Government confirms eight-year licence cards amid backlogs and system failures
New driving licence cards will soon be valid for eight years, the Department of Transport has confirmed.
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The validity period for driving licences in South Africa is set to increase from five years to eight, in a long-mooted move that has been welcomed by motorists and lobby groups alike.
Director-General Mathabatha Mokonyana confirmed this last week while briefing Parliament’s Select Committee on Public Infrastructure.
“We have just concluded, although it took a little bit of time, the issue around extending the validity period of the driver’s licence card from five to eight years,” he told the committee.
The decision was made following a detailed assessment, which found that South Africans favour a longer validity period.
“They don’t want to come back to us every five years. So we definitely will be moving to eight years soon,” he added.
While the Department of Transport has confirmed the move, its spokesperson Collen Msibi told MyBroadband that the cost-benefit analysis has not been completed as yet.
However, the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) says the government should not be in the business of making money, but rather of covering the costs.
“If you have fewer licences to issue, you’re going to have less costs and reduce those costs,” OUTA CEO Wayne Duvenage told ENCA.
He said it is not about the costs or money for the government, but rather about the efficiency that the government should be bringing in services like this to the public, and to reduce the administration and the costs that we have to suffer as the public in having to renew these licences.
“It also takes the pressure off government, because they’ve been under a lot of pressure with regards to the machine breaking down, and services not being delivered,” Duvenage said.
The current driving licence printing machine was meant to have been replaced six to eight years ago, he added, but due to all the political interference, the process has been delayed.
The most recent machine breakdown led to a licence card backlog of over 700,000 cards earlier in 2025, although that has now reportedly been reduced to less than 300,000.
Only two years for commercial drivers
While ordinary members of the public will enjoy an eight-year validity period once the new rules are introduced, commercial drivers will need to renew theirs every two years, Transport Minister Barbara Creecy confirmed during a National Council of Provinces session in November.
This is for reasons of safety, she said.
"Because we want to make sure that those people who are either driving very heavy vehicles that can cause significant accidents, or else they are driving passengers, should be renewing at least on a two-yearly basis, so that you are checking their eyes and other aspects," Creecy said.
Electronic licences
The Minister has also previously spoken about launching an electronic licence system that will allow motorists to store their card info on their phones, but no timelines for that have been indicated as yet.
In 2024, the Department of Transport announced that it would introduce new ‘smart’ driving licence cards, featuring improved security features and biometric data that will make them harder for criminals to replicate.
However, the tender process for this was put under scrutiny after Creecy asked the Auditor-General to investigate the procurement process that led to the R828 million tender being awarded to French tech firm IDEMIA. The AG’s audit, released in March 2025, found that the tender process was “irregular” and flawed.
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