‘We should celebrate Aarto’: RTIA defends roll-out as Outa withdraws case
· Citizen
The Road Traffic Infringement Agency (RTIA) says the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) withdrew the case against it at the eleventh hour.
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The civil action organisation had approached the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria in July, seeking the suspension of Phase 2 of RTIA’s Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (Aarto) system roll-out just weeks after it was extended to 60 municipalities.
The system, according to RTIA, is designed to enhance road safety and simplify traffic fine management, decriminalising minor offences.
Phase 2 of the Aarto roll-out began on 1 July, extending its footprint beyond the two pilot municipalities, Tshwane and Johannesburg.
Outa ‘terribly mistaken’
Outa sought its suspension on the grounds that RTIA did not establish the legal safeguards that motorists are entitled to rely on, among other concerns.
Briefing the portfolio committee on transport in parliament on Tuesday, 4 August, chairperson of the road traffic agency’s board Bonolo Ramokhele said Outa realised at the last minute that “they were terribly mistaken”.
The matter was supposed to be heard on Tuesday.
Ramokhele said the agency had experienced a few other legal challenges over Aarto’s second phase.
“But we have been able to successfully defend those in court,” he said.
This includes an urgent application by the South African Local Government Association (Salga) in June, which was eventually struck from the roll.
Salga had raised concerns about the regulatory framework for implementing the phase, infrastructure and equipment readiness of issuing authorities, and the financial model for municipalities.
The City of Cape Town also filed a dispute against the roll-out, which has resulted in the city not being part of the municipalities included in Phase 2.
RTIA defends Aarto
Ramokhele, however, told the parliamentary committee that South Africans should “be happy” that the programme is finally being rolled out.
“And it’s being rolled out successfully,” he said.
“By the end of today, there will be 30 to 40 South Africans who are going to die on our roads and some of them may die because somebody was on a cellphone, somebody has been drinking, somebody has jumped a red robot. And some of these deaths do come out of an issue of behaviour of our road users, specifically drivers,” he added.
“So, we should celebrate the Aarto programme because it’s attempting to actually do away with that. At its core, it’s not a punitive fines mechanism but a programme that government is putting into place to try and reduce road fatalities and reduce the impact of those fatalities on our economy, as well as our loved ones and our families.”
Ramokhele also said that, at its core, it is decriminalising road infringements and moving to a regime of administrative penalties.
“No more should we now have people going to jail for things that we could deal with from an admin penalty point of view.”
Remaining municipalities to be added in third phase
The third phase of the roll-out is expected to begin in March 2027, although the date has not been confirmed.
RTIA registrar and CEO Matsemela Moloi said it will include phasing in the remaining 151 local municipalities.
Following that, Phase 4 – which also doesn’t have a set implementation date yet – will then kick in.
This phase will include the points demerit system, which will initially apply to selected contraventions.
“There has been a decision taken that instead of introducing the point demerit system on all the contraventions, rather we first target those that directly contribute to fatalities in terms of the studies that have been conducted,” Moloi said.
A rehabilitation programme will also be introduced in this phase, he added, so that “we are not only punitive, but also able to assist those who would be contravening the laws”.
‘In the business of saving lives’
The agency’s executive programme manager Helen Kgamanyane said the system has been yielding results since 1 July.
She said 2 024 notices have been issued from 1 until 27 July, and a total of R976 950 has been paid towards them.
“The amount could include notices that were paid before July; however, we just wanted to show you that the system is active and operational.”
Kgamanyane said the agency wanted to emphasise that its mandate with Aarto is more about road safety and saving lives than revenue generation.
“That is something that we wanted to put forward, that as RTIA and Aarto, we are not in the business of revenue generation, but we are in the business of saving lives and reducing the socio-economic burden of crashes, because that also impacts our sister department, which is the Road Accident Fund,” she said.
Watch the full briefing here: