RAF turns to private law firms

The South Africa’s Road Accident Fund (RAF) is proposing a major shift in how it handles legal cases, turning to private lawyers to help manage a growing crisis of litigation costs and case backlogs. The hybrid litigation model, described as one of the fund’s biggest reforms in two decades, aims to cut legal expenses that have threatened compensation payments to accident victims. The entity has spent nearly R30 billion on legal costs over the past five years, a figure that rivals the state’s annual spending on social relief grants.

The RAF is funded primarily through the fuel levy paid by motorists. It currently faces a backlog of about 100,000 claims. National Treasury estimates the fund’s total liability at just over R400 billion, though some parliamentary assessments warn that unrecorded claims could push that figure beyond R500 billion. Individual attorneys at the fund are managing between 2,000 and 3,000 matters at a time, a workload that has led to missed court deadlines and settlements negotiated with little preparation.

Related: AI autonomy arrives at last

In a tender document, the RAF described its litigation function as “under-resourced,” with matters left undefended and court deadlines routinely missed. The proposed hybrid model would create a dual-representation system. State attorneys would continue handling the core litigation load, while a panel of private attorneys would absorb overflow, regional demand, urgent applications, and specialized cases.

“Critically, both streams would operate under the centralised governance of a strengthened legal administration department, which would serve as the command authority for all litigated matters, from the issuance of a summons to the entry of judgment,” the entity said in the tender document. The RAF stressed that the model is not a radical change but a “disciplined, structured approach to doing what the RAF has always needed to do: defend matters properly, prepare files on time, comply with court rules, and bring litigation costs under control.”

What changes, according to the document, is the architecture: centralized oversight, early file preparation, integrated case management technology, and a clear allocation framework that matches matters to the right representative.

Related: Corporate Training Programs Every Employee Must Take

The RAF said the hybrid model is intended to deliver economic, commercial, financial, and management benefits. Expected outcomes include reduced default judgments, improved court compliance rates, better mediation outcomes, lower overall legal costs, and a strengthened institutional reputation. The fund also aims for “a measurable reduction in default judgments, improved compliance with practice directives and the 2025 mandatory mediation directive and protocol, better trial readiness, and a significant decrease in unnecessary legal expenditure.”

The South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg last year introduced mandatory mediation before civil trials. The directive requires parties to undergo mediation before they can apply for a trial date. It mainly affects RAF matters, which clog the court roll with an estimated 300 new cases scheduled each week on Gauteng’s trial roll. Personal injury lawyers are currently challenging the legality and constitutionality of that directive, which was issued by now Deputy Chief Justice Dustan Mlambo when he was judge president of the Gauteng division.