General: Driver's licence deadline facing legal challenge

AfriForum has said it would implement legal steps against Minister Fikile Mbalula’s announcement that the Department of Transport would not be extending the grace period for expired driver’s licences beyond 31 March. In a statement on the Politicsweb site, AfriForum said the government remains unable to provide proper service delivery, with many members of the public having submitted their driver’s licence applications several months ago. AfriForum said it was further considering the possibility of taking on a trial case if the grace period was not extended, and a member of the public was punished for driving without a valid licence as a result of government’s own inability to provide this service. It said this may set a legal precedent confirming the unlawfulness of punishing members of the public for the department’s own service delivery failures. ‘If AfriForum is successful in obtaining a further extension of the licence grace period, it will give members of the public much-needed breathing space to finalize the renewal of their licences. This is only fair since the current backlog of licence applications was caused by the department's own systemic and deep-rooted failures in the first place,’ said AfriForum’s Reiner Duvenage.