The Supreme Court of Appeal has accused the Road Accident Fund (RAF) of using new directives to get around a court order it did not want to obey, declaring that its conduct threatened the authority of the courts.
The court ruled that the RAF could not continue rejecting road accident victims’ claims for medical expenses already paid by their medical aid schemes by simply issuing new directives with different legal justifications.
In a damning assessment of the fund’s conduct, the SCA said: “It is difficult to imagine more reprehensible conduct by an organ of state.”
The judgment, delivered on 16 October 2026, overturned a decision that had allowed the RAF to continue implementing the disputed directives until they were formally set aside.
The SCA instead declared the RAF and its then chief executive, Collins Phutjana Letsoalo, in breach of an earlier court order and their constitutional duty to comply with it.
The case arose from the RAF’s refusal to compensate accident victims for past medical expenses where their medical schemes had already paid the bills.
In October 2022, the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria declared the RAF’s original directive unlawful and interdicted the fund from implementing it.
The court found that medical aid payments did not absolve the RAF of its legal obligation to compensate accident victims for proven medical expenses.
The RAF’s attempts to challenge that ruling failed. The Supreme Court of Appeal dismissed its application for leave to appeal in March 2023, and the Constitutional Court dismissed a further application in October that year.
But the RAF continued pursuing the same outcome through two new directives.
The first was issued on 13 April 2023, just days after the SCA dismissed the RAF’s application for leave to appeal. The second followed on 2 November 2023, less than two weeks after the Constitutional Court rejected the RAF’s application.
The new directives relied on different legal arguments but sought to achieve the same result: preventing the RAF from paying claims for past medical expenses already covered by medical schemes.
Discovery Health, which challenged the directives, argued that the RAF was attempting to sidestep a binding court order by changing the reasoning behind its policy.
The court found that the directives sought to achieve what the High Court had already declared unlawful.
“The only difference between the first and second directives is that the latter offers more reasons for the RAF’s stance,” the court said.
It further said that RAF could not escape the consequences of the earlier ruling by changing its justification for refusing claims.
It also rejected the argument that the directives remained legally effective simply because they had not been separately set aside through review proceedings.
The SCA found that the circumstances justified treating the directives as invalid because they had been issued to circumvent the earlier judgment.
The court was particularly critical of the timing and manner in which the RAF issued the directives.
It noted that the RAF had not disclosed the second directive to the Constitutional Court when applying for leave to appeal in April 2023. The directive was disclosed only after the Constitutional Court had dismissed the application.
“The irresistible inference is that the RAF anticipated it might be unsuccessful in its application for leave to appeal to the Constitutional Court,” the court said.
The court concluded that the RAF had issued the directive to preserve the outcome of a policy already declared unlawful.
“The aim was to preserve the unlawful outcomes of the first directive by asserting that, from April 2023, it could continue to reject such claims on the ground that the claimants’ medical aid schemes had paid them,” the court said.
The SCA warned that allowing an organ of state to behave in this way would undermine the finality of court orders and the rule of law.
If public bodies could avoid judgments by repeatedly issuing new decisions with different justifications, the court said, they could effectively frustrate the judicial process.
The judgment also reaffirmed that medical scheme members’ claims against the RAF are not extinguished simply because their schemes have paid their medical expenses.
Where a medical scheme has paid a member’s treatment costs and the member is contractually required to reimburse the scheme after receiving compensation, that repayment arrangement does not amount to an unlawful agreement to share the compensation.
The court explained that reimbursement is not the same as sharing the proceeds of a claim, and that the relevant exclusion in the Road Accident Fund Act did not apply to such arrangements.
The SCA upheld Discovery’s appeal with costs, including the costs of two counsel, payable jointly and severally by the RAF and Letsoalo.
It interdicted the RAF from implementing the two disputed directives and prohibited it from making deductions from compensation paid to accident victims on the basis that their medical expenses had been or would be paid by their medical aid schemes.
The RAF and Letsoalo were also ordered to take all steps necessary to comply with the judgment within 14 days and report their compliance in writing to the registrar and Discovery’s attorneys.
The judgment does not merely settle a dispute about who should pay medical expenses. It makes clear that a public body cannot use successive directives to achieve an outcome that a court has already declared unlawful.
