Good news for people who need a new driver’s licence in South Africa

The Department of Transport has issued a statement confirming that the country’s only driving licence card printer is back in action and card printing operations have resumed.

The department says the printer has been out of operation since 5 February 2025, and its downtime has resulted in a driving licence printing backlog of just under 750,000 cards.

It also provided a breakdown of printing backlogs per province, with Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, and the Western Cape having the most extensive backlogs.

The backlog per province is as follows:

• Gauteng — 252,746
• KwaZulu Natal — 115,020
• Western Cape — 108,402
• Mpumalanga — 66,833
• Limpopo — 61,769
• Eastern Cape — 55,393
• North West — 39,983
• Free State — 33,741
• Northern Cape — 13,862

“This means working hours for staff members at the Driving Licence Card Account, which is an entity of the department, will be extended to ensure the reduction of the backlog,” the department said.

“With the current catch-up plan, updates on backlog reduction will be provided as and when significant progress is made.”

However, it noted that the rate of clearing the backlog will be dependent on the number of new applications it receives daily.

Until recently, the Department of Transport had been silent on the status of the driving licence card printer, despite various driving licence testing centres (DLTCs) and minister Barbara Creecy highlighting a production backlog.

The department’s first acknowledgement that the machine was out of action came in late April 2024, nearly three months after it broke down.

Transport department spokesperson Collen Msibi confirmed the details in feedback to MyBroadband.

“The Driving Licence Card Account (DLCA) is liaising with the sole supplier in France to repair equipment that has malfunctioned and resulted in the machine breakdown,” Msibi said.

“The Department is exploring various interim solutions to sustain the operations of the current machine, given its age.”

He added that the repair would be completed in two weeks.

Before Msibi’s confirmation, Cape Town’s MMC for safety and security, JP Smith, revealed that the city’s DLTCs had processed 60,000 card renewals since the start of the year, of which none had been issued.

This was in mid-April 2024. Smith expressed his dismay at the ongoing delays in issuing new driving licences. At the time, he said the city understood that the machine had broken down again.

“The City’s DLTCs have processed nearly 60,000 applications for new driving licences and Public Driving Permits (PrDPs) since the beginning of the year,” said Smith.

“To date, not a single had has been received for those applications from the DLCA in Pretoria.”

The Cape Town MMC’s revelation came after a MyBroadband reader informed us that they had applied to renew their licence at a centre in the Western Cape, only to be told that it hadn’t issued any new cards in 2025.

Creecy raised alarm over the machine’s status in March 2025, when she revealed that the DLCA faced a significant production backlog, forcing DLTCs to issue temporary licences.

“It’s common knowledge that the existing machine is very old,” she said. “We are trying to enhance maintenance efforts so that it can resume printing.”

Her use of the words “resume printing” indicated that the machine was out of order. However, the Department of Transport had not confirmed the machine’s status at that point.

This recent breakdown marks the 160th time the machine has been out of order in its more than 26 years of operation.