Dual Approach to South Africa’s New Driving Licence

South Africa’s transport authorities are retendering for a next-generation physical driving licence card, with the stated intention of migrating the credential to a polycarbonate (PC) substrate, at the same time as introducing a digital equivalent under the MyMzansi programme ¹.

On the physical side, a move to PC typically (though not publicly stated by official sources in South Africa) enables laser personalisation, through engraving or ablation, rather than surface printing, allowing biographical data and portrait imagery to be formed within the card body. This improves resistance to alteration attacks (eg. photo substitution, data scraping and reprint) because the personalised information can be locked into the card structure. PC construction also supports layered optical features such as DOVIDs that are harder to remove cleanly without visible damage.