Internal documents suggest the Road Accident Fund (RAF) has spent a mammoth R650m over the past two years on media and advertising, an expenditure so large it has politicians speculating that some of the money could have been used to boost spending in the 2024 election campaign.
Songezo Zibi, chair of parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa), has written to committee members to inform them that an employee of the RAF has decided to blow the whistle and provide a full list of the contracts signed by the fund for the past two financial years.
The data provided includes contract numbers, vendor numbers, company names and values, spending on each contract and the remaining amount on the contract as at the end of the financial year. In all, 88 contracts are listed with a total value of just under R2bn. Zibi describes the information as “troubling”, partly because it apparently flatly contradicts information provided by the fund to the committee in recent months.
The contradictions include the amounts paid to lawyers and service providers, but the standout expenditure consists of two R500m contracts granted to just two media houses. Of this, R650m is listed in the documents as having been spent already, despite the fact that the contracts still have more than two years to run.
The RAF has effectively confirmed that the contracts were signed and that the total value was R1bn, but claims the amounts spent are lower than those claimed in the documents, and that only half this has been spent so far.
It justifies the spending on the basis that to fulfil its “critical mandate”, the RAF needs to leverage all media platforms – print, television, radio, online and social – to communicate essential information to the public in every official language. “This comprehensive outreach ensures that vital information about the organisation and road safety reaches all citizens and communities, including rural, peri-urban, township and urban audiences.” (The RAF’s full response is below.)
The two media houses (which are not mentioned in Zibi’s letter but which Currency has established independently) are media buyer MediaMix360 and creative agency Dzinge Projects.
Both have confirmed to Currency that they are contracted to the RAF but have strongly denied that they spent anything remotely like the numbers produced in the internal RAF documents. Both undertook to provide the actual amount spent, but had not done so by the time of going to press.
Shandukani Nesengani, CEO of Dzinge Projects, says the amounts paid by the RAF were “nothing like” the amounts suggested in the document. “If it were, I would not be here talking to you. I would be in the Bahamas,” he says.
Andile Kona, a former journalist and CEO of MediaMix360, says the RAF has run some big campaigns, like the Easter road safety campaign, a “back to school” campaign, and a festive season campaign aimed at improving road safety. There was also a “massive backlog campaign” to encourage people to claim from the RAF.
But even taking all that into account, Kona says the amounts paid to his company could not possibly have amounted to R500m. “We are meticulous with payments. We only bill clients after the ad is flighted. If it’s a billboard, we include a picture of the billboard,” he tells Currency.
These new revelations come in the context of an ongoing dispute between the RAF and Scopa, which has seen some epic verbal battles in recent weeks.
Collins Letsoalo, the CEO of the fund who has now been suspended, has pointedly refused to appear before Zibi’s committee to answer questions about dubious expenditure raised by the Special Investigating Unit. This “insubordination” was listed as one of reasons for his suspension.
Remarkably, however, Letsoalo was subsequently invited to appear before the transport committee by committee chair Donald Selamolela – and he did so. He has launched a legal action to lift his suspension, claiming the board’s action was “unlawful, irrational, and unreasonable”.
However, Zibi said in his letter to the committee that the media expenditure “does not make sense”. In part, this is because the media contracts are set to run until November 2027 and December 2028 respectively, for each company.
“However, the first contract (with MediaMix360) had only R11m remaining at the end of March 2025, with more than two years left to run. On the second contract, R245m had been spent by the end of March 2025, which takes the total spent to about R650m out of R1bn, with more than two years remaining on each contract.”
At this rate, Zibi said, what already appears to be a “bloated contract will not be available for the entire contract duration unless the total contract price is increased”.
Suspicions mount
The extraordinary sums involved, and the murky nature of the RAF’s tenders historically, have led to speculation about what could have happened to this money.
One such theory, given the fact that the media contracts were signed in the year before the 2024 election and that most of the money had been spent long before the contracts are due to end, is that at least some of this cash may have been diverted to support political party election campaigns. But there is nothing in the documents which directly corroborates this claim.
Media critics say that spending R650m would be multiple times larger than any known campaign currently under way. A prime-time 30-second television advert can cost anything between R25,000 and R150,000, depending on the time and channel, which implies that a R200m campaign would dominate all stations for more than six months. Even spending of R1m-R2m would buy you a three-month high-frequency campaign on a top national station.
Though there have been a number of RAF media campaigns, nothing remotely on this scale associated with the fund has been seen in the media over the past two years.
Both CEOs, Nesengani and Kona, are upset that their businesses have been dragged into the dispute between Scopa and the RAF. “I’m running a legitimate business,” Nesengani says. “We have done great work for the RAF, and recently the death toll over the Easter weekend was down, partly because of our campaign.
“It’s sad because you know when two elephants fight, it is the grass that really gets crushed, and we are the ones getting crushed here.”
Kona echoes that sentiment, saying he has been running the largest black-owned media buying agency in South Africa for years. But if this is what happens, “I’m asking myself, do I really want to have a government contract in the future?”
Zibi, however, wants answers. “The RAF must engage with and inform the public of its services, expenditure of over R650m in two years … the committee secretariat has asked for detailed tender evaluation, contracting and payment information relating to the two contracts,” he said.
He pointed out that the RAF has no chief marketing officer at all, nor even a head of marketing.
“Even if these contracts originated from the head [of] corporate communications, which is possible, the position does not have the authority to sign off on R500m contracts. The acting head of the corporate support services is the chief of staff of the CEO, who also does not have the authority to sign off on such large contracts as she is graded below executive level,” he wrote.
The RAF’s full response
The Road Accident Fund (RAF) has a dual mandate to service claimants involved in vehicle crashes and promote road safety. To fulfil this critical mandate, the RAF leverages all media platforms – print, television, radio, online, and social – to communicate essential information to the public in every official language. This comprehensive outreach ensures that vital information about the organisation and road safety reaches all citizens and communities, including rural, peri-urban, township, and urban audiences.
To successfully reach the targeted groups, the Media Buying and Integrated Marketing and Communication agencies – Media Mix and Dzinge Productions (Pty) Ltd respectively – engage in strategic placements and media production across various channels on behalf of the Fund.
They effectively employ paid television, radio, print, online, social media, out-of-home, and digital advertising platforms to deliver powerful educational and influential messaging. This aligns with the RAF’s brand ideals of identity, values, messaging, and visual guidelines.
The agencies also spearhead media and marketing campaigns which are guided and approved by the RAF, and performance is measured through industry objective research tools. Post-campaign reports, media reach, tear sheets, and station logs, are rigorously submitted for thorough review.
The amounts mentioned are inaccurate. The Dzinge contract, which was signed in December 2023, had about 70% of its allocated budget still available for use as of the end of March 2025.
In contrast, the Media Mix contract, signed in November 2022, had about 30% of its budget remaining unutilised by the end of March 2025.
Costs for media placements are significant, driven by media inflation that exceeds the consumer price index (CPI), but the impact of strategic media buying campaigns is undeniable.
These strategic media buying campaigns have led to notable awareness and access to RAF services. For instance, improved Contact-Centre interactions with beneficiaries have substantially elevated claims query resolutions and raised road safety awareness. Additional impact assessment and improvement to claimant services include the Contact-Centre’s capability to track, manage, and resolve claims efficiently. This has enabled the settlement of a significant number of claims within 120 days as per the RAF’s ambitious 2020-2025 Strategic Plan. (According to the RAF 2024-2025 financial report, the average Customer Satisfaction score stood at an impressive 91.7%, indicating high customer approval and strong alignment with customer expectations).
All due processes were strictly adhered to in the appointment of the two companies, and both tenders were prominently advertised on the e-tender portal, ensuring a transparent Competitive Bidding Process.
All necessary approvals, up to the Board level, were secured without exception. Comprehensive audits were also conducted by all relevant internal and external authorities.
Issued by the Road Accident Fund’s Media & PR Unit.
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The RAF is dysfunctional and inefficient. And the closer one looks the more they appear to be corrupt as well. I speak from painful personal experience as I was involved in an accident in 2017, caused by a Zambian national driving a rental car, when he did a U-turn on the N1 near Centurion. A shoulder replacement operation and a lumbar fusion followed. The RAF adjudged these to be “minor injuries”. Needless to say the matter has not been finalized yet. Curiously though my medical aid fund received their full compensation for the 2 operations, and the law firm handling the claim has also been paid from the pathetic grant offered by the RAF.