High Court Torpedoes Lucrative Smart Licence Contract in Stunning Blow

EXCLUSIVE: A HALF-BILLION RAND TENDER SCANDAL has been BURIED by the very government that exposed it, after a shocking court ruling declared South Africa’s crucial driving licence contract IRREGULAR, INVALID, and UNLAWFUL.

In a stunning twist, Minister Barbara Creecy and the Department of Transport are CELEBRATING a court verdict that exposes their own department’s catastrophic failure. The R486 million deal with French giant IDEMIA – which YOUR biometric data and tax rands depend on – has been TORN APART by the North Gauteng High Court. The Auditor-General found IDEMIA FAILED to meet key technical requirements, yet they were STILL handed the keys to produce the nation’s new “smart” licences loaded with your most sensitive personal information.

This is NOT a victory for transparency; it’s a DAMNING INDICTMENT of a system so broken it requires a COURT ORDER to force basic compliance. While Creecy spins this as “vindication,” the shocking reality is that for MONTHS, this fatally flawed contract stood, threatening the security of every driver in the country. Now, in a desperate stop-gap, the printing duty is being outsourced to the NOTORIOUSLY DYSFUNCTIONAL Home Affairs department – the same entity drowning in passport backlogs.

IDEMIA, which denies wrongdoing, is now “considering legal options,” setting the stage for a TAXPAYER-FUNDED legal war. Meanwhile, the government’s “solution” is to start the entire corrupt process OVER AGAIN. This isn’t governance; it’s ORGANIZED CHAOS with your identity and safety at stake.

If they can’t even procure a plastic card without a judicial intervention, what possible faith can we have in their ability to safeguard the biometric data embedded within it? The system isn’t just broken; it’s actively being weaponized against the public it’s meant to serve.