Tim CohenSouth Africa’s crisis-ridden Road Accident Fund (RAF) has thousands upon thousands of court execution orders against it, crippling the legal process and denying road accident victims compensation, interviews with sheriffs of the court have revealed.
The sheriff of the court for Joburg and Pretoria East, Marks Mangaba, said in an interview that in his regions alone, there are 4,200 outstanding warrants of execution.
South Africa’s sheriffs, who are responsible for executing court orders, say the RAF is by far their largest problem institution, and that the backlog of execution orders has been rising fast over the past few years.
So bad is it that the volume of execution orders, which are effectively the last resort of legal claimants, is now threatening the efficacy of the entire legal system. And it’s due to the RAF unilaterally “stonewalling” claims that the organisation considers too large or those made by foreigners, lawyers involved in the industry claim.
The execution order crisis is a sequel to a massive decline in the quantity of claims being paid, following years of underfunding of the RAF, which is effectively a compulsory insurance scheme paid for through a large levy on the petrol price.
Yet the RAF itself claims it has no knowledge of how many warrants of execution against it are lodged with the sheriff of the court. “We are only aware of these warrants when the sheriff arrives at the RAF to serve them,” RAF head of corporate communications McIntosh Polela tells Currency.
The RAF also denies “stonewalling” the process, or that it considers itself above the law. “The RAF has a high regard for the courts and orders it issues. Orders that are due and payable are paid by the RAF in keeping with its payment processes,” says Polela.
‘Waiting eight years for compensation’
Lawyers and academics involved in the industry dispute this strongly. Hennie Klopper, emeritus professor in the department of private law at the University of Pretoria, points out in an interview that of 107,000 claims lodged between 2022 and 2023, fewer than 3,000 were processed.
“Instead of settling straightforward cases early, victims are pushed into costly litigation,” he writes. “These inefficiencies have increased the average cost per claim by 20% since 2020, inflating the RAF’s financial woes.”
And despite a substantial public contribution – about 11% of the cost of fuel goes to the RAF – Klopper says “the RAF is mired in a financial and operational crisis, leaving victims waiting up to eight years for compensation. The reality of these delays is a bureaucratic inconvenience and a direct assault on vulnerable people.
“Victims suffer untreated injuries, worsening medical conditions, and mounting financial burdens. Meanwhile, the public’s trust in the RAF erodes as leadership deflects responsibility and offers no tangible solutions.”
Sheriffs echo this view. Asked about the oddity of an institution of state not paying a huge number of claims against it, as specifically ordered by another institution of state, Mangaba says: “If there is no compliance from institutions, then the office of the sheriff becomes non-viable in terms of ability to execute other outstanding claims.”
The national sheriff’s office was unable to provide the total number of outstanding execution orders countrywide at the time of publication, but sheriffs say the numbers are rising.
Klopper, who has studied the RAF for decades, says that in total the RAF has claims specifically ordered by South African courts that now amount to R8.3bn. The interest on the outstanding claims alone comes to about R2bn a year.
Mangaba says a small number of the cases were the consequence of applications for a rescission of judgment. This is where the individual or institution against whom the court order is made applies to court for the execution order to be rescinded. He says he has the impression that the RAF has applied for rescission when large payments were ordered.
Klopper says about 15% of the execution orders are for large claims. Roughly 80,000 of the 107,000 claims made last year were claims of less than R80,000.
It is the RAF’s inefficiency – not the actions of legal or medical professionals assisting victims – that is truly to blame for its escalating costs and deepening crisis, he says.
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