South Africa’s largest e-hailing platform, Uber, is currently operating without a legally required registration certificate.
This is over six months after a statutory deadline set by transport authorities expired.
When the National Land Transport Amendment Act came into effect on 12 September 2025, it officially brought digital e-hailing platforms under the national public transport regulatory framework and gave operators 180 days to register with the National Public Transport Regulator.
While competing platforms like Bolt, Wanatu, inDrive, and Maxim met the requirements and secured their certificates, Uber’s application remains stuck in administrative processing.
This has left the country’s most dominant ride-hailing network in a legal grey zone across South Africa’s main metropolitan hubs.
The statutory bottleneck centres on the sequence of licensing requirements created by the new law.
Under the NLTA, individual e-hailing drivers can only apply for their required provincial operating licenses once the underlying app platform they use has obtained an official NPTR registration certificate.
Uber submitted its Form 9A application on 17 February 2026, less than a month before the statutory cutoff on 11 March which left little time for regulators to clear a complex seven-stage adjudication process that includes tax clearance, public notification in the Government Gazette, and live software security demonstrations.
This regulatory impasse poses immediate risks to the transport sector because it creates an enforcement trap for thousands of e-hailing drivers.
While Uber continues to process trips and collect platform fees across the country, traffic law enforcement agencies have launched coordinated impoundment operations against unpermitted e-hailing vehicles.
Because provincial regulatory bodies cannot issue operating licenses to drivers whose primary platform lacks an NPTR certificate, drivers bear the full brunt of vehicle impoundments, traffic fines, and lost income while state officials and platform executives navigate the registration delay.
Warnings over strict enforcement
The Department of Transport warned platform operators and drivers at the start of the 180-day transition window that failure to obtain proper documentation would result in strict law enforcement.
Muzi Simelani, Director at the National Department of Transport, cautioned operators against expecting last-minute leniency.
“You have six months to make sure that you comply with the new regulations,” Simelani warned during an official stakeholder briefing. “We know that South Africans tend to do things at the last minute, but we have given you more than enough time to gather everything you need to comply with the new regulations. Please make sure you comply, because failure to do so will mean you cease to operate”.
Despite these warnings, the Department of Transport confirmed Uber’s filing in a Government Gazette notice published on 19 June 2026, the third step in the seven-stage verification process but has not issued a final certificate or taken legal steps to halt the platform’s operations.
This selective enforcement has drawn sharp criticism from industry representatives, who argue that the government is allowing a dominant multinational to operate on tacit administrative consent while small operators face severe traffic fines.
Drivers face impoundments and daily losses
In Mahikeng, police recently impounded over 35 e-hailing vehicles as part of a joint law enforcement crackdown targeting unpermitted operators. Affected drivers reported that obtaining the required provincial permits has proven nearly impossible while the primary platform status remains unverified.
Driver Thomas Sibakhulu, highlighted the immediate daily losses facing operators.
“They impounded our cars while dropping learners at school, so now we are forced to hire cars to fetch learners, and per day it is R700,” Sibakhulu explained. “The ticket I got, they wrote R3,500, and the other ticket is R1,750, and the last ticket is for impound, which is R5,000”.
Head of the North West Department of Transport Hans Kenana insisted that law enforcement would enforce the letter of the law. “The police will not impound law-abiding, roadworthy cars,” Kenana stated. “Those drivers who have had their cars impounded must comply with existing legislation to get them back”.
Legal exposure and platform competition
Legal analysts point out that the state faces a self-created enforcement dilemma. Transport law specialist Sipho Nkabinde explained that the NPTR’s delay in processing Uber’s application places drivers in an impossible administrative position.
“From an administrative law standpoint, the statute creates a strict requirement, yet enforcement authorities are hesitant to pull the plug on a platform that drives significant economic activity,” Nkabinde said. “By allowing Uber to operate while its application sits in the NPTR queue on a pending basis, regulators rely on administrative tacit consent. However, this creates immense liability for drivers who are caught on the road without valid provincial permits.”
Although Uber asserted that its registration paperwork was submitted prior to the March deadline.
The company has declined to provide updated feedback on why its certificate remains unissued six months later. To minimise risk, many e-hailing operators are now multi-apping, running trips concurrently on fully registered platforms like Bolt or inDrive to present valid documentation during traffic stops.
