The crisis-ridden Road Accident Fund (RAF), which administers a budget of R50bn a year, has introduced a new recruitment policy that specifically allows the organisation to hire people with criminal records and those with “adverse financial records”.
The change has taken place in the context of an organisation in deep financial distress, which openly flouts court orders and which illegally refuses to settle claims of road accident victims who are not South African citizens.
Introduced in December 2023, the measure also takes place in an organisation that has filled dozens of posts with temporary appointments, including the acting chief investment officer, Sefotle Modiba. Unsurprisingly, the RAF has refused to answer queries about how many people have been hired in terms of this new dispensation, saying only that “the Road Accident Fund (RAF) does not wish to engage on this matter” in response to detailed questions.
Previously, candidates for jobs at the RAF with criminal records were excluded because the work involves high-trust financial management.
The new policy is not uncircumscribed but provides extraordinary latitude: it authorises the organisation to hire people with criminal records if the criminal record is more than 10 years old, or is not related to the nature of the job, or the criminal case is pending, or the criminal record is “the result of being falsely accused” or where a court order indicates that the person was not found guilty of any crime. Why anyone would have a criminal record without being found guilty is not specified.
These stipulations are in some respects contrary to public service policy, which, like the RAF, does not place an absolute bar on hiring people with criminal records, but is different in key respects.
The public service encourages employers to “evaluate the relevance of an applicant’s criminal history to the job at hand rather than applying blanket bans”, according to department of public service and administration spokesperson Moses Mushi. The executive authority is legally required to “consider the criminal records against the nature of the job functions in line with internal information security and disciplinary code”. They are required to assess whether the offence is unrelated to the job’s responsibilities and whether the candidate has shown rehabilitation, and sufficient time has passed since the offence.
However, as the seniority of the job increases in the public service, so does the possibility of exclusion. Employees appointed to senior management positions are required to do an e-disclosure and vetting process to ensure that they “are fit and proper to execute the functions of the state and eliminate the risks of fraudulent activities”. This is in line with the private sector, in which high-trust positions almost always exclude individuals with financial crimes in their past.
The RAF’s policy, however, does not make this distinction between senior and junior appointments, and places the decision entirely in the hands of the organisation’s HR department “in consultation with the interview panel”, which according to the new policy is empowered to overlook the previous criminal offence, even if it does fall within one of the categories of potential exclusion.
The curious case where an applicant has a criminal record but has been “falsely accused”, which would allow the applicant to be exempt from negative consideration in the case of the RAF, has no comparator in the public service code.
The same more or less applies to job applicants who have adverse financial records, except that the stipulations are more extensive (see above). The recruitment policy exempts applicants from exclusion in a wide array of situations, including if the candidate was liquidated or if an arrangement to pay off a debt had been entered into.
Despite these stipulations, which might in exceptional circumstances exclude someone who has a dubious record, or even a criminal record, the code also grants the CEO Collins Letsoalo the power to simply bypass them in any circumstances.
Read the full RAF resourcing policy below:
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