{"id":823553,"date":"2025-05-08T17:28:25","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T15:28:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=823553"},"modified":"2025-05-08T17:28:31","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T15:28:31","slug":"good-news-for-south-africans-renewing-their-driving-licence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/823553\/good-news-for-south-africans-renewing-their-driving-licence\/","title":{"rendered":"Good news for South Africans renewing their driving licence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The sole driving licence card printing machine in South Africa is back in service, the Department of Transport confirmed on Thursday (8 May).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The printer has been out of service since 5 February, which has led to a backlog of over 747,700 outstanding cards that need to be printed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To address the backlog, the department said that hours at the Driving Licence Card Agency will be extended to ensure that it can process the cards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;With the current catch-up plan, updates on the backlog reduction will be provided as and when significant progress is made,&#8221; it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, it warned that the backlog reduction will be impacted by the number of new orders being made daily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>South Africa\u2019s current licence card printing machine is 26 years old and has now experienced at least 160 breakdowns in its lifetime, which have become more frequent with age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The country has attempted to overhaul its licencing regime by turning to new, updated and more secure cards with additional printers, however the tender process around this has stalled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With a backlog of  almost 750,000 cards, drivers renewing their licences should expect delays. Delays will be concentrated where the backlog is biggest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The breakdown of the backlog per province is as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Gauteng: 252,745<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>KwaZulu Natal: 115,020<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Western Cape: 108,402<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Mpumalanga: 66,833<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Limpopo: 61,769<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Eastern Cape: 55,393<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>North West: 39,983<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Free State: 33,741<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Northern Cape: 13,862<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>To mitigate this, South Africans have been urged to obtain temporary driving licences while they wait for their permanent cards to be printed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The sole driving licence card printing machine in South Africa is back in service &#8211; but there&#8217;s a massive backlog of renewals to get through.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":819750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[2552],"class_list":["post-823553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-department-of-transport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=823553"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":823555,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823553\/revisions\/823555"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}