The Road Accident Fund’s failure to investigate, settle, and defend claims timeously is driving much of the billions of rand in legal costs incurred by the Fund, according to the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA).
The finding forms part of SCOPA’s draft report on its inquiry into the RAF, which examines both the Fund’s payments to attorneys representing it and the legal costs arising from litigation brought by claimants.
But the committee did not approach those costs on the assumption that the RAF was entirely responsible.
During his time as RAF chief executive, Collins Letsoalo repeatedly accused some plaintiff attorneys of abusing the system, including allegations of theft, fraud, and inflated claims. He also raised concerns about alleged systemic bias in the judiciary. The RAF told SCOPA that it had referred law firms to the Legal Practice Council (LPC) and the South African Police Service over alleged misconduct.
Those allegations formed part of what SCOPA set out to test: whether the RAF’s plaintiff legal costs could be explained by legal practitioner abuse or judicial bias.
Its draft findings do not dismiss the possibility of misconduct in individual cases. But the evidence, SCOPA says, does not support attorney misconduct as the main explanation for the scale of the RAF’s plaintiff legal costs.
“The bulk of plaintiff legal costs arise as a result of the failure of the RAF to timeously investigate and settle claims followed by its chaotic litigation approach,” SCOPA states.
It considers costs associated with default judgments, interest, and sheriff and writ costs to be fruitless and wasteful expenditure and finds that the RAF has failed to manage litigation effectively and efficiently.
How SCOPA got there
The RAF has been under scrutiny for years over its finances, governance, claims administration, and use of public money. In October 2025, those concerns developed into a formal SCOPA oversight inquiry.
Over the months that followed, the committee heard evidence from the RAF, the Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA), the Special Investigating Unit (SIU), the LPC, former RAF executives and board members, and others who had dealings with the Fund. It also examined documents and questioned decisions and practices contributing to the Fund’s financial and operational problems.
SCOPA is now working through its draft report, which is not confined to legal costs. It also considers the RAF’s litigation against the AGSA and Sunshine Hospital, disputes over the RAF 1 Form, labour matters, and claims administration.
Read: RAF faces surge of almost 160 000 claims after SCA ruling
Legal costs run through several of those issues, but the committee also considered them in their own right, looking separately at attorneys acting for the RAF and those acting for claimants.
The question was how much of the RAF’s legal bill is created in court, and how much starts with what happens before a case gets there.
Between April 2020 and December 2025, the RAF paid R8.63 billion in legal costs to its top 20 plaintiff law firms. Of that, R4.88bn was classified as plaintiff legal costs, including attorney, counsel, and correspondent attorney fees. The remaining 43.5% comprised disbursements, interest, and sheriff and writ costs.
SCOPA’s draft conclusion is that much of this cost did not begin with an attorney’s fee. It began with the handling of the claim.
The panel is cancelled
To understand how the costs accumulated, it helps to go back to 2020.
The RAF historically used two panels of attorneys. One dealt with claims-related litigation, defending the Fund against claimants. The other provided corporate legal services unrelated to individual claims.
It was the claims-related Panel of Attorneys that the RAF decided to cancel in 2020.
The Fund said it was moving to a new system that would deal with claims more efficiently and cost-effectively. The intention was for claims litigation to be handled through the State Attorney’s offices, with RAF’s own internal legal capacity also playing a greater role.
The courts were soon seeing something rather different.
In Road Accident Fund v Harmse in May 2025, Judge Swanepoel described the RAF’s approach to litigation as “chaotic”.
Five years after the panel attorneys were terminated, cases were still coming before the court in which the RAF was not represented, was under bar, or had its defence struck out. Even where an RAF attorney was present, instructions were often not forthcoming.
In the week of 5 May 2025, the court had 41 unopposed RAF matters on its default roll. Eight had their defences struck out, 13 were under bar, and in 20 the RAF had not entered an appearance to defend.
When the legal lines started to blur
The apparent gap in legal representation for claims matters seems to have led to blurred lines.
While the claims-related panel was being dismantled, the RAF entered a separate arrangement for corporate legal services.
On 29 April 2020, the board approved the RAF’s participation in the Government Employees Pension Fund’s corporate legal services contract. The GEPF panel consisted of 19 firms, although only 14 were approached for consent to the RAF using the arrangement.
Between May and June 2020, the RAF contracted 13 firms for 10 months while it prepared to procure its own Corporate Panel. One, Malatji & Co Inc., was not on the GEPF panel, and the draft report says it is unclear how it was procured.
The board had approved a R10-million annual budget. Within seven months, R26.6m had been incurred and paid – R16.6m, or 166%, above the budget. The amount also exceeded the R10m limit on the CEO’s delegated authority under the RAF’s 2017 supply chain management policy.
The 10-month arrangement did not end after 10 months. The contracts were extended four times. According to the SIU evidence recorded by SCOPA, only the third extension was approved by the board at the time, while a later ratification was made after the fact.
Although the Corporate Panel was intended for corporate legal services, its firms were used for claims-related matters after the claims panel was cancelled. SCOPA’s records include cases where firms were instructed only days – and in some cases a day – before trial or set-down.
Mpoyana Ledwaba, for example, was instructed on one matter on 13 January 2021 for a case set down the following day. Another matter was given to SC Murie on 17 May, with the case set down for 18 May.
SCOPA says claims-related work fell outside the scope of the 2020 Corporate Panel. It also says the short notice meant attorneys might not have had enough time to prepare properly, with the urgency potentially adding to costs.
What happened in court
SCOPA says the average cost of settling a claim increased from R114 008 in 2018/19 to R286 825 in 2023/24 – an increase of 151.6%. It rose again to R348 100 in 2024/25. The draft report attributes much of the increase to the backlog and the RAF’s failure to defend court matters, resulting in default judgments.
Over four years, default judgments against the RAF for costs and fees totalled R15.7bn.
In the Pretoria High Court alone, 7 559 default judgments were enrolled between April 2022 and May 2024.
The R8.63bn figure also needs some unpacking. It does not mean R8.63bn went into attorneys’ pockets as fees.
SCOPA separates plaintiff legal costs from disbursements such as experts, travel, and accommodation, as well as interest and sheriff and writ costs.
Once a summons has been issued, the RAF can defend the matter and settle before or during trial, or the case can proceed to judgment.
If the RAF fails to defend or does not appear, the court may grant default judgment. The court then has only the claimant’s evidence before it. The RAF can seek rescission, but an unsuccessful application brings further costs.
This was the situation Judge Jan Swanepoel was describing in May 2025.
In that week alone, judgments totalling R25.07m were granted, with the judge estimating that about R50m could have been added to the RAF’s liabilities across the two courts dealing with default matters.
Litigation was not inevitable
SCOPA also considered an argument that costly litigation is simply part of how the RAF Act works.
It did not agree.
The Act does not prevent claimants from approaching the RAF directly. It also prevents a summons from being issued during the first 120 days after a claim is lodged and generally allows up to five years from the cause of action to issue summons if the claim has not been settled.
There is therefore time for a claim to be investigated and, where appropriate, settled before litigation becomes necessary.
SCOPA’s draft findings identify several RAF decisions and failures that have pushed claimants towards attorneys and litigation: the decision to stop promoting direct claims, the disputed RAF 1 Form, delays in investigating and settling claims, poor communication with claimant attorneys, and failures to defend matters.
And the board knew
SCOPA’s findings also turn to the former RAF board.
The board was aware of the high legal costs and had started a process to establish why certain plaintiff attorneys were being paid so much. But as former RAF board chairperson Lorraine Francois put it, “we wanted to get answers and for them to be dealt with, but we didn’t”.
The board was also presented with evidence of allegedly unscrupulous law firms, including matters described as “fleecing” the RAF. Yet SCOPA found that it had not sufficiently considered the RAF’s own failures to adequately and efficiently defend matters as a factor in the rising legal bill.
Its formal finding is that the former board failed meaningfully to engage with legal costs and put no mitigating measures in place. Management, meanwhile, appeared to focus on the reduction in total legal costs after the Panel of Attorneys was dissolved without accounting for the substantial increase in cost per claim.
Read: RAF management dismissed warnings as ‘negativity’ while claims crisis deepened
SCOPA also places responsibility on the board for the allegations made publicly by Letsoalo, saying that, as the RAF’s accounting authority, it should have ensured that such allegations were rooted in fact.
“The failure by the RAF to properly investigate claims and arrive at a claim amount that is fair and defendable creates an enabling environment” for abuse by attorneys and experts, the committee said.
