Road fund bankrupts facility

R300M DEBT: PRIVATE HOSPITAL SELLS ON AUCTION AS RAF DEFAULTS AFTER COURT ORDER TO PAY

- Sipho Mabena

Revellers light firecrackers during Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, in central Durban on Monday. The Hindu community celebrates this day around the world. Picture: Rajesh Jantilal

(Rajesh Jantilal)

The embattled Road Accident Fund (RAF) has bankrupted service providers, such as the private Sunshine Hospital which treated accident victims, and also endangered crash victims by cutting off their access to private hospitals.

According to testimony before parliament's standing committee on public accounts (Scopa), between 2013 and 2025, the hospital helped hundreds of patients referred by over 130 state hospitals, including Standerton and Kwamhlanga hospitals in Mpumalanga, which often lacked beds, equipment or theatre time.

Kenneth Ford, co-owner and managing director of Sunshine Hospital in Benoni, Gauteng, which was collapsed by RAF's failure to pay over R300 million debt, said they were the state hospitals' lifeline and when the hospital shut down, that lifeline disappeared.

He said that from about 2013 until it closed its doors in May 2025, about 130 state hospitals, doctors and specialists approached Sunshine Hospital with urgent requests for medical assistance in the treatment of critically injured road accident victims.