You won your Road Accident Fund claim. You expected a cheque for your future medical treatment. Instead, you were handed a document, an “undertaking”, promising to pay those costs later. It can feel like a let-down. It is not. For most seriously injured claimants, that piece of paper is worth more than a lump sum would have been.

What the undertaking is

The Road Accident Fund Act allows the Fund, once your claim succeeds, to give you a written undertaking to pay your accident-related future medical costs as and when you incur them. This is the section 17(4)(a) undertaking. It covers reasonable future hospital treatment, surgery, medication, rehabilitation, assistive devices and similar costs, for the rest of your life, provided they flow from the injuries caused by the accident.

In practice the Fund now issues an undertaking to every claimant who qualifies for future medical costs, rather than arguing the point case by case. If you have a serious injury, you should expect one.

Why it protects you better than cash

The instinct to prefer money is understandable. But a lump sum for future medical care carries a hidden risk that the undertaking removes.

• Nobody can predict the future accurately. When your damages are calculated, medical experts estimate what your care will cost over decades. If your condition later deteriorates in a way nobody foresaw, a lump sum is already spent or fixed. An undertaking simply pays the new, higher costs when they arise.
• You cannot outlive it or run out. A lump sum can be exhausted, badly invested, or eroded by inflation. The undertaking has no ceiling and no expiry. It responds to your actual needs for as long as you live.
• It removes the guesswork about how long you will live. A cash award has to assume a life expectancy. The undertaking does not need to, because it only ever pays for treatment you actually receive.

Put simply, the undertaking shifts the risk of an uncertain medical future off your shoulders and onto the Fund, which is where it belongs.

How you use it

The undertaking usually works on a reimbursement basis: you (or your medical aid, or the treating provider) incur the accident-related cost, and the Fund refunds it on proof. Under the current framework the Fund may also arrange to pay a service provider directly in appropriate cases. Keep every invoice, prescription and referral connected to your accident injuries, because clear records make claiming against the undertaking far smoother.

Two practical points worth knowing

An undertaking covers reasonable and accident-related treatment. It does not cover experimental or unproven treatment, or care unconnected to the accident injuries.

Future loss of earnings is treated differently from future medical costs. Where the Fund undertakes to pay future loss of income or support, that arrangement is negotiated rather than imposed, and the terms matter. This is worth taking advice on before you accept anything.

The bottom line

If the Fund has offered you an undertaking, do not dismiss it as a fob-off. It is a durable, lifelong protection. What matters is that its wording genuinely covers everything your injuries will demand of it, and that is exactly the kind of detail your attorney should be checking on your behalf.

Sources: Section 17(4)(a), Road Accident Fund Act 56 of 1996. The Fund’s practice of furnishing an undertaking to every qualifying claimant is recorded in Kubheka v Road Accident Fund (2017/497) [2023] ZAGPJHC 1216 (25 October 2023). Direct payment to providers reflects the section 17(4)(a)(ii) framework.

Tzvi Brivik (Author)
Director at Malcolm Lyons & Brivik Attorneys Inc.

Malcolm Lyons & Brivik has specialised in road accident claims since 1965. We make sure the compensation you receive, whether in cash or by undertaking, actually meets the lifelong needs your injuries create. We work on a no win, no fee basis.

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