South Africa Government Services: We care We belong We serve
We care about our tea-breaks. We belong back in pre-school.
We serve Malema, and all things that relate to stupidity.
Yes, I am but one of a million other frustrated South
Africans, with a desperate and insatiable urge to punch Home Affairs in the
face. As many other South Africans are doing on a daily, I recently (about 7
months ago to be precise) strolled along to Home Affairs to stand in an
entertainingly extensive line to go and confirm my identity. Also known as,
applying for an ID. In this line I stood behind someone who wasted 15 minutes
arguing that they are in actual fact “not an initial” when asked for their
initials, and confronted by an official who used his mouth cleaning out some
chicken from his teeth more than he used it to answer any of my questions. This
then resulted in not one but five trips back, a couple of phone calls, confusion
in paper-work, a total misconception of reality for certain officials and
another adventure back to the land of homing affairs. Yes this is my testament
of my struggle and absolute adoration for the system of government services. I never thought the day would come where I’d
want to pull on my dancing shoes, sing on the top of my lungs and join the
service delivery protests.
This is an on-going battle between South African citizens
and the guy chewing on a piece of yesterday’s chicken he found stuck in his
back tooth, sitting behind the counter at Home Affairs. I’m yet to see a
functional official behind that god-forsaken counter. Hundreds and if not ALL,
South Africans have had an issue at some point in their lives with Home
Affairs. If it hasn’t been a lost ID, receiving an ID with somebody else’s face
on your name, finding that out that you now have in-laws situated in the lovely
lands of Zimbabwe, or just dealt with the arrogant, sloppy and downright
dysfunctional attitude of “South African Home Affairs”, the list is endless. So
what do you do about it? Besides nag, complain, get into an obscene argument
with the lady responsible for photographing your ecstatic face, because she
wants you to wait until somebody else comes for two-photographs as it only
prints in four, so you wait another 30 min. NO, you call Home Affairs
Compliments and Complaints Line. And call another 8 times because there is no
answer. So why create this line when there is nobody at the other end to attend
to the call? The line defeats its own purpose. So now I need a Life-Line
because I’m about to have a heart-attack, as well as a moderately over-achieving
degree in “stalkership”.
I then proceeded to log onto the well-known website
Hellopeter.com, just to browse around and have a general overview of the amount
of complaints that were logged onto the site. In a survey done by HelloPeter
about the “Nature of complaints towards Home Affairs (over the last 12 months) “,
the top contenders were: Late/ No delivery 33%; Feedback/Response 16% and in third
place the almighty…. BAD ATTITUDE at 6%. Some major changes are desperately required
within our South African Government Services, maybe start with baby-steps like
officials treating their fellow citizens with some dignity, respect and
intelligence.
Someone call sister Nkosazana
Dlamini Zuma, she must be very busy and forgot this note at home entailing the
intended vision of Home Affairs: “to be an efficient and effective machinery of
timely justice in handling complaints against respective institutions within
the ministry of home affairs” eish sister, answer your phone please.
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