RAF concerned about paying millions in claims to legal and illegal foreign nationals

JOHANNESBURG - The Road Accident Fund (RAF) has noted with concern that it pays hundreds of millions of rands to both legal and illegal foreign nationals every year. 

In 2008, the RAF paid out a Swiss billionaire more than half-a-million-rand after he lost two limbs in a motorcycle accident in Cape Town, the highest RAF payout to date. 

Addressing the media on its 2023/24 performance results in Centurion on Monday, RAF CEO Collins Letsoalo said that current laws and court judgments permitted the social benefit scheme to pay out to legal and illegal foreign nationals.

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"The law says we must pay them, then must continue to do what the law says. There were Botswana citizens who got injured in this country, they are entitled to those claims. There was a Zimbabwean bus that got involved in an accident around Limpopo, we are going to have to pay those people if they are here legally There’s nothing that we can do, it’s just the way it is."

He said that some countries stipulated that you could not claim from their social benefit scheme if you were injured in a road accident within their borders but not in South Africa. 

In the most recent case, three Belgian exchange students from Wits are claiming R151 million each after being injured in a bus accident.

"As I said, the biggest ever payout was to a foreigner, that’s a fact. You know what they say when I say that? They said it in recent court papers when I said that…'xenophobic.'"