After the Bell: The transport ministry — grinding to a standstill

Whenever I’m moving around I can’t help but notice, and sometimes be quite shocked by, how behind we are in the way we administer transport.

So much has changed so quickly, and so often the transport department, and all of the provinces, are just nowhere.

Traffic, always worse at this time of year, is the most awful reminder of this. No one, anywhere, has kept up with how many more cars there are on our roads. To the point that some areas, particularly around schools, taxi ranks and Sandton, are gridlocked… and central Cape Town is just a no-go zone on some days.

While someone could argue that this is all the fault of municipalities, anyone who has spent any time driving on the N1 from Limpopo to Joburg on a Sunday evening (particularly after a long weekend) will tell you no one has thought about the future.

Then there is the sheer admin of it all.

The efficiency conundrum

If you had to use one word to describe some of the things you have to comply with, it would be “nonsense”.

On an average Saturday afternoon you can go to the famous Waterfall driver’s licence centre and see a wonderful cross-section of our society, many of them sitting neatly on outside chairs under a thoughtfully placed gazebo.

Inside the office where you get your licence card a very funny attendant invites the women to please have a seat while the men... “You, my friend, you can stand with me” (you will be pleased to hear I did get my licence card very quickly at this facility!).

But it is all wasted time. You are waiting to get something there is really no need for.

The technology to allow you to carry your driver’s licence cards on your phone exists NOW, in February 2026.

But the transport ministry is still deciding whether to force us to get new driver’s licence cards every five years or every eight years.

And while all of this is going on there is the apparent mindlessness of a situation in which the department has to issue a tender for a printer for the cards when the government printer quite happily prints thousands of ID cards every day.

Then, of course, there is the annual lunacy of the car licence disc situation, in which you have to pay for a disc and receive nothing in return. And while I’m sure some government person will claim you have to fill in your details on the form every year (which, curiously, still seems to be only available in English and Afrikaans), you and I know that no one ever checks.

The provinces should be honest and call it what it is. It’s a tax for which you and I receive nothing.

All of this was the context in which News24 reported this morning that Uber and Bolt might soon be operating illegally, because the government appears to be taking its time to sort out their permits under a new system.

Now, I must be fair here. This is an attempt by the transport ministry to bring things up to date. The new regulations mean that e-hailing services have to be registered with the National Public Transport Regulator.

They were given six months to do this, and while it appears that they’ve tried to do everything properly, they are still not registered.

The mysterious role of Icasa

The chair of the Gauteng E-hailing Partners Council (which represents drivers), Henry Mathebula, might have muddied things further this afternoon, when he told Newzroom Afrika the delay was because the e-hailing services were waiting for a letter from the communications regulator Icasa.

No, I can’t see what role Icasa has to play here either.

Now, I don’t think for a second that the two services will really be shut down. Frankly, they have become too entrenched in different parts of our society for that to happen (and both have plenty of money to go to court).

Why we need e-hailing services

There are thousands of people who rely on all sorts of services these drivers provide, from those who get to campus on the pillion of a bike, to those who move their families around in an Uber Van.

I think what is probably more important than that is the incomes that are generated and the families those incomes look after.

I shudder, literally shudder, to think what would happen if this flow of money were to come to a halt, even for just a month.

I have known current Transport Minister Barbara Creecy for decades and I don’t blame her for all of this. She has always shown herself to be competent and up to date on issues.

Her predecessors (including the current secretary-general of the ANC) are really the people who we need to hold responsible.

In a strange way, the story of the transport ministry, in trying to catch-up to our lived reality now, is the story of this national coalition. Parts of the government seem to be trying to catch us up to where we should be.

I just hope that someone, somewhere, is also looking to the future, so that we don’t fall so far behind again. DM