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South Africa license plate: ZN standard 2L2F2L

Issued today 2023 to today. Standard 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, ZN standard 2L2F2L (2023 to today), sample XT 76 DS ZN
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Format, years and the law

Format
LL 99 LL ZN, for example XT 76 DS ZN (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
2023 to today. Still issued.
Vehicle class
Standard: the default series issued to private road vehicles. Issued for car, van, truck, bus, motorcycle, and trailer.
Colours
Characters #000000 Background #FFFFFF
Size
520 × 113 mm · every country's size
  • South Africa license plate, ZN standard 2L2F2L 250×205 mm (2023 to today)

    ZN standard 2L2F2L 250×205 mm

    standard · 250 × 205 mm

  • South Africa license plate, ZN standard 2L2F2L 250×165 mm (2023 to today)

    ZN standard 2L2F2L 250×165 mm

    standard · 250 × 165 mm

About this plate
KWAZULU-NATAL, two letters + two figures + two letters + ZN, from 1 December 2023. The DATE is pinned to a government publication (SAnews, GCIS) that also states the reason in the province's own words, "towns running out of available numbers", which is exactly what a registering-authority-mark system does when it exhausts. The SHAPE rests on reg 27(2)(a)(ii)(bb) plus Wikipedia for the choice of limb, and the mark "ZN" on Wikipedia alone.
How numbers are issued
Phased, and the phases are dated by the provincial government itself: phase 1 from 1 December 2023 covers "the registration of new vehicles, change of ownership, and re-registration of stolen-recovered vehicles"; phase 2 from 1 March 2024 opens voluntary migration, with a 24-month window "after which all motor vehicles will automatically be issued with a new format licence number upon licensing".

Legal basis and sources

  1. reg 27(2)(a)(ii)(bb) inserted by r. 5(a) of GNR.589 of 27 May 2009, the enabling instrument; reg 27(4) MEC may establish a new licence number system https://disasterlaw.ifrc.org/sites/default/files/media/disaster_law/2021-06/%20ROAD%20TRAFFIC%20REGULATIONS,%202000.pdf
  2. sanews.gov.za https://www.sanews.gov.za/south-africa/new-provincial-number-plate-system-unveiled-kzn
  3. en.wikipedia.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_South_Africa

Before and after

South Africa license plate, ZN RA mark (documented 2000 to 2023) It replaced ZN RA mark documented 2000 to 2023

This plate in your app

The series id is za-zn-standard-2l2f2l. 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-zn-standard-2l2f2l")'
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