The enactment of Section 66A of the National Land Transport Amendment Act has been transformational for e-hailing services, leading to increased recognition thanks to the formalisation it brings to the sector.
While the e-hailing platforms had six months from September last year to comply and get national accreditation, there is a still a journey to take, as the bylaws of local municipalities need to be determined and then addressed.
In response to a parliamentary question in July, transport minister Barbara Creecy said the intention of the recent national legislation is to ensure e-hailing platforms are registered in South Africa and have in-country offices, gain operating licences, vet drivers and include in-vehicle panic buttons, among other things.
Further, she said the regulatory framework is “to bring about stability and harmony between traditional minibus taxi services, metered taxi services and e-hailing services”. She added that it will recognise drivers as “formal public transport operators/drivers”, legalising their status and bestowing basic conditions of employment on them.
The introduction of the legislation, however, caught at least one of the operators by surprise. “We, as a business, only got light of it when it was published on 12 September 2025; it wasn't like we knew it was coming,” says Ashif Black, country representative for inDrive, speaking to ITWeb TV.
In retrospect, he says, the company would have liked the process to involve the operators in the consultation and to have been more transparent.
The inDrive platform, which has since secured its national accreditation, is licensed to operate in South Africa for five years, at which point it will need to apply again, says Black.
The challenge now faced is to deal with local regulations, which are yet to be finalised. Since inDrive operates in 16 cities across the country, the task presents a sizeable workload.
“Each municipality is different – the way the Gauteng [Department of] Transport regulates their cities is not the same way that the Western Cape mobility department will regulate its cities. There could be a lot of bylaws and we…and drivers also have to comply with, for the city that they chose to operate in,” he says.
This time though, Black notes, the company and industry is communicating and open to working with government as it develops the framework for municipalities to adopt.
Black says inDrive – which operates a peer-to-peer pricing model allowing riders and drivers to agree their own prices, and claims to have the lowest service fees in the industry at 12% – wants to ensure that industry regulation doesn’t impact the market economics to the point of excluding drivers.
“We hope that this does not create a marketplace where it is no longer accessible for anyone who needs a salary, or wants to substitute a salary to create liveable earnings, because we see this is easy access for someone to provide earnings for their family…We still want it to be fair; we don't want it to be over-regulated.”
The regulations have given credibility to the e-hailing firms and is resulting in increased recognition of their status and impact on the overall transport ecosystem. The move is also opening doors for negotiations around adding designated e-hailing pick-up locations at venues, such as airports and malls.
“We're using the new licensing framework, and our milestone of actually getting our licence, to have conversations with various entities – state-owned or privately-owned – whereby we want to see designated pick-up and drop-off locations.
“Previously, it was difficult to have these conversations, because we were not formally recognised as a sector, but I think with the new regulatory framework, as much as it sounds complex, it comes with a lot of victories, and credibility.”
As the e-hailing sector continues to evolve, Black believes it is important that regulation creates and supports opportunities, especially with the shifting dynamics, service offerings and different modes of transport to be included.
For inDrive, Black says that over the next five years, he expects growth into a larger portfolio of services, such as courier, freight and food delivery, as well as expansion in both the primary and secondary cities.
Share
