This has led to even foreign tourists sometimes being stranded at the side of the road because a law enforcement officer has impounded a tourist vehicle for not having a valid operating licence, causing severe reputational damage to the operator and to South Africa as a tourist destination.
“It’s not just financial damage, it’s reputational damage as well to the operator and South Africa as a destination because those tourists go home and complain about that experience and say ‘don’t visit South Africa’.”Vegter said a moratorium will have to be gazetted but this has not happened yet. “The whole way the licences are processed, approved {and so on] is absolutely suboptimal and we need to fix the system,” Frost said.
De Lille said the department shared its own challenges related to this work that contributed to a backlog of 1 014 operating licences by June 2022, adding that since July 2022 the NPTR had dedicated three days per week to deal with the backlog until it was cleared.