A woman’s bid to get the Road Accident Fund (RAF) to pay her R3,3m was dismissed after the court found that her testimony about the alleged accident was “superficial as though tailored”.
Judge Lindiwe Rusi, in the Mthatha high court,Eastern Cape, ruled that Nomana Khalipha’s accident claim against the RAF had too many holes in it and that she could not benefit from the fund.
Khalipha, from Coffee Bay, had taken the RAF to court after it refused her claim for damages. She claimed to have suffered an ankle injury after an unknown vehicle knocked her down when she was returning from work at night in 2022. The RAF denied liability and rejected her claim, saying her injuries did not result from the accident.
Khalipha’s legal representative, Adv Zolani Baceni, had taken the matter to court to determine RAF’s liability.
In her testimony, Khalipha told the court that eyewitness Luyanda Tshemese woke her up after the driver of the vehicle that hit her had fled and told her that she had been hit by a car. Tshemese then carried her to a nearby house where she spent the night before she was taken to hospital the following day. X-rays confirmed an ankle fracture.
Khalipha gave evidence that she had been walking on the road at night and that the car that knocked her down came from behind.
“It bears emphasising that the plaintiff’s evidence must be based on facts and nothing else, and certainly not conjecture,” Rusi said. “There is no direct evidence of the accident, and how the alleged accident happened. At best, her version that she was knocked down by a car is derived from what she heard from Tshemese.
“His [Tshemese’s] evidence was, therefore, crucial,” Rusi noted. “However, no basis was laid for the admission of the evidence of which Tshemese is the source and the person on whom its probative value depends. Such evidence remains inadmissible hearsay.
“[Khalipha’s] testimony is, to say the least, superficial, as though tailored. This is compounded by the fact that the person who, on her version, came about with information that she was hit by a car was not called to give evidence.
“Adv Baceni argued that from the fact that the plaintiff did not see any beam of headlights, the court must infer that the unknown driver was negligent. I disagree with this proposition as it is based on pure conjecture, unsupported by objective facts.”
Rusi added that the court remained in the dark about what transpired during the alleged accident.
“The vague manner in which the plaintiff described the incident and the inconsistencies between her description of the accident and what is contained in the hospital records; coupled to her failure to call the person who must be assumed to have had knowledge of the accident, left this court in the dark regarding how she sustained her ankle injury,” Rusi said before ruling against Khalipha.
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