08/06/2025
📌 Gauteng’s New Number Plates & the Problem with the Pilot Program
The Department of Transport is piloting new high-security number plates on G-Fleet vehicles — including QR codes and tamper-proof technology — claiming this will curb fraud and improve enforcement.
To make the pilot possible, the Minister invoked Section 88 of the National Road Traffic Act, which allows the Minister to exempt state departments from complying with the Act and its regulations, including regulations pertaining to number plates.
While many have been questioning the move, we've been asked to comment on the legalities.
Heres our take:-
⚠️ The power to exempt under section 88 must be used for the purpose that the power was granted.
📃Section 88 is framed as a relief mechanism to exempt state departments from compliance— typically where compliance with the National Road Traffic Act or Regulations is unreasonable, impractical or causes hardship.
🚓There is no evidence that the G-Fleet faced any hardship, impossibility or difficulty in complying with existing number plate regulations. No complaint has been raised. Yet, an exemption was granted — not to relieve them or address a genuine compliance concern, but to test a new system.
🚦Furthermore, the specifications for the new number plates have been clothed as 'conditions of exemption'. However, these conditions dictate that the number plate must contain a plethora of new features (which the current NRTA and Regulations prohibit) which are more onerous than the the format contained existing Regulations. Understood in this way, the purported exemption fails to meet the very definition or character of what a true exemption is aimed at, revealing the misuse of section 88.
Using a legal provision for a purpose it wasn’t intended, breaches the precepts of legality and may render the exemption ultra vires and unlawful.
📌 Is that innovation? — or a misuse of power?
We all support solutions that improve road safety — but not at the expense of lawful process.
— Saint Attorneys
