---
title: "Aarto postponed to 2026 — municipalities unprepared for new road traffic Act"
description: "Minister of Transport Barbara Creecy and her deputy Mkhuleko Hlengwa have deferred the implementation of the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences Act to 1 July 2026."
type: "NewsArticle"
publisher: "Daily Maverick"
site: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za"
section: "ROADBLOCK"
author: "Estelle Ellis"
author_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/author/estelle-ellis/"
canonical_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2025-11-10-aarto-postponed-to-2026-municipalities-unprepared-for-new-road-traffic-act/"
published: "2025-11-10T21:21:41"
updated: "2025-11-10T21:21:43"
lang: "en-ZA"
word_count: 529
---

# Aarto postponed to 2026 — municipalities unprepared for new road traffic Act

> Minister of Transport Barbara Creecy and her deputy Mkhuleko Hlengwa have deferred the implementation of the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences Act to 1 July 2026.

By Estelle Ellis · Published 10 November 2025, 23:21 SAST · Updated 10 November 2025, 23:21 SAST

## Key points
- Minister Barbara Creecy has hit the brakes on South Africa's driver’s licence demerit system, pushing its launch from December to July 2026 because some municipalities are not ready for its deployment.
- Transport Minister Barbara Creecy announces postponement of South Africa’s driver’s licence demerit system to July 2026 due to municipal unpreparedness.
- The phased implementation of the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (Aarto) was initially set for December 2025 but will now begin in phases starting October 2025.
- Issues identified include untrained law enforcement officials, lack of system harmonisation and funding challenges, prompting the delay.
- The Aarto Amendment Act, signed in 2019, has faced multiple delays, including a public participation process that concluded in May 2021.

## Content

Minister of Transport Barbara Creecy said on Monday that South Africa’s driver’s licence demerit system, scheduled to come into operation on 1 December, will now be postponed to July because some municipalities assessed are not ready.

The implementation of the [Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (Aarto)](https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/202508/53099pr274.pdf) was due to begin on 1 December 2025, in staggered phases.

In July, Creecy told Parliament: “Research has shown that more than 80% of road crashes are due to human error and thus call for behaviour-changing efforts on our part. To ensure positive changes in road user behaviour, the department will roll out the Administration and Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences Act (Aarto), central to which is the demerit system that systematically aims at containing road user behaviour.

“The Aarto will be rolled out in different phases according to municipal readiness from 1 October 2025 for the 69 municipalities which are ready for the roll-out. This is Phase 2 of the Aarto roll-out programme, while Phase 3 will be rolled out on 1 February 2026 for the 144 municipalities that will only be ready then,” she added.

With three weeks left before the roll-out in the metros and smaller municipalities, the department has now revealed that the respective local governments are still not ready.

On 31 October, the Department of Transport published more than 600 pages of amended regulations in anticipation of Aarto’s launch.

National Transport spokesperson Collen Msibi said the postponement came amid a departmental readiness assessment of some municipalities that were to form part of the first implementation phase.

“Some of the issues identified during the assessment, in the main, include that law enforcement officials and back office personnel \[are\] not yet trained, the different systems used by municipal law enforcement have not yet been ‘harmonised’, and neither has the funding of this process.

**Read more:**[Second phase of Aarto traffic offences Act will kick in on 1 December](https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2025-08-03-second-phase-of-aarto-traffic-offences-act-will-kick-in-on-1-december/)

“The department will soon publish the new proclamation with new staggered implementation dates, the 1st of July 2026 being the official implementation date. The phased approach of implementation will still be maintained as initially envisaged,” Msibi said.

The initial roll-out, according to the Government Gazette, was intended to take place in the eight metros – City of Johannesburg, City of Tshwane. Ekurhuleni, eThekwini, City of Cape Town, Nelson Mandela Bay, Buffalo City and Mangaung.

Another [69 smaller municipalities](https://www.aarto.co.za/#:~:text=The%20phased%20national%20rollout%20of,municipalities%20on%201%20April%202026.) were also to have been included in the now-postponed roll-out.

The Aarto Amendment Act was signed into law on 13 August 2019, and the Road Traffic Infringement Agency (RTIA) was provided with R545-million to fund the roll-out.

The draft regulations for the implementation of the law, including the demerit system, were published in January 2020. With the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, the rollout was postponed to July 2020, also to recapitalise the RTIA.

When the period for public comment on the regulations closed in December 2020, the Department received 9,288 public submissions. The public participation process was completed by May 2021. It was then announced that the staggered phasing in of the process would begin in July 2021 and that the fourth phase would be finalised by the end of 2022. **DM**