Lobby group, AfriForum, has confirmed that it will file a legal challenge against the five-year validity period for South African driving licences.
The organisation believes it is unconstitutional for motorists to be forced to renew their licence cards. It comes as the country’s only licence printing machine is again out of order.
AfriForum’s Ernst van Zyl says they will be in court in August.
“We seem to be in this position again. This breakdown of this machine, the one and only of its kind in SA, I don’t know why we can’t buy a second one. This gives more weight to our court case that will be on 7 August. We have got a much stronger case now that South Africans are again being turned into criminals because they can’t get something as simple as a licence card printed.”
Extending validity period
Meanwhile, various organistaions have since appealed to the government to consider extending the validity period of SA driver’s licences.
In March last year, the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) appealed to the then Transport Minister, Fikile Mbalula, to extend the validity period from five to 10 years.
CEO, Wayne Duvenage, explains: “We’ve suggested a few things. The first is we have done the research, met with the minister a few weeks ago and presented it to him regarding extending the validity period from 5 to 10 years. This is the case with many countries around the world and it is very easy to do that. It immediately takes away the problem but the government still needs to fix this online booking process, the corruption that takes place, the deficiencies, and the costs because we don’t want motorists to find themselves on the wrong side of the law, not on their own doing but as a result of the state.”
VIDEO | OUTA speaks about the extension driving licence cards:
