Minister Creecy's warning to drunk drivers: South Africans are not your crash test dummies

Minister Creecy WARNS drunk drivers:
South Africans are not your crash test dummies

By Estelle Ellis, Suné Payne, Lerato Mutsila and Ethan van Diemen

South Africans are not your crash test dummies

By Estelle Ellis, Suné Payne, Lerato Mutsila and Ethan van Diemen | 17 April 2025

Drivers who are under the influence of alcohol this Easter holiday period will get harsher treatment, says transport minister, but details are scant.

A new strategy to combat the sky-high number of drunk drivers on South Africa’s roads will be tested for the first time this Easter after a disastrous festive season four months ago, the Department of Transport has announced.

According to the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC), there was a 30% increase in vehicle accidents caused by drunk driving during the 2024/25 festive season. This, Minister of Transport Barbara Creecy told Parliament in February, had forced the department to request a review of strategies to clamp down on those driving under the influence.

“I think the bigger problem is that South Africa still has very weak liquor legislation. The whole culture of drinking and driving is not discouraged. The alcohol management system in this country is completely dysfunctional.”

As a result, a new plan would be put to the test during this Easter holiday period, traditionally the busiest time on the roads after the December holiday season.

“The effort to strengthen enforcement and introduce harsher penalties for serious offences includes three critical focus areas,” Creecy said.

“The RTMC, through the technical committee for standards and procedures, which is comprised of representatives from the private sector, road traffic authorities, law enforcement instruments and directors of public prosecutions from the different provinces, has revised the current alcohol evidential prosecutorial standards to strengthen prosecution of alleged drunken drivers.

“This is to close all loopholes in the standard operation of arrests, of offenders for drunken driving, by traffic officers.”

Transport department spokesperson Collen Msibi did not respond to a request to clarify which loopholes Creecy was referring to. Criminal law attorney Milton de la ­Harpe, who specialises in drunk driving cases, told Daily Maverick his firm had not received information about any big changes in legal procedures to clamp down on drivers caught under the influence of alcohol.

Road safety advocates, including the Automobile Association (AA), have called for law enforcement officers to be allowed to detain drunk drivers at roadblocks until they have sobered up. The need for this became clear last weekend when, on Friday night alone, several road safety and law enforcement operations in the Eastern Cape netted 122 suspected drunk drivers.






In the past few weeks, several horrific crashes allegedly involving drunk drivers have shaken the country.

In Gqeberha, one student died and 10 were injured, some seriously, after a taxi driver crashed into a group of people on the Nelson Mandela University campus. The driver was charged with culpable homicide, reckless driving and driving under the influence of alcohol.

In Cape Town’s Bantry Bay, two joggers were injured when a driver, later ar­­rested for drunk driving, ploughed into them, flinging them over the side wall on Victoria Road.

A persistent problem

The Western Cape Mobility Department’s head of communication, Muneera Allie, said drunk driving remained a major threat to road safety in the Western Cape.

“It is a persistent contributory factor to serious crashes and fatalities, particularly during high-risk periods such as the Easter weekend. Despite ongoing education and enforcement, too many motorists still take the risk of driving under the influence, endangering themselves and others.”

Allie said provincial traffic services arrested 85 people in the Western Cape for driving under the influence (DUI) during last year’s Easter long weekend. “A total of 43 DUI operations were conducted over the period,” she added.

High-risk zones for drunk driving had been identified through data from crash investigations, historical enforcement outcomes and alcohol screening operations, Allie said, and it was clear that key arterial routes such as the N1, N2, R27, R60 and R62 “consistently record high incidents during long weekends”.







JP Smith, the City of Cape Town’s mayoral committee member for safety and security, said the Traffic and Metro Police departments arrested 2,511 people for drunk driving in 2024, but “drunk driving is a challenge countrywide”.

During the 2024 Easter weekend, there were 25 drunk driving arrests in Cape Town, a remarkable decline from the previous year’s 80 arrests over the same period.

Asked about plans to curb drunk driving this Easter, Smith said: “Officers conduct ongoing operations including vehicle checkpoints and roving patrols to detect drunk driving. How­­ever, there are so many competing priorities within the safety and security environment that officers are very often redirected [to other priorities], particularly where other public safety risks present themselves.”

These included severe weather incidents, protests and gang violence.

Speaking on 11 April at the launch of KwaZulu-Natal’s Easter holiday road safety campaign, MEC for Transport and Human Settlements Siboniso Duma said projections indicated that more than 1,500 cars per hour would be passing through tollgates in the province on the afternoon of Thursday, 17 April.

Duma said law enforcement officers should have “no mercy” on individuals committing offences.

“We have orphans, widows and families that have been destroyed as a result of one drunkard. We don’t want KZN to contribute to the national figure of fatalities as a result of even one drunk person.”



Duma said law en­forcement officers were mandated to arrest drunk moto­rists and send them to jail. “They must be allowed to sober up behind bars and be released on bail after 21 April.”

He said the province would work with the National Prosecuting Authority to “ensure a successful prosecution and conviction and a prison sentence of six years. The fine of between R2,000 and R120,000 is not enough. We must aim for a prison sentence in order to end this scourge.”

Entire system is flawed

But Maurice Smithers, an alcohol harm reduction activist, said what South Africa needed was an entire overhaul of its laws around the sale and consumption of liquor.

“It is, for example, not illegal for a person under 18 to drink liquor. It is a crime to sell it to them,” Smithers said. “We have been pushing for random breathalising testing. It is also what the World Health Organization is pushing for.

“There was an attempt to change the Road Transport Act [to stipulate] that the only acceptable blood alcohol level was zero, but experts said it wasn’t sensible,” he added.

“I think the bigger problem is that South Africa still has very weak liquor legislation. The whole culture of drinking and driving is not discouraged. The alcohol management system in this country is completely dysfunctional.”

Smithers said to really improve control of the liquor industry in South Africa, the Constitution would have to be changed because it made provision for provinces to handle this responsibility.

“Everybody says it is a national problem – you need a national solution,” he said. “But I think ideally we should move towards a situation where communities control taverns and not the other way around.”

Smithers said the Western Cape, which had moved its liquor control competencies to the Department of Community Safety, had the right idea.

AA spokesperson Eleanor Mavimbela said law enforcement statistics and public reports indicated that drunk driving remained a persistent issue in South Africa.

“Determining an accurate trend over the past five years is difficult due to inconsistent reporting and the lack of centralised, real-time national data.

“That said, anecdotal evidence and SAPS crime statistics suggest that alcohol-related driving incidents remain prevalent, particularly around festive periods such as the Easter and December holidays,” Mavimbela said. “The AA believes more must be done. There is an opportunity for law enforcement agencies to not only arrest and prosecute, but also prevent accidents and incidents involving drivers over the limit.

“Key interventions could include increasing the visibility and capacity of law enforcement during peak seasons and in identified hotspots; actively de­­taining drivers at roadblocks who are over the limit until they have sobered up; and improving data collection and reporting efforts to enable more focused interventions.”

Mavimbela added that a truly successful strategy would build a culture of accountability and road safety.

“The AA continues to advocate a 0% alcohol limit for drivers, reinforcing the message that there is no safe level of drink­­­­ing and driving. This zero-­tolerance ap­­­proach will help reduce ambiguity and support a culture of safer, more responsible road use.”



Mavimbela said that although the AA did not have access to updated data on the conviction rate for drunk drivers, it was widely acknowledged that the rate was low.

“This is often due to procedural shortcomings, case backlogs and challenges in gathering admissible evidence. The revision of prosecutorial guidelines ... could lead to higher conviction rates – provided there is alignment between police, prosecutors and the courts, and that case management processes are improved.

“These limitations give merit to our proposal to detain drivers who are over the limit until they have sobered up.

“This measure serves to ensure that drunk drivers are not let loose to pose a threat to both themselves and other road users, and act as a deterrent that doesn’t depend on an already strained prosecution system,” Mavimbela said.

The Medical Research Council used the banning of alcohol sales in 2020 during the Covid-19 hard lockdown as an opportunity to undertake research on what happened to the rate of unnatural deaths in the country.

Its study showed that unnatural deaths plummeted – and the trend was immediately reversed when the ban on alcohol sales and the curfew were lifted. A similar pattern was noticed when strict measures were re­­introduced a few months later and then lifted again. DM

How much is too much?

Tap the + signs to read more

Est. Alcohol to legal limit (2 hrs)

• It takes about four drinks ???? in two hours for an average 77kg man to exceed 0.05% BAC,


• and about two drinks ??  in two hours for a 62kg woman.

How much can you drink and drive safely in SA?

Legal BAC limits in South Africa

• The legal blood alcohol concentration (BAC) limit for driving in South Africa is 0.05g of alcohol per 100ml of blood for all drivers.


• For professional drivers, such as those with a professional driving permit (for example, taxi and bus drivers or couriers), the limit is stricter at 0.02g per 100ml of blood.

Penalties for exceeding the limit

Penalties for exceeding the limit include:

• Arrest


• Fines


• License suspension


• Imprisonment

• It takes about four drinks ???? in two hours for an average 77kg man to exceed 0.05% BAC,


• and about two drinks ??  in two hours for a 62kg woman.

• The legal blood alcohol concentration (BAC) limit for driving in South Africa is 0.05g of alcohol per 100ml of blood for all drivers.


• For professional drivers, such as those with a professional driving permit (for example, taxi and bus drivers or couriers), the limit is stricter at 0.02g per 100ml of blood.

Penalties for exceeding the limit include:

• Arrest


• Fines


• License suspension


• Imprisonment

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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