This project investigates the politics of injury, care, and compensation through an analysis of South Africa’s Road Accident Fund (RAF), a national compensatory system established in 1997 to provide financial cover for victims of road accidents and their families. Conceived as a form of social insurance within a wider politics of redistribution, the RAF has become one of the most contested institutions of social policy in post-apartheid South Africa – criticised for inefficiency, corruption and insolvency, yet continuing to deliver vital, if uneven, forms of support.
The study interrogates how ‘injury’, ‘care’, and ‘compensation’ are defined and contested through the RAF’s bureaucratic and medico-legal processes, including through the enactment of professional expertise in the assessment of bodily trauma as well as legal disputes between family members over RAF claims. The project explores the extent to which enduring inequalities of race, class, gender and generation are reflected in, and actively shape, these intimate and contentious body politics. This 12-month pilot project (January–December 2026) combines archival and court-records research, fieldwork including exploratory ethnography and oral interviews, and professional networking, culminating in an interdisciplinary and intersectoral research and grant writing workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa. The project will generate one co-written journal article, proof-of-concept findings and partnerships to underpin future external grant applications, including a Wellcome Trust Discovery Award, advancing an interdisciplinary, multi-sited, intersectoral research programme with significant potential scholarly and policy impact.
