VehiclesDB

South Africa license plate: Government G

Issued today Documented since 2000. Government plates for car, van, truck, bus, motorcycle, and trailer, 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, Government G (documented since 2000), sample GOW 960 G
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Format, years and the law

Format
GLL 999 G, for example GOW 960 G (L is any letter, 9 any digit)

The format above follows the issuing rules: a registration that fits it is one this series could have issued.

Years issued
Documented since 2000; the format is likely older than the first year documented. Still issued.
Vehicle class
Government: civil government fleets with distinct series. Issued for car, van, truck, bus, motorcycle, and trailer.
Colours
Characters #000000 Background #FFFFFF
Size
520 × 113 mm · every country's size
About this plate
DEPARTMENT OF STATE, G + two letters + three figures + G. Reg 27(5)(a) is PERMISSIVE, "may consist of", and limb (i) expressly allows a State department to keep the ordinary licence number allocated on licensing, so a government vehicle need not carry this format at all and a G-suffix match is a sufficient but not necessary test for state ownership. This series is also the reason the reg 27(2)(a)(ii) proviso forbids G as the first letter of an ordinary licence number: the two rules exist to keep the G space clear of each other.

Legal basis and sources

  1. reg 27(5)(a), verbatim: the licence number of a motor vehicle 'the owner of which is a department of State, may consist of, (i) the licence number allocated to the vehicle upon licensing thereof; (ii) the letter G... 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)(a) identically https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201409/37542gen287.pdf
  3. PN 51 of 2002 para 5(b): red letters and figures on white with the Free State coat of arms for provincial-government vehicles https://www.policeroadstransport.fs.gov.za/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Licence-number-plate-for-the-Free-State-2002.pdf

This plate in your app

The series id is za-government-g. 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-government-g")'
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