The Department of Transport has given an update on the printing of driving licence cards in South Africa, including the approval of a new design coming to circumvent a now-delayed tender process for a new printer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The High Court has set aside the appointment of South Africa’s new driving licence printing machine tender, ordering the Transport Department to re-advertise it within 30 days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This will set the department on a new tender process, further delaying the replacement of the country’s only printing machine, which has a history of breaking down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Responding to the court order, Transport Minister Barbara Creecy welcomed the decision, saying it was a vindication of the department’s commitment to transparency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Creecy ordered the investigation into the tender when she took office in the DoT following the 2024 elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The investigation was driven by the Auditor General of South Africa’s findings of irregularities surrounding the tender, which were launched and drawn out before her tenure in the ministry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As per the order, the tender has now been set aside and must be re-advertised within 30 days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, given the delay, the courts have also given the department the go-ahead to find alternative printing methods to avoid potential backlogs and delays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Pending the appointment of a successful service provider under the re-advertised tender, the department has also been allowed by the court to outsource the services of printing and issuing of cards to the Department of Home Affairs,” it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In July 2025, Creecy announced that the department had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Department of Home Affairs to establish an interim licence printing system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under the agreement, the Government Printing Works, which already produces passports and Smart ID cards, will print driving licences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A backlog of 756,227 licence cards had piled up by May 2025 due to the printing machine breaking down between February and April.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was reduced to 336,028 by mid-September 2025 and cleared by December, with the DoT noting that it had printed an additional 2.23 million cards between May and the end of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To avoid another backlog, the DoT said that it was making progress on the interim solution for printing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Crucially, the State Security Agency has approved a prototype driving licence card that can be printed by the Government Printing Works.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n “A cabinet process will soon be undertaken to seek approval for the prototype card design,” the department said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There has also been a successful testing of a network connection between the Road Traffic Management Corporation and the Government Printing Works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This will allow the transfer of data and files required by the printers to produce the licence cards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Department of Transport has given an update on the printing of driving licence cards in South Africa, including the approval of a new prototype design.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":817846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[2552],"class_list":["post-847354","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\/847354","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=847354"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":847356,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847354\/revisions\/847356"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/817846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=847354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=847354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=847354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}