A recently passed National Transport Act amendment bill will give South Africa’s Transport Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga pricing powers for ride-hailing operators within the country. President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the National Land Transportation Regulation 5 into law last week, concluding a 13-year wait for the updated bill and aligning the regulation with advances in the digital economy since its original implementation.
The Department of Transport welcomed its enactment into law and outlined subsequent steps. “Now that the President has signed the amendment bill, the legislation will be submitted to the State Legal Assessor’s Office for certification and to the Minister for approval,” said a spokesperson.
“The NLTA now reflects our commitment to a modern, inclusive, and efficient transportation system,” said Sindisiwe Chikunga, Minister of Transport of South Africa. “This bill amends the National Land Transportation Act of 2009 to update it with developments since its implementation, simplify various provisions, resolve issues that have arisen, and establish provisions for accessible, non-motorized transportation,” she explained.
More than 7,000 drivers signed an online petition on Change.org last year, urging the South African government to expedite the process of enacting the bill, expressing frustration over the lack of progress since it was passed by Parliament in 2020.
In a recent interview, Melithemba Mnguni, secretary of the E-Hailing Partners Council, stated that ride-hailing operators are excited about the new amendments. “We have had issues with pricing and feel that we have been underpaid. There are also problems with market saturation, with too many operators and declining revenues,” she said.
The new law is expected to address these concerns by granting the Transport Minister the authority to regulate pricing, thereby ensuring fair compensation for drivers and better market conditions. This development is seen as a significant step towards modernizing South Africa’s transportation sector and improving the overall efficiency and fairness of ride-hailing service
Additionally, Mnguni mentioned that ride-hailing services had previously opposed the Bill. However, he thinks that since transportation companies pay the smallest portion of the service cost, further expansion is unavoidable.
“The enterprise setup has been insufficient: the e-hailing platforms are those who set the costs, however don’t take any duty relating to working prices.” He clarified.
The Bills also give Chikunga more authority to enact new legislation and security protocols while streamlining the administrative side of granting operating licenses.
Previously, these companies functioned inside a legal gray area, relying on metered taxi operating licenses and constitution permissions to better fit their business model. Ride-hailing service providers will no longer be required by the new legislation to use
For years, there have been concerns over the inability of transportation companies in South Africa to get operating permits. The revisions to the Nationwide Meeting, which include the creation of a new class for working permits and the ability of electricity suppliers to deal with illegal operators on their platforms, were reportedly tabled by former Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula in March 2020.
Issuing operating permits that allow people to operate public highway transport businesses is the responsibility of the national public transport authority and provincial regulatory bodies. Nevertheless, municipalities may be given this authority
Bolt operator and Ekurhuleni digital calling affiliate president Kenny Moretsele said that their broadband was more of a potential issue than one that may arise from the amended laws. He explained that it’s because the invoice’s value regulatory aspects are imprecise and ambiguous. “We will continue to follow the same course of value dumping in the company,” he declared.
He noted that because e-hailers had already registered, the regulation recognized them as transport businesses rather than expertise corporations and authorized their operations in South Africa.
Additionally, it fosters a certain level of trust because Bolt drivers have been the focus of several reports of misbehavior and unsafety, which
have led the platform to ban over 6,000 drivers nationwide in the last
