Phase 2 of the national roll-out of the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (AARTO) Act will proceed on July 1 after the Gauteng Division of the High Court in Pretoria ruled that the South African Local Government Association's (Salga) urgent application to halt its implementation lacked urgency.
The court did not consider the merits of Salga's challenge, which will be argued at a later stage.
Salga said it was disappointed by the ruling but stressed that its legal challenge remained alive.
"While disappointed at today's outcome, the reality of the matter is that the core issues that we wanted the court to provide relief on are still to be argued. Our legal team is preparing to take the matter forward," said Sebang Motlhabi, chairperson of Salga's public transport and roads working group.
Salga brought the urgent application over concerns that the funding model underpinning AARTO was unsustainable for financially constrained municipalities and that the regulations imposed additional responsibilities without a sustainable funding mechanism.
The association said it had also lodged an intergovernmental dispute in terms of the Intergovernmental Relations Framework Act, arguing that municipalities had not been adequately consulted on regulations that directly affected their operations and budgets.
"The current AARTO regulations, published in October 2025, impose financial burdens on municipalities without providing a sustainable financial model that will ensure effective implementation. This threatens municipal financial sustainability and risks diverting limited resources away from service delivery to cover the costs of implementing AARTO," Motlhabi said.
Salga said it remained committed to improving road safety and strengthening law enforcement but maintained that implementation should be financially sustainable and supported by meaningful engagement with local government.
