The Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) will this week continue its enquiry into the financial affairs of the Road Accident Fund (RAF), now entering its fourth week.
On Tuesday, 28 October 2025, SCOPA will hear from Mr. Thomas Harban, General Manager of the Legal Practitioners’ Indemnity Insurance Fund (LPIIF). The LPIIF was established in 1993 as the company through which professional indemnity insurance and certain bonds of security will be granted to practising attorneys. The LPIIF provides a primary layer of professional indemnity insurance to all legal practitioners in South Africa.
The LPIIF is affected by the RAF when claims prescribe while in the hands of legal practitioners, which occurs on a regular basis. Prescription of claims, and therefore claims against the LPIIF, have accelerated alongside the backlog of outstanding claims, which number over 400 000.
On Wednesday, 29 October 2025, the committee will hear from Mr. Brett Phillips, Senior Manager for Litigation and Mediation at the RAF, and Ms Christinah Mthethwa, a former RAF employee who handled direct claims. Their testimony will focus on the efficacy of the RAF’s use of State Attorneys and the management of direct claims, respectively.
On Friday, 30 October 2025, SCOPA will hear from a representative of Morar Incorporated and PriceWaterhouseCoopers about the technical opinions they respectively provided to the RAF, on whether it could change its accounting policy. The committee is looking into whether the RAF Board exercised its fiduciary responsibilities properly in deciding to sanction an accounting policy change that has been consistently found to be unlawful by the courts.
Last week, the committee heard evidence from Mr Kenneth Ford, former manager of Sunshine Hospital, who revealed that the hospital was forced to close after the RAF failed to pay more than R300 million in claims. By September this year, the hospital had issued over 6,000 summonses and obtained court judgments worth R180 million, but the RAF still had not paid. The delays also cost the RAF an additional R23 million in legal fees and interest.
Former RAF Chief Actuary, Mr Itayi Charakupa told the committee that the RAF has been manipulating accounting standards to hide its true level of debt. He explained that by slowing down the processing of claims, the RAF keeps many of them “in transit”, meaning they are not counted as liabilities. He warned that if the RAF processed all outstanding claims, it would run out of cash almost immediately. Former Chief Financial Officer, Mr Victor Songelwa supported this view, adding that the RAF’s monthly income is not enough to cover claims already due. He said this makes it impossible for the RAF to invest funds and unnecessary to have a Chief Investment Officer at this stage.
The committee also heard from Ms Mariëtte Minnie-Botbijl, who manages accounts for medical experts. She testified that medical experts who assess accident injuries have gone unpaid for more than ten years because of the RAF’s poor invoicing system, which has left thousands of bills either unpaid or duplicated.
All documents presented to the committee during the enquiry are made publicly available after each day’s session at this link: https://www.parliament.gov.za/raf-enquiry.
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