Long wait ahead for driving licence renewals in South Africa

Civil action group Outa has warned motorists that they could be waiting two months or more for their driving licence cards, now that South Africa’s only printing machine is finally back in action.

The Department of Transport confirmed this week that the card printer was back up and running after a three-month outage that hit in February.

However, the outage has caused a significant backlog in cards being processed, with almost 750,000 applications waiting in the queue.

The department said that it would be extending office hours to address the backlog.

Responding to the news, Outa noted that the printer can only process between 14,000 and 19,000 cards in a 14-hour shift.

It would thus take 40 to 53 days to clear that backlog, it said—excluding the addition of any new card applications.

Unfortunately for those waiting on new cards, new applications will definitely be coming, and the department itself has warned that applicants could expect further delays as a result.

This means that motorists who have applied for cards will have a long wait ahead of them.

In the meantime, they have been urged by the department to get temporary licences while they wait—conveniently netting a significant amount of revenue for the state in the process.

Outa previously criticised the state of affairs, saying that South Africans were effectively funding the government’s inefficiencies.

Outa lead Wayne Duvenage said that the backlog was also a self-made mess that the department could easily resolve.

One option, he said, would be to outsource the printing to the country’s national printing works, which have the means and technology to do so.

Another option would be to extend the validity of driving licence cards.

Solutions falling on deaf ears

Outa said that it has repeatedly offered solutions for the card printing mess, but nothing has landed with the Department of Transport.

A key proposal is to at least double the validity of licences to 10 years to be in line with international standards.

This is something that the government has investigated and researched, with findings agreeing with the move. However, plans to extend validity to 8 years have been scrapped.

Outa said it is concerned that the refusal to extend the card validity period is linked to the tender to buy a new card printing machine and the money to be made from reprinting cards every five years.

It noted that the card machine has been in use since 1998, seeing 27 years of service despite the fact it should have been replaced in about 2009.

“The DLCA has been trying to procure another machine for years, but repeatedly cancelled and reissued the tender,” it said.

The latest tender process has been a mess, with a R900 million tender awarded to a company, only to be pulled into an Auditor General (AGSA) investigation over irregularities.

In March 2025, Transport Minister Barbara Creecy announced that she had instructed her department to lodge a high court application for a declaratory order on the tender award, for guidance on how to proceed in the light of the AGSA findings.

Outa said that the matter has since fallen silent, and queries seeking clarity have gone unanswered.

“It appears that the high court application which the Minister promised did not go ahead,” it said.

Most recently, the DLCA’s annual performance plan for 2025/26 and its strategic plan for 2025-2030 submitted in April only make mention of the delay in rolling out a new driving licence card, and to minimise the “disruptions” experienced by motorists as a result of the printing machine.