RAF In the News

Written by Dianne Hawker | Published on 05 September 2024 Hundreds of Road Accident Fund cases are clogging the court roll in Gauteng and lawyers say the organisation is not making enough effort to ensure cases are finalised quickly. If you were involved in a catastrophic car accident today, it could take you more than five years to have your Road Accident Fund (RAF) claim dispute heard in court and possibly longer to receive your payment. This is the situation facing hundreds of RAF and other personal injury claimants affected by a growing backlog in the Gauteng Division of the High Court, based in Pretoria and Johannesburg. The earliest trial date available for RAF cases is in October 2029, while it’s November 2027 for cases against the police and February 2027 for divorces. Lawyers who have spoken to Daily Maverick about the crisis place the blame squarely at the door

Published on Sunday World on 4 September 2024 Four provinces – Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, the Western Cape, and the Eastern Cape – currently bear 73% of crime levels in South Africa. This is according to Police Minister Senzo Mchunu. He said the gravity of these crimes alone, including extortion, was of serious concern to the police. Mchunu stated that the police are hard at work fighting extortion and other related crimes in parts of the country on a daily basis. “The modus operandi of the perpetrators involved in these heinous acts is well-known,” according to Mchunu. “Most of them are individuals who do not want to work but rather choose to parade as armies of murderous parasites that must be fought and rejected by society as a whole,” Mchunu said. The minister was addressing parliament on Tuesday on measures taken by the police to deal with threats posed by extortion. Communities

Issued by Dr Chris Hunsinger MP | Published on 03 September 2024 The DA wrote to the Minister of Transport, Barbara Creecy, to urgently draw her attention to the fact that the Road Accident Fund (RAF) seems to have halted payments for nearly four months. This state of affairs seems to point to the fund’s imminent implosion without prompt intervention from either the Transport Minister or the Portfolio Committee on Transport. Over the years, we have seen a worrying disconnect between the Department of Transport and one of its key entities, the Road Accident Fund (RAF). The RAF CEO and the Board have been operating unchecked and without proper oversight for too long. Having six Transport Ministers in only seven years has produced a perfect environment in which the RAF, for example, can pick which sections of the RAF Act to apply and which not to apply, based on what

Written by Roy Cokayne | Published on 25 July 2024 The civil justice system in Gauteng is in crisis, with a shortage of judges to hear and adjudicate civil trials and the high volume of cases being lodged leading to delays of up to five years before a matter is heard. Nicolette de Witt, chair of the High Court Committee of the Pretoria Attorneys Association (PAA), said civil trials in the High Court in Pretoria are currently being allocated for January 2029 and the waiting time between the date of allocation of civil hearing dates and the hearing date itself “has reached an astonishing period of four and a half years”. “These lead times are the longest they have been in the history of this division of the High Court,” she said. “Under the [prevailing] circumstances … in Pretoria, the civil justice system is failing South African citizens and depriving

Written by Roy Cokayne | Published on 18 July 2024 Adopting a different accounting standard saw the fund’s liabilities for outstanding claims plummet from R331bn to R34bn – and led to the AG issuing a disclaimer to its financial results. The Road Accident Fund (RAF) has been advised by new Deputy Minister of Transport Mkhuleko Hlengwa to use legislative reforms rather than “arbitrary changes in accounting standards” to achieve the necessary changes required by the fund. This was a reference to the governance issues facing the RAF related to its 2020/2021 annual financial results. The Auditor-General (AG) issued a disclaimer to these financial results because the RAF had adopted a different accounting standard, resulting in the fund’s liabilities for outstanding claims plummeting to R34 billion in 2022/23 from R331 billion in 2019/20. An application to the High Court in Pretoria to review and set aside the AG’s disclaimer and to

Written by Roy Cokayne | Published on 15 Jul 2024 Follows appeal by fund-appointed medical experts to Creecy for help getting hundreds of millions owed for their medico-legal reports. Governance at the Road Accident Fund (RAF) is something that has to be sorted out “as a matter of priority”, says newly-appointed Minister of Transport Barbara Creecy. “That is a matter that once I have settled, I will be giving my attention to,” she said on the sidelines of the Southern African Transport Conference in Pretoria last week. Creecy was responding to a question from Moneyweb about whether she would prioritise a letter written on behalf of a group of more than 70 medical experts to former minister of transport Sindisiwe Chikunga in June 2023, and a follow-up letter to Creecy last week for assistance in obtaining payment of hundreds of millions of rand allegedly owed to them by the RAF.

“The RAF was not going to change its mind, it had adopted a stance and was impervious to persuasion that it was wrong.”.. To read the article on TimesLive, click the button below: Read more