ANALYSIS: What Scopa should have made a bigger fuss over in RAF draft report

Of course, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts spent most of its Road Accident Fund efforts on unravelling the immediate procurement scandals, but Daily Maverick’s resident RAF nerd found five things that didn’t get enough attention.

The shortcomings of the Road Accident Fund (RAF) under Collins Letsoalo’s leadership are well documented. Key areas of concern include procurement irregularities in his personal security spending and financial mismanagement surrounding the fund’s media expenditure .

Among the latter findings lurks the infamous SABC news clock saga, in which the RAF made a massive unauthorised prepayment of R22.35-million (excluding VAT) along with an R894,159 agency commission for the SABC TV news clock premium spot.

This transaction happened while the RAF’s marketing department was “cold” and was the specific transaction that triggered the suspension of senior marketing manager Hlami Mathye.

Then there’s the default rate. To receive compensation, a claimant must prove “fault” (negligence). This forces claimants and the fund into an adversarial, litigious environment. Nearly 80% of all civil trials in South African courts are RAF matters, and the overwhelming majority of them are settled “on the doorstep of the court” after years of costly preparation.

The latest Performance Committee on Transport briefing for the first quarter of the 2026/27 financial year (1 April to 30 June 2026) showed that 1,775 default judgments were granted against the RAF in just three months.

That’s a 29% default rate across all trial matters on the court roll. Why? Because there was no state attorney to represent the RAF.

But a more careful reading across all the audited reports this side of the current decade (and a good listen of the hearings) reveals that the RAF’s executive management repeatedly pointed to their steady improvement in achieving annual performance plan (APP) targets – which climbed from 57% in 2019/20 to 91% in 2022/23 and 92% in 2023/24 – as proof of a successful turnaround.

It’s a shame, then, that claims registered plummeted from 258,000 a year to just 80,000. And direct claims fell from 33,000 in 2020 to 2,894 in 2024.

The RAF achieved these high APP scores by altering, rescoping or completely deleting targets they were failing to meet.

For example, the board successfully requested the minister of transport to exclude the target for “Elimination of Wasteful and Fruitless Expenditure” from its performance analysis, claiming it was impractical.

Key operational targets, such as the Integrated Claims Management System roll-out, were repeatedly rescoped or delayed when deadlines were missed. The turnaround was a paper exercise; actual service delivery to road accident victims collapsed by over 70%.

Daily Maverick has reported that the previous administration boasted of a R1.8-billion surplus in 2020/21 and improving solvency ratios.

The historical data, however, reveals that this s urplus was manufactured by combining a change in accounting standards (Ipsas 42) with operational paralysis.