Minister of Transport Barbara Creecy has told Parliament that her department has not considered making national panic-alert integration between e-hailing platforms and the police compulsory. The answer, reported on 1 September, cuts against what many passengers assume the e-hailing rules South Africa gazetted a year ago already require.
Creecy was replying to EFF Member of Parliament Lorato Florence Tito, who asked whether mandatory panic-alert integration and real-time incident coordination with police had been considered. Creecy described the safety measures as measures proposed in the regulations, and said other measures could be coordinated by the industry itself. The Citizen
That distinction matters every time a South African gets into a car booked on an app. One panic button is required by law. The other, the one on the phone in the passenger’s hand, is not.
The reply lands alongside a fresh round of public complaints about e-hailing driver conduct, and alongside newly disclosed figures showing that thousands of drivers are still waiting for the operating licences the same law now demands of them.
What the e-hailing rules in South Africa actually require
The Department of Transport gazetted the National Land Transport Amendment Act and the Second National Land Transport Regulations on 12 September 2025. The Act created e-hailing as a recognised service type for the first time.
Under the department’s own statement, each vehicle must be branded or carry a sign identifying it as an e-hailing vehicle, and the Act requires panic buttons to be installed in e-hailing vehicles. Vehicle owners carry the responsibility for that installation. South African Government
Platforms had to register with the National Public Transport Regulator. App developers who let users book rides without an operating licence face a fine of up to R100 000 or up to two years in prison.
Drivers must hold a dedicated e-hailing operating licence issued by a provincial regulatory entity, replacing the meter taxi permits and charter permits many used before. That is the piece now creating the bottleneck, and it follows the operating licence deadline for e-hailing drivers that Southafriworld reported earlier this year.
What is not compulsory, on the minister’s own account
The table below separates what the law demands from what it merely suggests. No published coverage of the regulations has set the two side by side.
| Measure | Status | Who carries it |
|---|---|---|
| Platform registration with the NPTR | Required; 180-day grace period ended 11 March 2026 | The platform |
| Dedicated e-hailing operating licence | Required | The operator, via a provincial regulatory entity |
| Visible e-hailing branding on the vehicle | Required | The operator |
| Panic button installed in the vehicle | Required | The vehicle owner |
| In-app panic button | Encouraged, not required | The platform |
| National panic-alert integration with police | Not compulsory, per Creecy | Not assigned |
| AARTO demerit points for traffic offences | Not commenced | RTIA, once proclaimed |
Creecy has separately said the in-app panic button is encouraged rather than mandated, with the choice left to whichever is convenient in the moment. She has also suggested drivers consider dashcams as an additional precaution.
The branding requirement, which is compulsory, is the one the industry disputes most sharply. Elijah Lekgowane, president of the National e-Hailing Federation of South Africa, has argued that marking every e-hailing car makes drivers easier to identify and target, in a sector where drivers have been hijacked, robbed and killed.
That risk is not abstract. E-hailing drivers have been caught in years of conflict with minibus taxi operators over routes and ranks, tensions visible again during the July taxi strike in Gauteng.
Thousands of licence applications are still waiting
Bolt South Africa says it received its certificate of registration from the NPTR on 27 February 2026, ahead of the 11 March cut-off, and that it complies with Regulations 15 to 18.
But registration of the platform is only the first step. Each operator must then apply separately to a provincial regulatory entity, and that is where the system has stalled.
At Bolt’s regulatory engagement session in Rustenburg on 18 August, attended by more than 150 operators, the North West Provincial Regulatory Entity disclosed a backlog of between 3,000 and 5,000 pending operating licence applications in that province alone. The entity said more frequent sittings would be needed to clear it.
Bolt said it would continue engaging authorities on an appropriate enforcement approach while operators wait for their applications to be processed. Fikile Nzuza-Chunga, senior public policy manager at Bolt South Africa, said licensing processes must work in practice and that the institutions responsible for implementation must remain accessible.
No national figure for pending applications has been published. Drivers caught in the queue are absorbing the wait on top of the fuel costs squeezing e-hailing operators, with no published guidance on how traffic officers should treat an operator whose application is lodged but unheard.
The demerit points that were meant to start on 1 September
Public frustration with e-hailing driving standards has been loud this month. Rob Handfield-Jones, managing director of Driving.co.za, published dashcam footage of a Bolt driver crossing an intersection more than six seconds after the light had turned red, and rated the offence at the top of a ten-point severity scale.
“From an average road user: unacceptable. From a public transport driver: inexcusable,” Handfield-Jones said. He argued the fix is not extra training, since stopping at a red light is a licence-level skill. mybroadband
One incident and a run of platform review complaints are not a measure of sector-wide conduct. Southafriworld found no published national dataset separating traffic infringements committed by e-hailing drivers from those committed by other motorists.
What is measurable is the enforcement tool meant to remove repeat offenders from the road, and it is not running. The AARTO Act’s administrative machinery was extended to roughly 60 further municipalities on 1 July 2026, joining Johannesburg and Tshwane, following RTIA warnings to licence holders on the AARTO rollout.
The demerit points provisions, sections 24 to 28, were left out of those proclamations. Legal analyses published in July by Gittins Attorneys and by Recording Law both record that the widely reported 1 September 2026 start date was cancelled when Proclamation 274 of 2025 was withdrawn, and that the RTIA has said the minister will fix a commencement date in due course. Southafriworld could not verify the current position directly from the Government Gazette before publication.
What happens next
Several things remain unresolved. There is no published date for the demerit points system, no national count of outstanding operating licence applications, and no stated enforcement position for operators whose applications are pending.
Uber declined to comment when The Citizen asked platforms about compliance in March, and no confirmation of its NPTR registration has been published since. Maxim, which registered on 27 February 2026, has launched an SOS feature for drivers and says a passenger version is still to come.
For passengers, the practical position is unchanged. Check that the vehicle and driver in the app match the car at the kerb, look for the branding the regulations now require, and treat the in-app emergency feature as a platform product rather than a legal guarantee.
The next fixed marker is administrative, not legislative: the North West Provincial Regulatory Entity has asked platforms for accurate operator numbers per municipality before it schedules additional sittings.
