Court denies application to appeal the ruling that millions of Gauteng traffic fines should be cancelled
The Road Traffic Infringement Agency (RTIA) has lost its application to appeal a February Gauteng High Court judgement which found that all traffic fines issued since 2008 did not comply with the conditions outlined in the AARTO Act, and should be cancelled.
The ruling is expected to affect a large percentage of the millions of fines issued over the past six years – with the Johannesburg Metro Police issuing 5.3 million traffic fines from 2015 to 2016, alone, and the Tshwane Metro Police issuing 1.1 million in the same period.
Delivering his judgment in the application to appeal, Judge Bill Prinsloo said there was no reasonable prospect that another court would come to a different conclusion.
In its original arguments, the RTIA said that the issue only affected those who originally brought the case. However, in applying for leave to appeal, the case was described as having national importance.
“If the RTIA simply complied with the prescripts of the AARTO Act, matters like this can be avoided entirely,” said Howard Dembovsky, National Chairman of JPSA.
“Instead, it has adopted an attitude of ‘the end justifies the means’ from the outset of the current experimental implementation of the AARTO Act in the jurisdictions of the Cities of Johannesburg and Tshwane. “
“The sooner that the RTIA and all of the traffic law enforcement authorities in South Africa come to the realisation that traffic fines cannot be used to drive revenue budgets and must be compliant with the prescripts of the law, the better off we will all be,” he said.
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