The Pretoria High Court has handed down a declaratory order setting aside the Department of Transport’s appointment of Idemia as the preferred bidder for South Africa’s driving licence printer tender.
The department has been instructed to re-advertise the tender within 30 days, and in the meantime, the court has allowed the department to outsource printing services to the Government Printing Works.
“The Minister of Transport, Barbara Creecy and the Transport Deputy Minister, Mkhuleko Hlengwa, have welcomed the High Court’s declaratory order,” the department said in a statement.
“On 6 January 2026, the Gauteng North High Court declared that the tender was irregular, invalid, unlawful, and unenforceable.”
The court order follows the department’s court application, which was made after the Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA) found irregularities in the tender process.
“Reacting to the court’s declaratory order, Minister Creecy stated that the court outcome is a vindication of the department’s commitment to transparency and legitimacy,” the department said.
Currently, South Africa has one very old driving licence printer that is prone to breakdowns and should have been replaced years ago. The tender was to find a service provider to procure new printers.
After several years and numerous withdrawals of the tender, Creecy’s department announced that it had selected Idemia as the winning bidder in August 2024.
However, the decision sparked backlash, with the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) organising a meeting with the minister to highlight various procurement irregularities.
It submitted a detailed report of its findings, prompting Creecy to instruct the AGSA to expand the scope of an investigation into the contract.
Key among these was Outa’s finding that the tender’s cost has ballooned from the Cabinet-approved budget of R486 million to R899 million.
Despite Idemia telling MyBroadband that it legitimately and lawfully won the tender, the AGSA found various problems with the tender adjudication process.
“Idemia, the winning bidder, failed to meet key bid technical requirements,” the AGSA said.
However, it noted that other bidders weren’t unfairly disqualified as they too failed to meet the bid’s technical specification.
“All bids submitted exceeded that R486 million budget set by the Driving Licence Card Account (DLCA), indicating inadequate market analysis and budgeting,” the AGSA said.
“The DLCA used outdated pre-Covid prices, and the budget they submitted to cabinet for approval did not include all the costs for the contract, leading to cabinet approving a memo that was not a true reflection of the cost of the contract.”
The AGSA also found various instances of non-compliance in the department’s prescribed procurement process.
The department also provided an update on its progress in outsourcing driving licence card production to Home Affairs’ Government Printing Works (GPW) as an interim solution.
“The State Security Agency has approved the prototype driving licence card designed by the GPW,” it said.
“The establishment of the network connection between the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) and GPW was successfully tested.”
It added that the network connection enables the transfer of data and files required by the GPW to produce the driving licence cards.
“A Cabinet process will soon be undertaken to seek Cabinet approval of the prototype card design,” the department said.
Creecy announced her department’s agreement with the GPW while presenting the budget vote speech for the 2025/26 financial year. However, the target she specified was missed.
“To ensure we have a backup solution, we have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Government Printing Works,” she said in July 2025.
“We expect that this backup solution will be able to print driver’s license cards within three months.”
The interim solution was announced after the country’s only driving licence card printer was being repaired between February and May 2025, resulting in a production backlog that peaked at nearly 750,000 cards.
