Despite controversial former Road Accident Fund (RAF) chief executive Collins Letsoalo’s unceremonious departure from the troubled entity a few months ago, some of the legal battles waged against him are still playing out in court.

The latest is former RAF senior IT advisor Mothusi Lukhele, who was fired by the agency in November 2021 just three months into his three-year contract.

Lukhele was urgently summoned to the RAF’s head office in Pretoria by Letsoalo barely three weeks into the job after a cyber-attack, which required immediate action and was so significant that his new boss appointed him acting chief information officer (CIO).

In addition, Lukhele was instructed to dismiss the then CIO and his leadership team from the RAF on the basis that Letsoalo had lost confidence in the CIO and his team due to their incompetence after the entity suffered two successive and similar cyber-attacks.

Lukhele then suffered the same fate in that Letsoalo also fired him while fulfilling his instruction.

The RAF accused him of failing to comply with certain of the suspensive conditions of the contract, which were that he did not submit proof of submission of application for a police clearance certificate on time to the RAF or Letsoalo.

As part of Lukhele’s employment contract, he was required to comply with the resolutive conditions to provide proof of the application for police clearance and the actual certificate within 30 and 90 days of the commencement of his employment, respectively, which he failed to do.

About a month before Lukhele was appointed, the RAF discovered that there were two pending cases of theft against him – the first was reported at the Johannesburg Central police station in 2020 and the second at the Sandton police station the following year.

However, the RAF hired him on the resolutive conditions that he provides the RAF with proof that he applied for a police clearance certificate within 30 days of commencing employment and provide the fund with a clearance certificate regarding the pending criminal cases within 90 days of the commencement of his employment.

Another resolutive condition requires an employee to obtain and maintain security clearance from the State Security Agency.

Lukhele denied knowledge of the existence of the cases and undertook to furnish the RAF with a police clearance certificate indicating that there are no pending criminal cases against him.

Later in November 2021 at the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, Judge Cassim Sardiwalla granted Lukhele an interim order interdicting the RAF and Letsoalo from terminating his contract of employment and suspending his dismissal pending review proceedings.

The RAF and Letsoalo told the court the fund’s legal department only became aware of Lukhele’s urgent application on the day of the hearing when the order was already granted.

They subsequently sought an order to reconsider and overturn the ruling that suspended Lukhele’s dismissal. They argued that Lukhele had been dishonest by failing to disclose important facts, and that his intentional withholding of these facts led to the granting of the contested order. However, their application was unsuccessful, including a later request for leave to appeal the judgments issued by Acting Judge Brian Ceylon..

Undeterred, Letsoalo and the RAF escalated their case to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA). The court has now ruled that any order regarding Lukhele’s contract, which is the basis of the dispute, would have no practical effect, as his contract ended in July of last year.

“Even if this court were to find that leave to appeal should be granted, and the applicants (Letsoalo and the RAF) were successful on appeal, the result would be academic. There is no basis to alter or vary the order already made because the substratum of the dispute has fallen away,” reads the judgment handed down on December 17.

In conclusion, SCA Judge Keoagile Matojane, with Judges Glenn Goosen and Daisy Molefe concurring, dismissed the application for reconsideration in terms of the Superior Courts Act with costs.

Meanwhile, the RAF has announced that it is moving its head office from Centurion to Hatfield in Tshwane from January 5 and that all its services will be available at its new location.

loyiso.sidimba@inl.co.za

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