The Department of Transport has gazetted the driving licence card extension for public comment, and the detail matters more than the headline. Codes A, A1, B and EB get 10 years from the date the card is ordered from the Card Production Facility. Codes C1, C, EC1 and EC get five.

Existing five-year cards for the light codes stay valid until a new card is issued, and lapse three months after expiry. Comment is open for 30 days.

The extension is demand-side relief for a supply-side failure. South Africa prints licence cards on a single machine that has been slated for replacement since 2009. It broke down between February and May 2025, pushing the backlog past 733,000 cards.

The DLCA cleared that on 9 December after printing 2,239,456 cards in seven months, with Home Affairs assisting since. One card still takes roughly 14 working days, and the DLCA is targeting seven over the next three years. The replacement machine tender awarded to Idemia was declared unlawful in January, re-advertised in February, and remains unresolved.

The policy side has moved far quicker. Cabinet approved in July, eight months ahead of the department's own March 2027 target, and 10 years exceeds the eight originally sought. Implementation still needs legislative amendments.

BusinessTech reported the gazette and stressed the changes are not yet in effect. MyBroadband has covered the seven-day production target and the Government Printing Works prototype card approved by the State Security Agency. ITWeb reported the High Court setting aside the Idemia award after the Auditor-General found the winning bidder had failed key technical requirements.

Halving renewal volumes for ordinary motorists is real relief, and government beating its own deadline by eight months is worth noting. But read the codes. If you run a fleet, a delivery operation or anything with a truck in it, your drivers stay on five-year cycles, and a driver with an expired card cannot legally work.

That is the group whose income depends on a machine that stopped for three months last year, and they get nothing here. The safety argument for shorter heavy-vehicle cycles is defensible. The queue is not.

Use the 30-day window if you have a view, and track your drivers' expiry dates yourself, because three months is the only cushion in the gazette.

You might also like our piece on the Smart ID branches now carrying part of this load, why Lanseria Smart City is the benchmark for announced versus delivered, and how South Africa's business regulation compares on restrictiveness.

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