VehiclesDB

South Africa license plate: Diplomatic D

Issued today Documented since 2000. Diplomatic plates for car, van, truck, bus, and motorcycle, issued by Department of Transport (national) and the MEC responsible for road traffic in each of the nine provinces. One of 20 South Africa license plates.

South Africa license plate, Diplomatic D (documented since 2000), sample YUD 686 D
Make this plate with your text Download the blank template (SVG) Every South Africa license plate

Format, years and the law

Format
LLL 999 D, for example YUD 686 D (L is any letter, 9 any digit)

The format above is broad: a registration that fits it has the right shape, which does not show that this series issued it.

Years issued
Documented since 2000; the format is likely older than the first year documented. Still issued.
Vehicle class
Diplomatic: diplomatic corps (embassy) issuance, usually its own decode. Issued for car, van, truck, bus, and motorcycle.
Colours
Characters #000000 Background #FFFFFF
Size
520 × 113 mm · every country's size
About this plate
DIPLOMATIC AND CONSULAR CORPS. The one certain fact is the terminal D, and it is the whole of what the Regulations say. Until it lands this series is a recall net and is labelled as one.
Region code notes
A diplomatic number carries no provincial mark and no registering- authority mark: reg 27(5)(d) takes it out of the provincial systems entirely. Decoding its letters as geography is the single most likely parse-API error in South Africa.
About the format
The pattern shows one representative shape.

Legal basis and sources

  1. reg 27(5)(d), verbatim: the licence number of a motor vehicle the owner of which is '(i) a foreign government, diplomat representing a foreign government, an international or inter-governmental organisation; (ii) a... https://disasterlaw.ifrc.org/sites/default/files/media/disaster_law/2021-06/%20ROAD%20TRAFFIC%20REGULATIONS,%202000.pdf
  2. GG 37542 GN 287 of 9 April 2014 reproducing reg 27(5)(d) identically https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201409/37542gen287.pdf

This plate in your app

The series id is za-diplomatic-d. The API returns its format, validation, colours and designs with the rest of South Africa's series:

curl -s https://vehiclesdb.com/api/v1/plates/za \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $VEHICLESDB_API_KEY" \
  | jq '.series[] | select(.id == "za-diplomatic-d")'
Check plate formats in your app

More license plates

Nearest to South Africa