South Africa does not yet have a zero-alcohol limit for drivers. The Department of Transport is pursuing an amendment to Section 65 of the National Road Traffic Act that would replace today’s limits with zero, and the legal firm Van Deventer Dowlath & Marx has now criticised the plan for ignoring drunk pedestrians. The proposal is still working its way towards Cabinet, and nothing about the current limits has changed.
Where the proposal stands
Transport Minister Barbara Creecy told the Road Safety Practitioners’ Colloquium in Ekurhuleni on 2 September that the department was “in the process of acquiring approval from the Chief State Law Advisor and Socio-Economic Impact Assessment System (SEIAS) approval to secure cabinet concurrence for this amendment by the end of 2026”, according to SAnews, the government news agency. In other words, Cabinet agreement is the target for the end of the year, not a given. TopAuto, by contrast, wrote that Creecy had already sent a proposal to Cabinet; the government’s own account describes approvals still being sought.
Creecy first announced the plan on 15 January, when she presented the 2025/26 festive season road safety report. Government’s own SAnews account of that briefing records the current rules: it is a criminal offence for general drivers to exceed 0.05g of alcohol per 100ml of blood or 0.24mg per 1,000ml of breath, and professional drivers face stricter limits of 0.02g per 100ml of blood or 0.10mg per 1,000ml of breath. SAnews gives the breath limit in milligrams. Some media reports, including BusinessTech, state it in grams, so the unit is worth checking against the Act itself before it is quoted.
The idea is not new. BusinessTech notes that former transport minister Fikile Mbalula announced a 0% limit in February 2020, with legislation promised by December of that year, but it never materialised.
The government’s case
Creecy said more than 18,000 people were arrested for drunk driving between March and the end of August, a third of all traffic arrests in that period, and that South Africa “cannot normalise” the close to 12,000 deaths on its roads each year. The department has set a target of halving annual road fatalities by 2030. In January she said 173,695 drivers were tested over the festive season and 8,561 tested positive, a 144% increase on the same period a year earlier.
Deputy Minister Mkhuleko Hlengwa gave updated figures in an 8 October speech published by gov.za. He said law enforcement arrested 19,829 motorists for drunken driving between March and September, about 34% of all road arrests, and that alcohol is a contributing factor in approximately 27% of road fatalities. “The message is clear: alcohol and driving should never mix,” he said, adding that the aim is to change behaviour and not simply to increase prosecutions.
What the critics say
The pedestrian criticism comes from Cor van Deventer, a director at Van Deventer Dowlath & Marx, in comments first carried by TopAuto on 14 September and repeated by BusinessTech on 4 November. These are the firm’s views and a legal opinion, not a government finding or a study. We could not find the firm’s own statement online, so the quotes below are as reported by those outlets.
Van Deventer argues that intoxicated pedestrians are “a large part of the crisis” and that “Zero-tolerance will change driver behaviour, but it won’t fix the pedestrian crisis.” He says pedestrians are already barred from being drunk on a public road under the Act, but that enforcement is inconsistent, and that enforcement is concentrated at roadblocks and not where intoxicated people gather.
He also raises legal and practical concerns. In his view, a zero limit would remove the perceived “safe drink” category, and a trace reading from some medicines or foods such as vanilla extract, cooking wine or certain vinegars could lead to investigation or prosecution. He says breathalyser calibration, officer certification, device logs and safeguards against false positives would all become critical, that criminalising trace readings without proof of impairment could raise concerns under section 36 of the Constitution, and that “there will be no margin for error”.
The pedestrian numbers differ by source
Government’s pedestrian figures vary by period and source. SAnews reports that Creecy said pedestrians accounted for 48% of the 6,457 deaths recorded from 1 January to 23 August. TopAuto reports that the Road Traffic Management Corporation put the share at 44% for January to August. Hlengwa said 3,091 pedestrians had died so far this year, about 42% of all fatalities, which is 722 fewer than a year earlier. These figures cover different cut-off dates and are not directly comparable, but all show pedestrians as the largest single group of victims.
The government has not ignored pedestrians entirely. Creecy told the colloquium that traffic authorities had focused this year on stopping people crossing and walking on highways, and had stepped up patrols near entertainment areas to keep intoxicated pedestrians from running across major roads. Hlengwa called for safer road design, better lighting, visible crossings and community education.
Enforcement is the other recurring question
A separate critic, Kashifa Ancer of the DG Murray Trust’s Rethink Your Drink campaign, told EWN that enforcement is a key weakness even with the 0.05 limit, and that more testing, policing resources and equipment would be needed. EWN reported that the Road Traffic Management Corporation estimates alcohol contributes to at least 27% of road fatalities, in line with the figure Hlengwa used.
What it could mean for operators and employers
For fleet owners, logistics firms and any employer with staff who drive, the practical point is that nothing changes until the amendment passes Cabinet, goes through Parliament and takes effect. Companies may want to review their own alcohol policies in the meantime, though that is a judgement for each employer and not something the government has asked for. Questions that remain unanswered include the final wording, any tolerance for trace readings, the date of implementation and how testing equipment would be certified. For more on the minister’s decisions, see our report on the Road Accident Fund levy and the Regulatory & Policy section.
