Barbara Creecy, South Africa’s transport minister, has formalised regulations governing the country’s e-hailing industry.Â
Catch up: The rules, which originate from the National Land Transport Amendment Act introduced in September 2025, require safety features such as panic buttons, live trip tracking, driver verification, car branding, and other measures designed to protect passengers and drivers.
Compliance is another story: The regulations require e-hailing operators to register with the National Public Transport Regulator (NPTR), while drivers must obtain operating licences, pass background checks, and comply with vehicle requirements.
That sounds straightforward enough except that three months after the registration deadline expired, only ride-hailing companies Wanatu, Bolt, Maxim, and InDrive have registered. Several operators, including Uber, continue to operate while awaiting regulatory approvals.
What do these rules help? The new rules will make the industry more formal, improve passenger verification, create clearer standards, and potentially make investigations easier when incidents occur. For passengers, it could mean more transparency around who is driving them and where they are going.
But not everyone is convinced: Driver groups argue that panic buttons address symptoms rather than the underlying problem. The National e-Hailing Federation of South Africa has repeatedly argued that driver earnings and other security concerns remain unresolved.Â
Some drivers have also raised concerns about vehicle branding requirements, arguing that clearly identifying e-hailing vehicles could make them easier targets for criminals, and even going as far as signing petitions against it.
Yet, South Africa’s e-hailing industry now knows the rules. Whether they solve the problems drivers and passengers face in the gig economy is another question.