ONE IN THREE ILLEGAL
These shocking figures of drivers fraudulently obtaining their licences led Saturday Citizen to probe how easy it is to ‘buy’ one. The answer: dead easy – if you have the money.
Driver’s test examiners can make R40 000 a week in bribes from instructors for ‘guaranteed passes’.
The practice of bribing your way to a driver’s licence in Johannesburg is as ubiquitous as it is unavoidable for some budding drivers, especially if they are vulnerable to intimidation and manipulation, according to experts.
Often referred to as “cold drink” or tjotjo, bribing an instructor to obtain a licence is both costly and almost unavoidable in some instances, because instructors intimidate new drivers by telling them that failure to pay a bribe is almost guaranteed to ensure you fail.
Jannie*, a driving school owner for more than 30 years, prides himself in being one of the few honest driving instructors in Johannesburg, but says he often faces intimidation when he tries to expose the parallel universe of the illegal driver’s licence industry.
“Driver’s licence instructors work in cahoots with the traffic department staff and that is why it will never end, and they will never get caught,” he explains.
“If you go and stand in line at Randburg testing station, or even as you walk into the station at about 6.30am or 7am, you will immediately be approached by one of them.
“The corruption starts with the learner’s licence. A student can pay about R750 for someone to queue for them and book a test. Booking a test is only supposed to cost you about R228. About 90% of the instructors are corrupt and pretty much all of the examiners are corrupt.”
According to Jannie, driver’s test examiners can make about R40 000 a week from the bribes they receive from the instructors in a transaction known as a “guaranteed pass”.
This is the system whereby the instructor obtains a bribe from the learner driver in order to take the test, knowing that even if they make enough mistakes to fail the examiner will either look the other way or assist the student.
This can set a learner driver back an extra R4 500, but some instructors can arrange it for as little as R1 500.
“Another way they can do it is to arrange for somebody else to take the test on their behalf – the learner’s and the driver’s test.
“That can cost you about R12 000, but they will do it, because at the testing station everybody gets a piece of the bribe, from the examiners to the managers,” Jannie adds.
Chairperson of Justice Project South Africa Howard Dembovsky estimated that one in three issued driver’s licences are illegally obtained.
“It’s become a pandemic situation now, to be honest, and the
only way to deal with it is for management to get a firm grip on it,” he says.
“Ultimately, you can say that everybody in the value chain is bribed.
“But to get to a stage where it is being dealt with effectively there has to be a comprehensive anticorruption strategy.”
It has become a pandemic. Howard Dembovsky Chairperson of Justice Project South Africa