The Constitutional Court’s role was to validate the Pretoria High Court ruling handed down in January 2022.
Outa’s primary argument was that it believed the Aarto Act was aimed more towards making money than improving safety on South Africa’s roads.
The High Court had declared that the act “unlawfully intruded upon the exclusive executive and legislative competence of the local and provincial governments”.
The Aarto Act was set to take effect on 1 July 2022. However, the High Court ruling threw a spanner in the works.
Parts of Aarto were already in force in the Johannesburg and Tshwane metros when the ruling was made, leaving motorists in the dark about whether their existing fines issued in these jurisdictions had become null and void.
At the same time, the metros wanted to know whether they were now entitled to the funds collected by the RTIA through these fines.
Then-transport minister Fikile Mbalula announced his department’s intention to appeal the High Court judgment. The RTIA said its board would join the minister’s appeal.
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