The National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), the majority union at the Road Accident Fund (RAF), has approached the labour court for a declaratory order that its planned strike action at the embattled fund is legal and protected.
The fund was granted an interim interdict against the industrial action in March after Numsa announced that it would embark on a “national shutdown” of all RAF offices to demand the removal of CEO Collins Letsoalo for alleged “gross incompetence” and presiding over the “disastrous” state of affairs at the state-owned entity.
Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim said the RAF had claimed in its court papers that it fell under the social security sector and not transportation.
“Numsa rejects [this} with contempt because it is blatantly false. [The] RAF falls under the responsibility of the minister of transport. The RAF board is appointed by the minister of transport, and prior to Numsa being recognised at RAF transport union Satawu was the majority union at RAF,” Jim said.
“When Numsa was being consulted during the section 189 [process dealing with retrenchments], RAF as the employer ticked ‘transport’ as the sector that it falls under. The RAF management must be a bunch of lunatics if they believe that this kind of propaganda can be sustained.”
The RAF wanted to abuse the court process to get the court to sanction Numsa’s derecognition, said Jim. “On the basis of false assertions they submitted to the court, the RAF unilaterally and unlawfully terminated Numsa’s recognition agreement. This has stripped our members of the rights and the protections they had secured as members of Numsa.”
The union wanted the court to declare that its registered scope did not prevent it from organising within the RAF as Numsa’s constitution covered it. “We want the recognition agreement reinstated,” said Jim.
RAF spokesperson McIntosh Polela said: “Numsa has the right to take the matter to court. The RAF does not wish to engage in public discussions until the court has ruled on it.”
The RAF is among state organs hollowed out by years of mismanagement, huge backlogs and corruption. The fund handles almost 100,000 claims each year and is subjected to, almost daily, fraudulent and overinflated claims.
In 2005, the RAF — which was set up in 1996 to compensate victims of traffic accidents — faced 185,773 claims, incurring legal expenses of R941m. By 2018, with a reduced number of claims of 92,101, legal costs skyrocketed to R8.8bn and reached R10.6bn in 2019.
In November 2023, the Special Investigating Unit announced it had recovered more than R317m the fund paid to lawyers erroneously, and also was investigating claims that the RAF lost millions more to maladministration and corruption.
The total amount of default judgments issued against the RAF for cost and fees from 2018 until the second quarter of 2023 amounted to R4.7bn.
In December, transport minister Sindisiwe Chikunga called on the RAF and auditor-general Tsakani Maluleke to reach an “amicable” out-of-court solution to their “technical accounting dispute”.
At the heart of the dispute between the RAF and the auditor-general is the fund’s controversial decision to adopt new accounting standards, which the auditor-general said had resulted in it understating its liabilities compared with the previous year.
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