What is a section 56 notice to appear in court?

A document is handed to you at the roadside. It has an amount on it, a date, and the name of a court. You put it in the cubbyhole.

Six months later you are stopped at a roadblock and told there is a warrant. The document you never read was not a bill. It was an instruction to be in a particular building on a particular morning.

What it is

Section 56 of the Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977 allows a peace officer to hand a person a written notice to appear in court, instead of arresting them, where the officer on reasonable grounds believes that a magistrates' court will not impose a fine exceeding an amount determined by the Minister.

It is one of the methods the law provides for securing an accused person's attendance. The others are arrest, a summons issued by the clerk of the court at the instance of the prosecutor, and an indictment in the High Court.

The notice must:

• specify the name, residential address and occupation of the accused
• call on the accused to appear at a stated place, on a stated date and at a stated time to answer a charge
• set out the offence alleged
• contain a certificate by the peace officer that they handed the original notice to the accused and explained its importance

That last requirement is worth noting. If nobody explained anything to you, and no certificate was completed, that is information to take to an attorney.

It is not a fine

This is the misunderstanding that produces almost every bad outcome in this area.

The substance of a section 56 notice is the obligation to appear. The amount printed on it exists because most such notices also carry an admission of guilt endorsement, which allows you to admit guilt and pay the stated fine without appearing, under section 57 of the Act.

So you have two options, and one default:

Pay the admission of guilt fine. You do not attend, the matter ends, and you have admitted guilt.

Appear on the date and answer the charge. You plead not guilty, or you plead guilty and address the court on sentence, or the prosecutor withdraws it.

Do nothing. This is not an option, although it is the most popular choice. It is a failure to appear.

Paying is a conviction

Before you pay anything, understand what payment does.

Paying an admission of guilt fine is deemed to be a conviction and sentence by the court, without you ever appearing, being represented, or hearing the evidence. For some offences it results in an entry on your criminal record.

Our guide on admission of guilt fines sets out which offences produce a record, how the confusion with ordinary traffic fines arises, and the section 57 route to having a deemed conviction set aside where it was not in accordance with justice. Read that before paying anything that is not plainly a minor traffic matter.

The convenience of paying is real. So is the consequence, and people discover the second one years later when an employer asks for a police clearance.

Section 56, section 341 and a summons

Three documents that all look like traffic paperwork and are not the same.

A section 341 notice is the notice left on a windscreen or handed over for certain minor offences, offering payment of a fine. It does not name a court date in the same way.

A section 56 notice names a court and a date and requires appearance, with an admission of guilt option.

A summons is issued by the clerk of the court at the instance of the prosecutor and served on you, usually by the sheriff or a police officer. It also requires appearance. A summons often follows an ignored notice.

None of these is an AARTO infringement notice, which belongs to a completely different system. Whether AARTO or the Criminal Procedure Act applies depends on where the infringement happened, and our guide on which traffic fine system applies where you live works through it. The traffic fine checker does the same from the notice in your hand.

The distinction matters because the remedies do not transfer. There is no representation to the Road Traffic Infringement Agency on a section 56 notice.

What happens if you do not appear

Failing to appear in answer to a written notice, without having paid the admission of guilt fine, is an offence in itself, and a warrant for your arrest can be issued.

The practical sequence is unglamorous and slow, which is why people are lulled by it. Nothing happens for months. Then the warrant surfaces, usually at a roadblock, at a licence renewal, or when the police arrive at the address on the notice, which is the address you gave them.

Our guides on what happens if you miss your court date and getting a traffic warrant cancelled deal with the position once that has happened, and the short version is that dealing with it voluntarily is very much better than being found.

What to do when you are handed one

Read it at the scene. Find the court, the date and the time. Find the amount and whether an admission of guilt is offered.

Check your own details, including the address. An error in the address means correspondence and warrants go somewhere you will not see them.

Do not sign anything you have not read, and do not sign a blank or partly completed notice.

Photograph it immediately. Both sides. Notices get lost, and the court and date are the two things you cannot reconstruct.

Diarise the date the same day, with a reminder a week before.

Decide deliberately. Pay, or appear. Choose one, and do it.

If it is serious, get advice before paying. Reckless or negligent driving, driving under the influence, assault, and anything involving injury are not matters to dispose of by paying an amount at a counter. Our guides on reckless and negligent driving and drinking and driving explain why those carry consequences well beyond the amount on the paper.

On the day

Go early and expect to wait. Court rolls are long and being late is being absent.

Take the notice, your identity document and any relevant documents.

Find the right court and report to the clerk or the prosecutor.

Dress and behave as though it matters, because you are asking a magistrate to form a view of you.

Ask for a legal representative if you want one. If you cannot afford an attorney, Legal Aid South Africa is on 0800 110 110, and our free legal help page sets out the means test and the university law clinics.

Do not plead guilty to get it over with. A plea of guilty is a conviction, and our guide on what happens at your first court appearance explains what the appearance is actually for, which is usually not the trial.

If you have only just found the notice

It happens, and the answer is not to wait and see.

If the date has passed, go to the court named on the notice, or phone it, and ask what the position is. Where a warrant has been issued, arranging to deal with it through an attorney is materially better than encountering it at a roadblock.

If you moved and never received it, the fact that notices went to an old address is worth raising, and it is worth raising with the dates you moved and proof of your current address.

Take the original notice with you, or the photograph of it.

Worked example

This example is illustrative. A driver is stopped and handed a notice for driving with a defective brake light. The notice names a magistrates' court, a date six weeks away, a time, and an admission of guilt fine of R500. The officer signs the certificate on the notice.

Option one. He pays the R500 before the date. He does not attend. The matter ends. For an offence of this kind it is the proportionate answer, and the record consequences are minor.

Option two. He believes the light was working and wants to contest it. He attends on the date, pleads not guilty, and the matter is either withdrawn or set down for trial.

Option three. He puts it in the cubbyhole. Nothing happens for four months. He has in the meantime failed to appear, which is an offence, and a warrant is issued. He is stopped at a roadblock in the following year, arrested on the warrant, and spends a night in custody over a brake light.

The third outcome is the common one, and the entire difference between it and the first is five minutes spent reading a piece of paper at the roadside and one entry in a calendar.