{"id":837273,"date":"2025-09-10T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=837273"},"modified":"2025-09-10T11:20:03","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T09:20:03","slug":"new-laws-for-uber-in-south-africa-coming-this-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/837273\/new-laws-for-uber-in-south-africa-coming-this-week\/","title":{"rendered":"New laws for Uber in South Africa coming this week"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Department of Transport spokesperson, Collen Msibi has confirmed<\/strong><\/a> that new laws governing e-hailing services in South Africa will be coming into effect even sooner than expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Portfolio Committee on Transport chairperson Donald Selamolela said this week<\/strong><\/a> that the committee was expected the laws to be gazetted “within two months”, likely on October.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Msibi said the department will gazette the laws for implementation on Friday, 12 September.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The gazette will operationalise the National Land Transport Amendment (NLTA) Act, which was assented to by President Cyril Ramaphosa in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under the the new laws e-hailing drivers will no longer need to use charter permits and meter taxi operating licenses and will instead receive an official e-hailing operating license.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vehicles will also carry or be branded with a sign indicating they are e-hailing vehicles, and their licenses will indicate the geographic areas in which they are approved to operate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drivers will be vetted and subject to criminal record checks under the new regulations, and a professional driving permit will also be required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along with these regulations, the legislation has new security requirements for e-hailing drivers and their vehicles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This includes needing a panic button and drivers ensuring their profile photo is up to date for accurate client identification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Should drivers fail to adhere to these new regulations, they could incur a two-year prison sentence or a financial penalty of up to R100,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Selamolela, regulators are also empowered to withdraw or suspend licenses as needed when an operator is found to be violating the NLTA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fast-tracking of the new laws, which took around a decade to draft and get to the desk of the president, comes amid escalating violence between taxi and e-hailing operators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The laws are being implemented to better regulate the e-hailing industry, following a substantial increase in violence against e-hailing drivers in Soweto and KwaZulu-Natal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government hopes that it will ease tensions between the services and the taxi industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Department of Transport spokesperson, Collen Msibi has confirmed that new laws governing e-hailing services in South Africa will be coming into effect even sooner than expected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":814980,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[20207,6457],"class_list":["post-837273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-e-hailing","tag-uber"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837273","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=837273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":837279,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837273\/revisions\/837279"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/814980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=837273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=837273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=837273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}