Driving licence card mystery

The Department of Transport (DoT) has ignored a two-year-old report from experts recommending extending the validity of South Africa’s laminated licence cards to eight years.

The contract to provide the new printers and technology to produce the new smart driving licence card is currently in limbo due to allegations of irregularities in its awarding process.

However, the new card is not required to support an extended validity period.

The Driving Licence Card Validity Period Review was submitted by infrastructure, engineering, and advisory practice Zutari to the department’s Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) in May 2022.

The department commissioned the research to determine whether South Africa’s driving licencing system was in line with international best practices, taking into account that the last review of the local licencing regime was carried out in 2005.

The report reiterates previous statements from transport ministers that the current laminated driving licence card — introduced in 1998 — had its validity capped at five years primarily due to potential durability issues.

However, that turned out to be a baseless concern. Many licence card holders — including some on members of the transport technical committees — described their cards as being in a “good pristine” condition after 10 years.

After analysing 40 other countries’ road accident rates and licence validity periods, the researchers came to the conclusion that most of South Africa’s validity periods should be extended.

Among the findings on which they based their recommendation were the following:

• 20 of the countries with better road safety ratio than South Africa had an average licence card validity period of 9.3 years
• 20 of the countries with a worse road safety ratio than South Africa had an average licence card validity period of 4.4 years
• Many of the countries with short validity periods used paper-based licences that would not be as durable as laminated or polycarbonate cards
• Most countries require medical certificates to prove a motorist is fit to drive, with little mention of eye tests. Many of these countries only required medical certificates once the driver was of an advanced age

The report recommended that code A, A1, B, and EB licence cards be issued with an eight-year validity period instead of five years. These include licence cards for light motor vehicles and motorcycles.

The five-year validity period should remain only for heavier vehicle classes, as it is generally similar to what is applied in other countries.

The report also said that transitional provisions be put in place to accommodate the extended validity period on the laminated cards currently issued to drivers.

Separately, it recommended that these cards be replaced with polycarbonate cards that would “better support” a 10-year validity period.

A few months after the report was submitted, Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula announced that the cabinet had approved new polycarbonate licence cards with smart features for the country.

Mbalula also confirmed that the new licence cards would be valid for eight years.

However, neither Mbalula nor the RTMC acknowledged the report’s recommendation that the extended validity period of eight years be applied to existing laminated cards.

Sudden change of tune

In May 2024, RTMC CEO Makhosini Msibi announced a sudden about-turn on the validity period extension for the new cards during an interview with Moneyweb.

Mbalula’s successor, minister Sindisiwe Chikunga, reaffirmed this in a subsequent interview.

Msibi justified keeping the five-year validity on a second research report, which supposedly said that the country had a number of accidents related to “communicable and other diseases.”

However, the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse subsequently discovered that no such report existed and that the report referred to was, in fact, Zutari’s.

While it made no mention of communicable diseases, the report recommended that South Africa assess best practices in developed countries regarding eye tests and age limits on driving licences.

One of its findings on this front was that many countries only required medical checks on drivers, including eye tests, from the age of 50.

“For a good number of the driving licence renewal processes done before the age limit, there are no medical examinations (eye tests or fitness to drive) performed,” the report stated.

Although the report pointed out that South Africa generally needed to make more use of and enhance access to eyecare services, it did not use this as an argument against extending the validity period.

MyBroadband asked the transport department why it had decided not to implement the report’s recommendation, but it did not provide feedback by the time of publication.