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Gauteng redirects 70% of booking slots to renewing driving licences

The Gauteng Driving Licence Testing Centres (DLTCs) will from Monday dedicate 70% of their capacity to driving licence renewals to address current backlogs.

“Working together with all the stakeholders, the province will ensure that 70% of all slots made available to the DLTCs will be dedicated exclusively to processing driving licence renewals on a daily basis.

“We have also taken a decision that available capacity in the DLTCs, such as equipment, machinery and staff will be dedicated to addressing the backlog in driving licences renewals,” said the Gauteng Public Transport and Roads Infrastructure MEC, Jacob Mamabolo.

Mamabolo on Wednesday said DLTCs managers who undermine this directive will face a possible suspension.

A Provincial Management Operations Centre will be established to monitor the activities of DLTCs daily to ensure that the decisions taken at the meeting are implemented.

“There will also be a dedicated team to maintain and service the equipment and machinery that is used to process the driving licenses renewals on a regular basis,” Mamabolo said.

Uprooting corruption

From next month, the department will commence with a forensic investigation into allegations of corruption, bribery and collusion reportedly taking place at DLTCs across the province.

“While the current COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on the driving licence renewals backlog, it has also laid bare the fact that over the years, the DLTCs have not been functioning optimally,” said Mamabolo.

He said the centres’ capacity has not been increased to match the demand and the pressure brought by the growing population.

“However, we are confident that with the decisions we have taken, we will be able to address the backlogs.”

The department will be piloting the use of mobile units, in partnership with Road Traffic Management Corporation, to increase the capacity of the facilities and provide a better service to communities.

“We are aware of the frustration that driver’s licence holders, who want to renew their cards, have been experiencing. We are taking extraordinary measures to deal with the backlog,” said Mamabolo. – SAnews.gov.za

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From Sophiatown to Triomf

By 1963, Sophiatown had been physically razed to the ground. In a final act of psychological warfare, the government built a white working-class suburb over the rubble and named it Triumph (Triomf). They wanted to erase the very memory of Sophiatown from the landscape. For decades, the name Sophiatown disappeared from maps, replaced by the neat, sterile streets of the victors.

The “resurrection” of Sophiatown began officially in 2006, when the City of Johannesburg formally restored the original name to the suburb. Today, the neighborhood is a quiet, leafy residential area, but the ghosts of the “Paris of the Transvaal” are everywhere. The Sophiatown Heritage Centre, housed in the former home of Dr. A.B. Xuma (a former ANC president), is one of the few original buildings that escaped the bulldozers. Walking through the streets today, you can still find small markers of the past: a lone Victorian pillar, a specific tree mentioned in a poem, or the rebuilt St. Joseph’s Church.

The legacy of Sophiatown is not just one of tragedy, but of an indestructible cultural spirit. The music, the slang (Tsotsitaal), and the “Drum” era aesthetic continue to influence South African fashion and film today. It serves as a reminder that while you can bulldoze a house and rename a street, you cannot kill the soul of a place that once danced to the sound of a thousand saxophones.