Aarto rollout challenged – again
· Citizen
Just weeks after the controversial Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (Aarto) Act was extended to a further 60 municipalities on 1 July, the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) has asked the Pretoria High Court to suspend its implementation pending a review of the relevant presidential proclamations.
The court is due to hear the urgent application on 5 August.
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If the application succeeds, Aarto will, as was the case until 30 June, apply only in Johannesburg and Tshwane for the time being.
The act was first enacted in 1998, yet government has been struggling with the rollout.
Several attempts have been abandoned at the last minute, with the most recent, scheduled for 1 December last year, postponed to 1 July this year less than a month before implementation.
Since then, the Western Cape has also objected, and the rollout in that province has been deferred to a later date.
The latest challenge follows the court’s dismissal, on 29 June, of an urgent application by the South African Local Government Association (Salga) to halt the 1 July rollout. The application was dismissed because it was not considered urgent.
Salga argued that the affected municipalities were not ready to implement Aarto because their concerns about funding had not been addressed and the necessary regulations had yet to be published.
However, the extensive set of regulations was promulgated just in time the following day.
Outa’s application is based on two key issues:
- President Cyril Ramaphosa has not yet appointed the Appeals Tribunal that is supposed to hear disputes between motorists and the Road Traffic Infringement Agency (RTIA); and
- The public was never given an opportunity to comment on the new regulations governing Aarto’s implementation.
Advocate Stefanie Fick of Outa explains in an affidavit supporting the application that Ramaphosa’s proclamations extending the act also brought key provisions of the Aarto Amendment Act into force.
Tribunal for motorists’ appeals
One of the most significant changes introduced by the amended act is the establishment of a tribunal to hear motorists’ appeals where the RTIA rejects their representations against infringement notices. Under the original act, motorists could instead choose to challenge the matter in court.
However, Ramaphosa has yet to appoint the tribunal’s nine members, despite nominations having been called for in 2021 and again in 2024.
Transport Minister Barbara Creecy must recommend candidates from the public nominations to Ramaphosa, who will then make the appointments.
Fick says this means motorists in the affected municipalities are being denied access to the courts without any alternative dispute resolution mechanism being available to them. They are therefore in a worse position than motorists in other municipal areas.
She argues that this violates their constitutional rights to equality and to have disputes resolved fairly in a public hearing before a court or another independent and impartial forum.
Lack of consultation on latest amendments
On the regulations, Fick says there is an established practice of consulting the public on Aarto regulations that may affect their rights.
In fact, the authorities sought public comment in 2011, 2015, 2019, 2020 and 2025.
In 2020, Outa submitted extensive comments on issues including the mechanisms for serving infringement notices and the functioning of the tribunal.
The regulations prescribe in detail how Aarto must operate, including how many demerit points apply to specific offences, what options are available to motorists who receive infringement notices, which forms they must complete, and how the Appeals Tribunal should function.
Fick points out that the proclamation implementing the 1 July rollout specifically repealed the previous regulations, which had been in force since 2008, and replaced them with a new set that was never released for public comment.
The affected municipalities are also no longer permitted to process traffic offences under the Criminal Procedure Act, as they did previously.
Outa challenging the rollout, not the act
Outa makes it clear that it is not challenging the constitutionality of Aarto, which has already been upheld by the Constitutional Court, nor does it oppose the phased expansion of the system.
Instead, it argues that the rollout must be done properly rather than “piecemeal, in a discriminatory and unconstitutional manner”.
The organisation is asking the court to suspend the expanded rollout that took effect on 1 July and restore the legal position that existed beforehand until its review application has been heard.
It ultimately hopes to secure a final order preventing any further rollout until the issues it has identified have been adequately addressed.
It is not yet clear whether the president, the minister of transport or the other government respondents will oppose the application.
This article was republished from Moneyweb. Read the original here.