Dear Home Affairs and ANC
I once described your service, (a misnomer, if ever I heard one), in terms associated with post-digestive waste.
I apologize. I did not do you justice. It's infinitely worse than that. When I think of the nine hours spent outside your model of 'batho pele / people first', many words come to mind - words beginning with F, C, S... Suffice it to say that it's a fudding disaster. Incidentally, I did not get to see the inside of the bustling beehive of excellent activity. Not this day.
Your staff are the frothy cream on top of the concoction that you serve up. A security gentleman warned us about the skelms promising to speed things up for a fee. So far so good. He explained that those who had booked would be attended to first. That is wonderful, except that it's impossible to book on a system designed by Fred Flinstone - on a bad day. When this was pointed out, his helpful response was:
"Yes, sometimes there are system problems. Just keep trying".
Till the Good Lord returns (to quote a model of ANC leadership excellence)?
Someone asked if there was a queue for senior citizens. A 'yes' or 'no' would have sufficed. But our customer service hero was determined to go the extra 1.6 kilometres.
"This is not SARS", he pointed out helpfully. "Just follow the queue and imagine that you are at SARS." No irony detected here.
Don't we love Home Affairs humour? I imagine that that gentlemen was the star student in your Customer Service Excellence training courses.
The rest of his contribution for the day was standing in a doorwaiy. Oh, and wisely not getting too involved when a fight almost broke out over queue jumping claims.
As the long day declined towards closing time, the people next in line asked if they should leave, or stay on in the hope of being attended to.
"The supervisor will decide", he replied.
The supervisor was still deciding as the desperate hopefuls watched the doors close in their faces. This poster boy for government service cannot answer the simplest of questions.
What purpose does such an employee serve? Apart from consuming oxygen that could have been put to much better use.
Gangrene has to be removed. Cancer, the same. You guys live with this mess day, month and year in and out. And you've never felt moved to do something significant about it? And you have managers and supervisors that you pay to manage and supervise? The only news I've ever seen about enterprise and innovation at your department involves people selling documents at R50 000 a shot.
A small point. When you have rats and cockroaches scurrying around a building, you can be reasonably sure that they're not there because of cleanliness and good housekeeping. You have vermin scurrying around, selling queue places. It's not a good environment. Not one you can be proud of. Ah, but we dispensed with that stupid, colonialist notion of pride in work long ago, didn't we?
Government departments around the world are renowned for indifference, maddening bureaucracy and piss-poor service . You have refined it to an ignoble art. The torture is exquisite. It is like being caught in a cross between Monty Python and Catch 22.
People actually vote for this.
People truly believe that you can govern a country in the twenty-first century.
I have to repeat this: isn't it fascinating that the one department that works efficiently, online and off, is the money collector, SARS? I wonder what that tells us.
Yours in the struggle.
Richard
Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted
Capitec Bank, South Africa
1378565477
O Tichmann
+27 833970723
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