Invites attorney associations to an urgent meeting following the dismissal of the RAF’s 180-day payment moratorium application.
The Road Accident Fund’s (RAF) new interim board has convened an urgent meeting today (Friday) with attorney associations to discuss the implications on the fund of the High Court’s dismissal of its urgent application to extend the 180-payment moratorium.
The dismissal of the urgent application means the RAF will now have to pay claims within 14 calendar days, instead of almost six months. It is unclear if the RAF has the financial resources to pay all the claims that will now become due.
In a letter dated 3 September 2025, a copy of which is in Moneyweb’s possession, RAF interim board chair Kenneth Brown said the fund “notices with concern” the dismissal of the urgent application to extend the 180-day payment moratorium.
“The board wishes to extend an urgent invitation to all attorneys’ associations who act on behalf of plaintiffs and plaintiff attorneys, for an urgent stakeholder meeting to discuss and resolve this matter outside the ambit of the court,” he said.
The letter, signed by Brown, said he “wishes to put proposals on how outstanding debt will be settled within the short [shortest] period of time”.
“The board hopes that we can find common ground on the way forward. It is against this backdrop that we wish to propose to have this meeting,” he said.
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Judge Jabulani Nyathi, in a judgment handed down in the High Court in Pretoria on Tuesday, struck the RAF’s application from the court roll, with costs, due to a lack of urgency.
The RAF applied for the extension, revival, or reinstatement of the 180-day moratorium on the execution of writs and warrants for capital and interest against the fund.
Brown on Thursday declined to comment to Moneyweb on the implications on the RAF of the dismissal of the urgent application, or the proposals the fund would be presenting to attorney associations.
“As a courtesy to the lawyers that we are meeting, I don’t want them to read things in the media [ahead of the meeting],” he said.
One advocate who handles RAF matters believes the RAF is doing damage control and endeavouring to engage the legal profession with the hope of reaching some common ground.
“The RAF has stopped paying court orders for some time now, and the chickens are now coming home to roost,” he said.
An attorney who handles many RAF matters said the fund has never honoured their payment holiday of 180 days, which they have now lost, and legal practitioners are going to take a firm stand and demand payment in terms of the RAF Act.
Another attorney said the RAF was trying to “get another bite of the cherry” after its urgent application was dismissed.
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Open communication
However, Conrad van der Vyver, the Pretoria Attorneys Association (PAA) executive committee member for RAF litigation, said he celebrated the invitation to a meeting.
“It shows me that there is an open communication – something that was lacking for the past several years,” he said.
“It is still the goal of the association to work together with the RAF, as we believe we are working towards the same goal – and that is for reasonable compensation of accident victims, and to also protect and ensure there is adherence to the constitutional obligations of the RAF as well as the constitutional rights of the claimants,” he added.
However, Van der Vyver stressed that neither he nor the PAA can bind its members or make decisions on behalf of accident victims.
That said, he noted that the PAA believes the association can work together with the RAF towards a sustainable fund that functions in a proper and meaningful manner to protect the victims of road accidents.
Van der Vyver added that if proposals from the RAF are reasonable, it could possibly lead to a reduction in the number of high court applications for writs of execution against the fund.
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Fixing the issues
Personal Injury Plaintiff Lawyers Association (Pipla) chair Advocate Justin Erasmus said the dismissed RAF application, if approved, would have been the fifth extension the fund has got and where it has been protected for 180 days.
Erasmus said Pipla representatives would be attending the meeting with a constructive attitude, to try and find some middle ground with the RAF and resolve the problems.
He said Pipla’s attitude is that they have got to “try and fix this now.”
“Insofar as the RAF has a problem, we also have a problem. There are payments that have been outstanding for hundreds of days,” he said.
Erasmus said the problem is not just delayed payments, but matters involving claims rejected by the RAF because they did not comply with a RAF board notice and a new claims form.
A full bench of the High Court in Pretoria in November 2023 declared the board notice and form unconstitutional, unlawful, and invalid.
Judges Ingrid Opperman and Anthony Millar, along with Acting Judge G Alley, said that fundamentally the RAF exceeded its powers in issuing and applying the board notice in a peremptory way without any statutory authorisation.
They said the board notice did not facilitate the efficient administration of claims, but instead reduced the number of claims by creating administrative hurdles to stop claims from being submitted.
“It resulted in victims of motor vehicle collisions being excluded from claiming compensation,” they said.
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Pending SCA appeal
A RAF appeal against this judgment is pending in the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA).
Erasmus said the RAF is currently not defending matters involving the board notice and claims form, which are going straight to default judgments.
“Attorneys are getting orders, which the RAF is just ignoring and not paying, because they say its appeal is pending before the SCA.
“I think it’s going to explode when they lose [at the SCA] in Bloemfontein on those matters, and they have got to pay because they are not going to be able to pay,” he said.
This article was republished from Moneyweb. Read the original here.
