RAF concerned about millions in payments to legal and illegal foreigners

JOHANNESBURG – The Road Accident Fund (RAF) has noted with concern that it pays out hundreds of millions of rand to legal and illegal foreigners every year.

In 2008, the RAF paid a Swiss billionaire more than half a million rand after he lost two limbs in a motorcycle accident in Cape Town. This was the RAF's highest compensation payment to date.

Addressing the media on the 2023/24 benefit results in Centurion on Monday, RAF Managing Director Collins Letsoalo said existing laws and court rulings allowed the social benefits system to pay benefits to legal and illegal aliens.

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“The law says we have to pay them and then we have to continue to do what the law says. There have been citizens of Botswana who have been injured in this country and they are entitled to that compensation. There was a bus from Zimbabwe that was involved in an accident near Limpopo and we will have to pay those people money if they are here legally. There is nothing we can do, it is just what it is.”

He said that some countries have a policy that if you are injured in a road traffic accident within their borders you are not entitled to social security benefits, but that is not the case in South Africa.

In the latest case, three Belgian exchange students from Wits are each demanding R151 million after they were injured in a bus accident.

“As I said, the largest sum ever paid out went to a foreigner, that's a fact. Do you know what they say when I say that? They said it in the recent court filings when I said that… 'xenophobic.'”