Dear Editor
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has sent an urgent written request to the Chairperson of SCOPA, Songezo Zibi, to ensure that an investigation in the committee into the Road Accident Fund covers all of the outrageous financial mismanagement identified over the past months and years. It must be comprehensive and thorough, not surface-level.
SCOPA’s resolution yesterday to establish a parliamentary inquiry into the deepening crisis at the Road Accident Fund (RAF), follow the DA’s repeated calls for the RAF to be placed under full Parliamentary and SIU scrutiny.
The SCOPA inquiry, must be aimed at uncovering corruption, maladministration, and mismanagement.
It is outrageous that the Road Accident Fund CEO earns R7.1 million a year, while the organisation remains technically insolvent, with outstanding claims amounting to tens of billions.
The DA’s letter to Chairperson Zibi requires that the terms of reference for this inquiry are sufficiently broad for a meaningful investigation into the full extent of governance failures at the RAF, and must cover:
- The conduct of senior RAF leadership, particularly that of the now-suspended CEO, Collins Letsoalo;
- That RAF executives misled SCOPA by asserting that Letsoalo possessed a security clearance, when in fact no such vetting had taken place;
- Whether his appointment was ever lawfully executed;
- Letsoalo’s repeated efforts to undermine the Auditor-General and his insistence on applying non-compliant accounting standards;
- The disastrous decision to terminate the RAF’s panel of lawyers (after which we are seeing a sharp increase in default judgments and legal costs.);
- The RAF’s multiple qualified audits, casting doubt on the Fund’s financial health; and
- Letsoalo’s unilateral introduction of additional eligibility criteria for claims (which expose the state to potentially massive liabilities in the billions of rands, if worst-case projections materialise.)
The RAF levy costs South Africans about R50 billion per year. South Africans diligently pay into this fund, while it is being entirely mismanaged.
We will work to ensure that this inquiry holds the right people accountable and that the RAF is refocused on its core mandate: delivering justice.
Dear Editor
Patrick Atkinson MP
DA Member of SCOPA