As almost 600,000 South Africans patiently wait for their new driving-licence cards, it has emerged that a transport department delegation enjoyed a trip to France to examine a pricey smart-card machine owned by a company bidding for a tender — despite the device not being there.
The seven-person delegation, comprising five bid-evaluation committee (BEC) members and two technical advisers, could not explain why they had chosen to visit France instead of either the Czech Republic or Greece — the only two sites where the machine, which prints blank polycarbonate cards, could be viewed. Instead, they looked at an “unrelated” machine owned by the company.
After two days in France, they moved on to Amsterdam for a site visit to inspect a second machine that would personalise the cards in a process whereby security features and the card owner’s personal details and biometrics are embedded in them. Yet the company had claimed in its bid document that its machine could be viewed only in Morocco or Burkina Faso.
While it is unclear if transport department officials examined the correct printer, an investigation by the auditor-general (AG) found that two members of the delegation did not even view the machine.
Shortly after their return, the transport department officials nevertheless recommended that the company, Idemia South Africa (ISA), be awarded the contract to supply, install and maintain the card-printing system for five years. The price agreed on was almost R1bn — R412m more than the department had initially budgeted for.
These details are contained in documents before the Pretoria high court. The transport department has asked the court to declare the ISA contract invalid, irregular, unlawful and unenforceable, and to set it aside. It wants to readvertise the tender and, until then, outsource the printing of driving-licence cards to the department of home affairs.
ISA is opposing the application, arguing that, while mistakes may have been made in the tender award process, they were not serious enough to warrant cancelling the contract.
The company has been involved in previous failed contracts in South Africa. In 2023, home affairs had to revert to its outdated system after the company failed to meet at least five extended deadlines.
What is more, an AG report into the driving-licence card tender noted ISA had been appointed as a service provider for Airports Company South Africa in a biometrics contract that was cancelled in August 2024, owing to irregularities surrounding the contract.
The transport department’s acting director-general, Mathabatha Mokonyama, says in his founding affidavit that the delegation had been unable to explain why they went to France rather than the Czech Republic. Efforts to buy a new printer have been under way since 2021, but have been fraught with missteps.
South Africa’s current driving-licence card-printing machine is 26 years old and has broken down at least 160 times. The transport department told the Sunday Times that this week 539,947 licences were waiting to be printed, with many applicants having to wait months for their cards.
Last month the transport department announced that, because of the backlog, it was waiving fees for temporary driving-licence cards and suspending penalties for motorists with expired licences.
When contacted by the Sunday Times for her response to or explanation for the trip, delegation chair Bhavna Dana said, “I cannot give you an answer. I am not allowed to speak to the public about these things. Please can you go through the department.”
Other members of the delegation could not be reached for comment.
The transport department said procuring a new driving-licence card machine was now on hold owing to the declaratory order application. It could not comment on the trip to France and the Netherlands, as the matter was before court.
Efforts to reach ISA for comment were unsuccessful. Two listed directors, Joao Jeremias and Nomana Lupindo, did not answer calls or respond to messages sent to their registered numbers. Their legal representative at ENS also did not respond to calls or messages.
Neither the transport department nor investigators from the AG’s office have been able to elicit an acceptable explanation for the bid-specification team choosing to observe the wrong machine — one of the grounds on which the AG recommended the bid by ISA be disqualified.
Soon after the contract was signed in August last year, advocacy group Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa), which had investigated the tender, handed over a report detailing all its concerns to transport minister Barbara Creecy.
She referred the matter to the AG for investigation.
Two days before the AG published its findings, transport director-general Adv James Mlawu, who signed off on the contract, resigned.
Among the AG’s audit findings were that Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) principles had been disregarded in awarding the tender and procurement policies were violated, constituting an irregular outcome. It was recorded that the National Treasury noted the R412m shortfall between the signed deal and the original budget, and that funding to make up for this amount would not be forthcoming.
Other concerns were that no certificate of compliance had been included in the machine test report, and that only three of the five-member BEC had witnessed the personalisation process. One of them had refrained from the technical scoring because he had not personally witnessed it, while the other had provided a score. This, the AG found, meant the evaluation was “not fair or transparent”.
It’s completely wasteful expenditure to go on a junket to check out the wrong machine. Our hope is that the tender gets scrapped and they start the whole process over [again] properly
— Advocate Stefanie Fick, Outa’s head of legal
The AG was also unable to determine why the bid-specification team had decided to inspect the wrong machine. It found that ISA should have been disqualified during the bid-evaluation process and recommended that the deal be scrapped.
In March, Creecy announced she had instructed her department to take the matter to court, and last month it filed an application for an interlocutory order to overturn the ISA contract.
In his founding affidavit, Mokonyama said the Driving Licence Card Account (DLCA), being a trading entity within the transport department, had invited bidders to tender for the project.
“All the bidding companies’ values exceeded the amount of the tender as set by DLCA, indicating inadequate market analysis and budgeting. The DLCA had used incorrect and/or outdated pre-Covid prices, which constituted a material irregularity. The budget, which was submitted to cabinet for approval, was incorrect, as the cost of materials to print blank cards was not included. Again, this was a further gross irregularity.”
Mokonyama said bidders had been required to submit at least three reference letters relating to work done on similar bids. However, the AG investigation found the references submitted by ISA belonged to Idemia France, Idemia Czech and Idemia Netherlands.
This failure to comply with the public finances act and Treasury regulations could result in irregular expenditure, as the tender process was not fair or transparent.
"[ISA] was awarded points for certain criteria on the technical evaluation, even though they did not submit the required evidence and/or proof that they complied with the bid requirements.”
Regarding the site visit in the Netherlands, Mokonyama said that some "BEC members allocated points to a bidder for a requirement that they did not observe”. For this reason, “there is no evidence that the members came to a decision independently”.
He said because the AG was unable to determine how or why the BEC members decided to observe the incorrect machine, “[ISA] should have received zero points for this criterion, leading to their disqualification.”
Advocate Stefanie Fick, Outa’s head of legal, described the DLCA tender saga as “a comedy of errors”.
“It’s completely wasteful expenditure to go on a junket to check out the wrong machine. Our hope is that the tender gets scrapped and they start the whole process over [again] properly.
“[ISA] might argue that all that went wrong was a load of little mistakes, but what happened was fundamentally unlawful and wrong. We’re glad [the irregularities] didn’t get swept under the carpet.”
Fick added that if the DLCA had done its due diligence, it could have printed cards in much the same way home affairs has done with smart ID cards.
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