23 years later, car crash victim still waiting for compensation from RAF

Jan-Paul Smit could be earning about R40 000 a month as a flight-sergeant in the SA Air Force but today he can barely scrape a living with a measly R10 000 following a car crash that put him out of service.

23 years and still waiting

He has had to wait 23 years, and counting, for the Road Accident Fund (RAF) to deliver on its statutory task to compensate him for damages due to the accident, leaving him destitute and in a lurch.

Smit, 58, a sergeant at the time, had been in the SA Air Force for almost 20 years and was attending a course to become a flight-sergeant when he was involved in an accident with a tow truck in 2000.

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He collided with a tow truck hauling a bus along Moloto road, north east of Pretoria, around 9pm and it took emergency medical personnel over an hour to get him out of the wreckage.

“I remember that evening, around 9pm, like it was yesterday. I had just bought a T-bone steak and chips for R30 from a roadhouse,” Smit said.

He explained that on a bend just before Wallmansthal, there was a tow truck that broke down as it was towing a bus. Another tow truck was hauling the broken down tow truck and the bus.

“I slammed into the tow truck as it turned but most of the impact was absorbed by the bull-bars. I was medically boarded after the accident and that is how my career in the Air Force came to a screeching halt,” Smit, a married father of two, said.

String of postponements

Within two years of the accident his claim for compensation, which he lodged directly with RAF, was in court, and then a string of postponements for the next 10 years.

Smit, who moved from Pretoria to Cape Town in 2002, said every time the court ordered the RAF to pay, they would demand new medical assessments, which he has done but still nothing has come of this.

But he could not afford rent and now lives with his wife in a rented apartment in Jeffreys Bay in the Eastern Cape.

The last time he went for assessment and submitted new documents was in October last year, but he is yet to hear from the RAF.

“It is frustrating. I would have bought a house if my claim was paid promptly. My rent now is R15 000 and this is what I was paying in Cape Town in 2002. I literally live on my credit card,” he said.

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The RAF would not divulge reasons for the delay in Smit’s claim as this is prohibited by the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA).

“To obtain further information, the requisite PAIA process has to be followed,” spokesperson Boniswa Matshoba said.

History of non-payment by RAF

The RAF is financed by a fuel levy and any person who has suffered injury or death may claim compensation, but the state organ has instead hogged the headlines for failure and delays in payment of claims.

A Pretoria medical orthotist and prosthetist said: “I am a medical practitioner who must deal with fraud within the RAF daily. Patients are suffering because of mismanagement even though there is a formal court order against the RAF to pay for medical services under court orders.”

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He said medical practitioners risked losing their practices due to RAF’s non-payment of claims.

The Citizen has previously reported on how RAF boss Collins Letsoalo has been accused of abusing his power to settle personal scores by withholding payments to law firms that challenged his appointment, leaving accident victims in the lurch.

Pretoria attorney Kabelo Malao has detailed how his firm, K Malao Incorporated, has suffered due to Letsoalo’s alleged spiteful charge. He said he has seen payments amounting to R15 million, including interest, due to 15 road accident victims, unpaid.