The Road Accident Fund is introducing a series of measures to strengthen its response to litigation, including a hybrid legal model, expanded mediation, and a new framework aimed at preventing default judgments.
The Fund recorded 1 775 default judgments in the first quarter of its 2026/27 financial year, from 1 April to 30 June 2026. The figure represents 29% of the 6 079 matters enrolled during the quarter, according to the RAF’s presentation to Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Transport on 12 August.
Acting chief executive Radikwena Phora told the committee that the RAF defended 18 981 of 19 194 summonses, giving it a 98.9% summons defence coverage rate. Of the 6 079 matters enrolled, 2 270 were settled, 820 were heard at trial, and 1 214 were postponed.
The default judgments were concentrated in Gauteng. Pretoria accounted for 1 084 and Johannesburg for 673, together accounting for 1 757, or 99%, of the 1 775 defaults. The remaining 18 came from other regions.
The RAF has been grappling with legal capacity problems since its 2020 decision to dissolve its panel of private attorneys. The Office of the State Attorney, which took on the work, had substantially less capacity to handle the Fund’s litigation workload.
Moonstone reported in February that close to 85% of positions in the RAF’s legal division were vacant, with more than 385 posts unfilled.
Read: Staffing gaps deepen RAF’s legal and financial exposure
Trying to stop the next default judgment
The RAF has identified three factors contributing to default judgments: a fragmented summons intake process, tight procedural deadlines, and limited follow-up after judgments.
The response starts with capacity. The RAF has about 130 state attorneys, each carrying roughly 6 000 matters. Phora described that ratio as “very heavy”, with the Fund targeting about 600 matters per state attorney once the current burden has subsided.
The RAF is supplementing the state attorney function with a defence team to take on overflow work. Phora said building the additional capacity internally would require more premises, laptops, and other infrastructure. The hybrid approach allows the Fund to bring in additional capacity without having to build all the infrastructure itself.
The Fund has issued a request for information to establish what additional capacity is available in the market, and what it would cost.
The RAF is also upgrading its legal management system to provide deadline alerts and integrated tracking. An integrated claims and legal strategy has been introduced to identify litigation triggers earlier in the claims process, while a separate default-judgment prevention framework will guide the categorisation and handling of matters within the required timeframes.
Mediation expands
The Fund is also trying to resolve more disputes before they reach trial.
During the quarter, 252 mediations were completed, with 191 settled in full or in part, giving a 76% success rate. That represents mediation throughput of 84 matters a month, up from 25 a month in the previous quarter – a 3.4-fold increase.
A further 1 579 matters are in the mediation pipeline, with 314 dates already confirmed for 2026.
The programme is being piloted in Gauteng before being expanded to other provinces. Phora said mediation was intended to provide a more cost-effective way of resolving matters and reduce pressure on the courts.
The RAF is also running a separate backlog eradication project, with dedicated professionals being recruited to work through historic claims. The project is starting in Pretoria, with the intention of keeping the backlog work separate from the processing of new claims before applying the approach to other regional offices.
The people problem
The legal reforms are being implemented against a wider staffing and leadership problem at the RAF.
The presentation put the overall vacancy rate at 57% across 353 posts. The Fund has 61 positions in active recruitment: 17 professional and 44 support posts. Of these, 47 were at offer stage, 10 candidates were being interviewed, and four had been shortlisted. If the recruitment programme is completed, the vacancy rate is expected to fall to about 40%.
The RAF also went through four CEOs in seven months between August and December 2025. Collins Letsoalo’s contract expired on 6 August; acting CEO Phathutshedzo Lukhwareni was subsequently suspended; Victor Songelwa was appointed interim CEO and resigned at the end of November; and Phora took over as acting CEO on 1 December.
The Fund has yet to appoint a permanent chief executive. Deputy Transport Minister Mkhuleko Hlengwa (pictured) told the committee that the ministry was finalising Cabinet memoranda dealing with the CEO and board appointments.
The head of legal services remains vacant. The RAF said it had advertised the position and conducted interviews but has not found a suitable candidate. The post has gone back to market, with the Fund targeting completion of the process by the end of August.
A new picture of RAF’s finances
The RAF has received an unqualified audit opinion from the Auditor-General, after three consecutive adverse audit outcomes.
Phora told the committee that the RAF had prepared a position paper on the applicable accounting standard, consulted the Accounting Standards Board and the Auditor-General, and allowed the Auditor-General to conduct a preliminary review of its annual financial statements.
Hlengwa confirmed that the audit had been completed using the approved accounting standard and said he expected the RAF to meet the 30 September deadline for submitting its annual report and financial statements to Parliament.
The clean audit follows a costly legal battle over how the RAF should account for its liabilities.
The dispute dates to 2021, when the RAF moved from the prescribed Generally Recognised Accounting Practice (GRAP) framework to IPSAS 42. The change reduced the liabilities reported by the Fund from about R327bn to R34bn.
The underlying obligations had not fallen by hundreds of billions of rand. IPSAS 42 recognised liabilities differently, capturing a narrower portion of the Fund’s obligations than the previous GRAP approach.
National Treasury officials and accounting experts told SCOPA in October last year that IPSAS 42 recognised liabilities too late in the claims process, resulting in financial statements that did not adequately reflect the Fund’s position.
Read: RAF inquiry | ‘You can’t fix liabilities through accounting’
The Auditor-General challenged the RAF’s accounting treatment, and the dispute moved to court. The Gauteng High Court found that the change had not been approved by the Accounting Standards Board. The RAF appealed, but the Supreme Court of Appeal upheld the decision in September 2024 and again rejected a further application in March 2025.
The litigation has cost the RAF more than R11.2 million in legal fees.
Despite the court defeats, the previous board resolved to pursue the matter in the Constitutional Court. Transport Minister Barbara Creecy dissolved that board on 15 July 2025, citing, among other concerns, the RAF’s costly accounting litigation, frequent default judgments, and failure to fill critical executive positions.
Cabinet approved an interim board on 7 August 2025, with Kenneth Brown appointed as chairperson. The interim board subsequently withdrew the Constitutional Court application, bringing the accounting litigation to an end.
Read: RAF drops audit fight as investigation into R1bn media contracts heats up
The move back to the applicable accounting framework will have a significant effect on the RAF’s financial statements. For the first time in several years, the September statements will provide an audited picture of the Fund’s financial position based on the accounting standard it is required to use.
The RAF 1 Form judgment has added another potential liability for the Fund. Claimants whose submissions were rejected or not acknowledged under the unlawful 2022 form have until 30 September 2026 to resubmit them using the 2008 form, with successful claims treated as having been lodged on the original date. With the RAF expecting almost 160 000 claims to be resubmitted, the financial implications of these additional claims could run into billions of rand.
Read: RAF faces surge of almost 160 000 claims after SCA ruling
The September financial statements will show how the accounting change translates into the RAF’s reported financial position.
The bigger question: how will RAF be funded?
The accounting question is closely tied to another one: how will the RAF be funded?
The Fund remains primarily funded through the fuel levy. Hlengwa said the RAF component is about R2.27 a litre.
The government is now looking at whether the Fund needs to be recapitalised and how its funding model could change. Hlengwa said a cost-benefit analysis is being finalised to examine the sustainability of the Fund and its revenue model.
The analysis includes the government’s Medium-Term Development Plan priority of reducing the cost of living and what this means for petrol price levies, including the RAF levy and how it could be restructured. It is also considering the introduction of third-party insurance and the impact of electric vehicles on fuel-based revenue.
The analysis forms part of the Road Accident Benefit Scheme (RABS) Bill, which will be taken to Cabinet and then Parliament. Hlengwa said the Bill is materially complete, with the cost-benefit analysis the outstanding component.
The numbers Phora gave the committee show the pressure on the Fund’s cash flow. The RAF can receive as little as R4bn in a month, while its payment queue was sitting at more than R20bn.
The Fund has been increasing the pace of its payments. It paid R4.6bn in April, compared with R1.6bn in April 2025, and R6.2bn in May, compared with R4bn a year earlier. By the end of June, payments for the quarter had reached R8.9bn, covering 28 000 claims in April, 17 000 in May, and 25 000 in June.
Higher payouts reduce the claims queue, but they also place greater demands on the Fund’s available cash.
From RABS to RAF reform – and back again
The RABS Bill was introduced in 2017 as a proposed replacement for the RAF’s fault-based compensation system. It would establish a no-fault social insurance scheme based on defined benefits, removing the need for injured road users to prove negligence.
The proposed model would also remove the right to sue negligent drivers and compensation for pain, suffering and disfigurement. Concerns were raised about capped benefits, exclusions, and the constitutional implications of removing established common-law rights.
Parliament rejected the RABS Bill in 2020.
The government subsequently pursued a different route through a Road Accident Fund Amendment Bill, aimed at reforming the existing RAF rather than replacing it.
That approach was abandoned in June 2025. Hlengwa told the Portfolio Committee on Transport that government would instead revive the RABS framework as part of a broader restructuring of the Fund.
Read: Government revives rejected Bill to fix Road Accident Fund
What the revised RABS framework will contain remains to be seen. The original proposal attracted substantial opposition from the industry and other stakeholders, and the government has not yet set out how the revived scheme will address those concerns, if at all.
In the meantime, the existing claims book remains under the RAF Act. So does the payment queue, along with the legal workload that the Fund is now trying to address.
