After more than 2 months of waiting my bike is finally licensed and registered… in Cape Town. As it turns out the national part of the acronym in eNaTIS is a bit of a misnomer. In reality it’s not very “national” at all.

I got my bike early April, right before the eNaTIS systems were being “installed”. I’m not quite sure what they were doing there because the system is still horribly broken. Anyways, after trying to register my bike in Cape Town and being told the systems were down or I had the incorrect paperwork or I needed this document as well it was finally time for me to leave to move to JHB. So I did. I brought all the documentation with me.

Seeing as I was going to be permanently residing in JHB I figured I may as well register the bike here. How wrong I was. Apparently the police clearence isn’t valid because it was obtained in Cape Town. Nevermind the fact that I had the original document and all these systems are supposed to be national. So I sent the paperwork back down to CPT to have my bike registered there (courtesy of the ‘rentals).

Nope… apparently I still need more paperwork (there’s now about 7 different documents). So all the documentation was finally organised, and the bike about to be registered. Nope, no can do… the police clearence isn’t on the eNaTIS systems (the police clearence was obtained in March); did I mention I had the original document. Apparently they can’t enter it into their systems. So more waiting ensued, after finally getting the police clearence on their systems (and more eNaTIS related downtime — you’d think that after more than 2 months they would have ironed out the “kinks”) my bike was licensed and registered. At least I got a nice 5 digit CA plate.

Other than that I did go riding a few weeks ago — with my sister’s plates (who conveniently has the same bike) and I can see why people get so many fines in JHB. There’s nothing but straight lines and 90 degree angles here. I’ve yet to see anything that looks remotely like a twisty, or even a curve or a bend. Nothing but monkeys twisting the throttle and measuring the size of their cock by flaunting the money they put into their bike… it’s pretty damn boring.