Parliament slams RAF 'train wreck’ amid R50bn scandal

The Road Accident Fund (RAF) is facing one of its deepest crises yet, with four senior executives (including the acting CEO, CFO, and chief governance officer) suspended amid mounting allegations of maladministration, financial irregularities, and wasteful spending.

"It's a train wreck. That's the only way that I can describe it," says Songezo Zibi, Chairperson of Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa).

"We've seen enormous maladministration, really bad accounting practices, all of which have led to over 430,000 claims being outstanding. Some of them, for more than a decade, have been unattended; the value per claim has gone up by 70%. Legal fees per claim of support quadruple and so on. So, there's enormous financial leakage in the road accident fund, as well as other very concerning things, and those processes need to be arrested.

"The Road Accident Fund gets allocated about R50 billion a year, and they spend about R43 billion. They used to settle about 253,000 claims with that money, R43 billion. They now settle about 63,000 with the same money, while claims are lying unattended. It' not because the claims have gone up. It's because the process has become inefficient."

Zibi explained that the entity’s accounting practices have been so poor that liabilities were written off without legal advice, leading to years of litigation against the Auditor-General.

He also pointed to inflated contracts, lavish staff events, and questionable invoices, including a R4 million staff function and bottled water priced at R85 each.

Former RAF CEO Collins Letsoalo has been subpoenaed to appear before Scopa after allegedly evading accountability, while previous boards and auditors are expected to face tough questioning.

The investigation marks only the fourth inquiry of its kind since 1994 and underscores what Zibi calls a broader 'collapse of governance'.

To listen to Zibi in conversation with 702's Bongani Bingwa, click below: