AFTER THE BELL: Signs of hope — Home Affairs works, if you can find the right queue

From lost identity documents to power cuts and endless queues, one family navigates South Africa’s Home Affairs offices in search of passports.

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“Gosh, you look like the minister.”

It was not a comment I’d ever expected to hear. Especially standing, as I was about a month ago, in a queue to pay for a temporary identity document (ID) at Randburg Home Affairs.

The day had started at Home Affairs, but elsewhere.

Have you ever tried to get two wonderful teenagers and both their parents together during office hours? It’s not easy.

But there we were, before opening time, at the Home Affairs office at Cresta Shopping Centre. Along with many other people.

As they prepared to open the doors, someone who had what a general would call “command authority” and a voice that knew it, emerged.

Within seconds people who didn’t know each other and clearly spoke a variety of languages and from a broad variety of faiths, had organised themselves into an orderly and legitimate queue. Those who had arrived first were first.

The real queuing had already happened. My wife had sat patiently on the Home Affairs site trying to book a passport appointment for the two youngsters.

After nearly coming to tears, AI suggested that we try early on a Monday morning for a slot. You should always believe the machine.

Finally, appointment in hand, payment made and various other mutterings over with, we had used two whole-family conveyances to get everyone to the right place at the right time.

I don’t know why, perhaps it is my journalist’s soul, but I always feel that I’m about to get found out in a government office. Somehow, I will be tripped up.

The dread was well founded.

While the teenagers were perfectly correct, and my wife, of course, was in order, I was the family disgrace.

Despite having my non-lovingly tended green ID book to hand, it turned out that years ago I’d got a card ID and had then lost it.

Home Affairs says my Green Mamba had, thus, lost its bite. It is now just a historical artefact.

It didn’t seem like the right moment to mention that I’d voted with it about three times since losing the card ID. And that I plan to do so again next week.

As a result, the entire trip had been in vain.

But, because we had made an appointment we could come back the next day if I could get a temporary ID, which I should say, to save you the trouble, you cannot get at Cresta.

Thus it was that I found myself, shorn of my family who had moved off to more productive pursuits, at Randburg Home Affairs.

It is amazing how different two offices fulfilling the same function can be. And how offices are shaped by their spatial environment.

Randburg had the look of chaos. It wasn’t, of course; it just looked that way.

I don’t know what it is about government offices but it seems beyond the ability of anyone in government to have a public office with a proper sign that tells you where you need to start and what you need to do.

Or whose interests it serves to not just have a clear, understandable sign.

Thankfully, a security guard told me to go to a particular building and a particular counter.

Once there it seemed impossible to know if it was a queue or a gathering. At the entrance was a group of forms organised in no particular way. And once a fellow queuer had told you the process, it was obvious that you needed to fill in one of those first.

After having my fingerprints checked (which did nothing for my self-confidence) I found myself in the cashier’s queue. And face-to-face with a picture of our current Home Affairs minister, Leon Schreiber [Editor’s note: “That’s Dr Schrieber, Stephen”].

I suspect he may be distressed to hear how the person in front of me was struck by our resemblance. I think for a moment she wondered if in fact the minister was on some kind of unannounced inspection.

Or perhaps had just lost his ID...

Ten minutes later I was off, ready to face Cresta again the next morning.

By that stage, of course, any veneer of authority in my family was long gone. Now I was the problem child, the one with whom no one wanted to ride in the same car.

And again we faced the incredibly long queue outside before Cresta opened. But, out came that command authority and into the office, and the system, we went.

Half an hour later, after juggling two children who had to have both their parents with them at separate cubicles, we emerged, proof of their applications in hand.

On Friday, several days after the emails had arrived telling us the passports were ready, my wife and children went off to collect them.

And were met by one of those massive power cuts that doesn’t even make the news anymore.

Finally, yesterday, they were successful.

But not, it would appear, without some struggle. My wife tells me that for no reason whatsoever it seemed to take forever. And it was again not clear to anyone arriving what they needed to do. One poor person had waited an entire hour before they were told to write down their name on a piece of paper in the front.

I have to say this for Home Affairs, the system works. The IT stuff is brilliant, and the staff are friendly and helpful.

But instead of spending money on pictures of the president, the deputy president, the minister and the deputy minister, perhaps we could spend the budget on signage.

If only to spare the minister the embarrassment of having some people think we look alike. DM

Business Maverick

Home Affairs

Leon Schreiber

passports

queues

identity documents