Public Interest SA Supports Legal Action to Overturn R898 Million Driver’s Licence Contract

MEDIA STATEMENT

Johannesburg, Friday, 18 July 2025 — Public Interest SA welcomes and fully supports the Department of Transport’s legal bid to set aside the controversial R898 million contract awarded to Idemia South Africa for the supply of a new driver’s licence card printing machine. The Department’s self-review application before the Pretoria High Court rightly seeks to address material irregularities that rendered the tender process not only procedurally flawed but also fundamentally unlawful.

We commend acting Director-General Mathabatha Mokonyama for exercising his statutory obligation to act in defence of public resources and accountability. The Auditor-General’s findings — highlighting significant procurement irregularities, inadequate due diligence, scoring discrepancies, and inexplicable site visits — paint a grim picture of institutional dysfunction and procurement malpractice within the Driving Licence Card Account (DLCA), a trading entity within the Department.

It is unacceptable that the DLCA, by its own admission, lacked the internal capacity and oversight required to manage a tender of such strategic and financial magnitude. The escalation of the project cost from an already-approved R486 million to R898 million — resulting in a R412 million shortfall — is nothing short of fiscal recklessness, which has further undermined public confidence in the integrity of our procurement systems.

This case is yet another reminder of the deeply entrenched maladministration that plagues the state’s supply chain processes. It reinforces the urgent need to overhaul not only the DLCA but also the entire driver’s licence production regime.

“To this end, Public Interest SA reiterates its longstanding call for the complete scrapping of the outdated barcoded driving licence card system. In its place, we advocate for the full integration of the driver’s licence into the smart ID card system, as originally envisioned when the Department of Home Affairs introduced the secure and technologically advanced smart national identity card,” states Tebogo Khaas, chairperson of Public Interest SA.

“Maintaining fragmented systems for driver’s licences, firearm licences, and national IDs — each with separate tenders, printing processes, and systems — is wasteful, inefficient, and counterproductive to the government’s stated e-Government and digital transformation objectives. Such fragmentation not only inflates costs but also perpetuates an environment ripe for corruption, undue influence, and administrative chaos,” adds Khaas.

The current crisis, underscored by a backlog of more than 600,000 unprinted licence cards as of July 2025, reveals a structural failure that cannot be solved by merely replacing an obsolete printing machine. South Africans deserve a system that is modern, secure, cost-effective, and corruption-resistant.

Public Interest SA therefore urges the Department of Transport, in collaboration with the Department of Home Affairs and National Treasury, to urgently chart a path toward full integration of licensing credentials into the smart ID platform. This move would represent a major step forward in aligning with global best practices and restoring public confidence in the state’s capacity to deliver efficient and transparent services.

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📸 Fikile Mbalula via Twitter

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Bagaetsho Oteng

Media & Communications

Email: media@publicinterest.org.za