The South African Local Government Association (Salga) has approached the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria for an urgent interdict to halt the rollout of Phase Two of the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (Aarto) Act, which is scheduled to take effect on 1 July.
The case is set to be heard on Tuesday – less than two days before the planned implementation date.
Aarto, which has been on the statute books since 1998, aims to centralise traffic fine management by shifting violations from the courts to an administrative process. It also introduces a demerit points system designed to remove repeat offenders from South African roads. To date, the act has only been implemented in Johannesburg and Tshwane.
Phase Two would extend the law to 69 additional municipalities. However, the Minister of Transport, Barbara Creecy, had already postponed this rollout once before – from 1 December last year to 1 July this year – because municipalities were not ready. The main stumbling blocks she cited at the time were inadequate training of municipal law enforcement officers and administrative staff, as well as the harmonisation of law enforcement systems used by various municipalities and the funding thereof.
The 1 July implementation date has, moreover, yet to be formally proclaimed in the Government Gazette, as required. New regulations setting out the detailed rules for the implementation have also not yet been promulgated.
An unsustainable funding model
Salga’s primary concern is financial. The organisation says that municipalities are already under severe financial strain, with limited resources to deliver essential services. It argues that the cost of implementing Aarto will exceed the revenue municipalities are expected to receive from Aarto fines and that there is currently no provision for additional funding.
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This would mean municipalities would have to divert funds intended for service delivery – covering infrastructure, water provision and sewerage – in order to subsidise their Aarto responsibilities.
Salga chairperson for public transport and roads, Sebang Motlhabi, was forthright: “What we are not going to do, we are not going to just take a function as local government which will compromise the local government in its mandates in as far as infrastructure is concerned, the water provision is concerned, the sewer provision is concerned.”
Salga says it raised concerns about the funding model with the Department of Transport in November last year, yet the department has to date provided no meaningful solution. The organisation adds that, while it supports Aarto in principle, the current model threatens municipal financial sustainability and could undermine service delivery.
Intergovernmental dispute declared
Salga has confirmed that it formally declared a dispute with the Department of Transport earlier this month, in terms of the Intergovernmental Relations Framework Act. It argues this dispute must be resolved before the implementation of Aarto can proceed.
Motlhabi said that attempts to engage with the department had yielded little: “There was a promise made that there will be a proper consultation with us as Salga and that consultation has not yet happened. Up until the last time, two weeks or three weeks before the implementation, the department then called a meeting to brief us on the readiness of the implementation.”
The Western Cape has already secured an exemption from the 1 July date. After raising objections, the Department of Transport agreed that the province’s municipalities would be included in the rollout at a later stage.
ALSO READ: AARTO implementation delayed again: Demerit point system pushed to July 2026
How the current fine revenue model works
Under the existing system, motorists who pay their fines within 32 days receive a 50% discount, with the remaining revenue going to the municipality. If the 32-day period expires without payment, the fine is escalated to the Road Traffic Infringement Agency (RTIA) – an agency of the Department of Transport – which then administers the matter and receives 50% of the total revenue. The municipality’s share may be reduced even further by agency fees if payment is made through another office.
Industry unprepared
Rob Handfield-Jones, managing director of driving.co.za, said that even if the implementation were published in the Government Gazette immediately, it would be grossly unfair to expect motorists and businesses to be ready for the wider Aarto rollout within only a few days. Businesses will have to change their systems – systems that process information which could later serve as evidence in court – and this, he stressed, is not something that can be handled casually.
Cornelia van Niekerk, owner of Fines4U, which administers traffic fines on behalf of thousands of motorists and fleet owners, has written a formal letter to both the RTIA and Minister Creecy, highlighting irregularities in the way the RTIA is currently applying the Aarto legislation. Van Niekerk said Fines4U won a court case in 2017 confirming that the RTIA is bound by the strict statutory timeframes contained in the act, but that the agency is currently disregarding those deadlines – a situation she says infringes on the rights of motorists.
ALSO READ: South Africa faces two traffic fine systems at once
