How to renew your vehicle license in South Africa
20/02/2012 at 8:08 pm kohlrabie 4 comments
Guide for foreigners: How to apply for renewal of your vehicle license in South Africa
Step 1: The City of Cape Town now offers a stunningly easy and innovative way of renewing your vehicle license. You can do it online! Just go to http://www.capetown.gov.za/en/Vehiclelicensing/Pages/Licencepayments.aspx and follow instructions.
Step 2: Complete the form and send it off
Step 3: Wait for email confirming that your application has been received including bank details
Step 4: Pay via EFT
Step 5: Wait for your license
Step 6 – 10: repeat Step 5
Step 11: receive fine for expired license
Step 12: call service centre to find out that your license has been sent to your old address
Step 13: call new tenant of your old home
Step 14: SMS new tenant of your old home
Step 15: repeat Steps 13 and 14
Step 16: get hold of tenant who doesn’t know where key to post box is which she never checks.
Step 17: wait a few days and then repeat steps 13 and 14
Step 18: learn that license never arrived at old address either
Step 19: repeat Step 12 to find out that you must fax proof of new address, copy of ID and request letter in order to have license resent to your new address
Step 20: follow instructions and fax everything through (engage several other people to help you by providing printers and fax machines. Thanks again!)
Step 21: wait
Step 22: go to Municipal Court to explain circumstances and get rid of fine. (bring lots of forms. Once again thanks to all involved)
Step 23: Wait for 1 hour
Step 24: be told that you must wait until you receive the SUMMONS to do anything about it (mind – the traffic officer who GAVE you the fine said you must take the fine to the court asap. “They will throw it away – no problem!”)
Step 25: get a second fine for your expired license in front of the municipal court. The friendly traffic officer tells you to take both summons to the Court once you have them. “They will throw them away – no problem!”
Step 26: call service centre (2 weeks after fax) to inquire why licence still hasn’t arrived. Friendly lady tells you that your details still haven’t been changed and that you better go to the traffic office in person. Bring proof of address and ID. They will give you your license. No problem.
Step 27: cancel appointments in town because you can’t risk getting a third fine
Step 28: Go to traffic office to be told that your passport doesn’t count here. You must come back with your Traffic Register Number.
Step 29: Frantically search your house for your traffic register number.
Step 30: Go back to traffic office. ALMOST be sent away again because now you must of course pay extra for the TWO extra months that your license is newer than when you first applied and SOUTH AFRICAN GOVERNMENT OFFICES ONLY ACCEPT CASH WHICH YOU NORMALLY DON’T HAVE WITH YOU. Find out that your details have meanwhile been changed. Lady behind counter is confused. What must she change?
Step 31: HAAAALLELUJAH HAAALLELUJAH HALLELUJAH HALLELUJAH HALLE-E-LUJAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!
Step 32: (a few days from now): find another new license in post box
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Entry filed under: Uncategorized. Tags: Cape Town, how to renew you vehicle license in South Africa.
1.
christian | 21/02/2012 at 12:31 am
don’t tell me this happened to you?????
2.
kohlrabie | 21/02/2012 at 7:13 am
of course. Finally got my license yesterday.
3.
Miriam | 22/02/2012 at 5:24 pm
Cheer up, sweetie. I admit, it’s not QUITE as bad over here, but nevertheless I also had an interesting excourse concerning my drivers license, which mysteriously disappeared sometime between … Well, gee, where can it be? and …. oh fuck, I’ve been driving around without a license for 3 MONTHS??? Or maybe even 4????? Well, this is how it went:
1. look in internet to find out what you need to apply for a new license
2. internet says 40 bucks, that’s it. Oh, and don’t forget your ID.
3. Oh right, almost forgot one teensy tiny thing: IF you happen to have earned your license in a different (God forbid) City or county than the one you’re living in now, THEN you need a BLA BLA BLA VERY OFFICIAL SOUNDING THING from the license-giving City.
4. ok, now find out number of license-giving Bureau Of Traffic in Bonn.
5. Call the above at 8 a.m. between taking off your coat at work and dealing with the first ennervating kid coming to your kindergarten group.
6. Be pleasantly surprised at how friendly the person you reach let’s you give all necessary details (date of birth, married name, birth name, waist circumference…). Express devote gratitude at the fact that this person assures you that you can, without fail, safely go to the Bureau of Traffic in Bergheim (that’s the current one!! Remember the rules??) THIS VERY SAME AFTERNOON, and then there will be a fax waiting there telling them that I actually earned my drivers license in Bonn some twentysomething years ago.
7. Hang up with a very good feeling. Especially as the Bureau of Traffic in Bergheim has exactly ONE afternoon per week in which we poor depraved working people can actually GO there and get something done without having to apply for vacation to do this.
8. Arrive at above address smiling and confident in the afternoon.
9. Wait in a corridor that has the charm and comfort of a public toilet.
10. Do this for quite a while. Ok, I’m not really a patient person.
11. Your turn comes. Person behind desk barely bothers to swallow her piece of cheesecake (no exxageration! She was eating cake while doing her job.) while informing you that no fax what so ever has arrived there from Bonn.
12. Don’t get up and go. Snivel a bit and turn on all your charm and ask the crumby lady HOW ON EARTH could this be.
13. Crumby lady now gets interested and actually stops eating and calls the Bureau of Traffic in Bonn FOR ME!!! Isn’t that nice of her.
14. Things get even more interesting when she actually GAPES at me while telephoning, rolls her eyes and says “Oh my god, I can’t believe this. You guys are still working with PAPER FILES??? You don’t have this stuff down on computer?” Then she nods and “hm hm”s, and hangs up. Then she informs you that the nice man in Bonn in now going down into the BASEMENT of the Bureau of Traffic to find the proof of the fact that I, poor little insignificant Miriam, actually earned my drivers license…. yes we know the rest, thanks.
15. You get assigned a very special seat, IN the crumby ladys office, in which you can now sit and wait for the nice man in Bonn to find your goddamn stuff.
16. You wait. And listen to the crumby lady exchange dazzling office banter with her colleague. And watch her drink coffee.
17. Do this for about 25 minutes.
18. Then get snivelly and needy again. Tell the crumby lady you have a child waiting for you at home. She then calls the nice man in Bonn once again.
19. Mind: about an hour has passed since you walked into this office.
20. Crumby lady rolls her eyes ONCE MORE.She says (and these were her actual words), “Good lord, man, you’ve been looking for this lady under her MARRIED NAME all this time? You don’t seriously think she got married at 18, did you?”
21. Crumby lady hangs up. Nice but stupid man in Bonn goes into the basement once more.
22. Wait for 20 more minutes. Night is now falling outside.
23. the fax machine goes into action!
24. >The crumby lady drops her cake and rolls into action.
25. HALLELUJA!!!!!!!
26. You suppress urge to embrace the crumby lady because she now feels like a lifelong friend.
27.Now all that is left to do is to go pay the 40 bucks. And don’t forget to bring back the receipt. Otherwise you won’t get your temporary license.
Good night and blessings to you all.
4.
Bim | 23/02/2012 at 5:43 pm
Are you still alive?
Bim