Field of Dreams

Dear South African Politicians 

There is a broader truth to this verse, quite apart from the context in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream':

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on..." 

You politicians do not understand that. Rassie Erasmus, Siya Kolisi and the Springbok rugby team do.  How, then, can you lead a country hungry for significance and success?

You  showed up at the final for photo opportunities (and perhaps other opportunities). Siya and his men showed up week after week for their country. For us. So did every South African whose heart beat, raced and skipped a beat with every eighty minutes played. 

You do not understand what happened on Saturday night. You see, the All Blacks, worthy opponents that they were, were only the personification of our real opposition:  the division that you have sown in our country, the hatred, the racism. The lie that we are not a  nation worthy of your best efforts. That we are not to hope and dream as other people do. But only with your permission and approval. That we are to stay within the dark, narrow lanes of your stunted imagination.

But on the field of dreams, our team kept alive our bruised, battered hopes and dreams.  We so desperately had to win. We were a people perishing for want of vision, as the Good Book says.

You do not understand the heart of South Africa. We love our country. We love our people. Even when there are times that we may not like one another. How could you understand that when  you dwell  in the dark places of selfishness, self-centredness, greed and a ravening hunger for power? Are these not the parents of that hideous progeny  called State Capture, conceived in the heat of such lusts? The heart is first captured. When you had given your hearts over to lust, how could you do otherwise?

“This team just shows what you can do. As soon as we work together, all is possible, no matter in what sphere – in the field, in offices, it shows what we can do..."

So said captain, Siya Kholisi.

Is this what you politicians fear? 

Kholisi went on to say something to the effect that we need to take this spirit and belief beyond the rugby field. 

So, to every opportunistic, greedy, power hungry politician and all your cronies,  South Africa says VOETSEK. We don't need you. 

ANC, EFF and the rest: eff you very much.

We are South Africa.

Yours in the real struggle.

Richard 

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

1378565477

O Tichmann 

+27 833970723

 

Earth to Home Affairs

 Dear Home Affairs Management. 

This is a matter of utmost urgency and importance.

Please investigate without delay what is going on in the Northern Cape.

In the town of Postmasburg I visited your offices to try once more to get my hands on that much desired document,  a South African identity document. Having failed four times in Durban,  I was not exactly filled with hope and optimism. 

The first clue that something strange is going on here was the absence of a fierce,  jail warden-type security guard at the entrance. I was puzzled. This was not the Home Affairs that I have come to know and love.

Also absent were the rat-like characters scurrying around, offering places in the queue for a fee, or offering expensive ID photographs. Bigger shocks were yet to come. The offices were clean, orderly and very well signposted. Although I had brought my shaving kit along, I did not need it, as I was inside the building within a very short time.

Of course, in Durban I merely glimpsed the shadowy, mysterious interior from my position in the queue outside. The joy and honour of actually entering were not to be mine on the four occasions that I spent an enjoyable day at your premises.

Service in Postmasburg was efficient, polite and even friendly. In truth, it was real service. The sight of a South African civil servant smiling is rather disconcerting, when one has never seen it before. I thought for a moment that I had said something hilariously wrong. I fully expected Leon Schuster  or someone else  to step up and say:

 "The joke's on you . There's a camera there and another one over there. You didn't really think this was a Home Affairs office, did you? Ha, ha, ha." 

Backslapping and embarrassed grins.

I applied for and received my smart, new identity document in about two weeks. I had spent fewer than two hours in total at the Home Affairs offices. The experience was so unsettling that I had to lie down for two hours after. 

Surely this is not the South African way. I think that you ought to send inspectors to the department here. Surely you cannot allow such a flagrant disregard of organisational culture to flourish. Who knows but that South Africans will be expecting and demanding civil and efficient service from government next. Perhaps even honesty and ethical behaviour. Lord forbid. What kind of society will we have if you folks are deprived of your feudal rights to lord it over the peasants like yours truly? Where will be the grimy, chaotic South Africa that we have come to know and enfold in our hearts?

Please act swiftly. Our very way of life is in peril.

Yours in the struggle to preserve the old ways.

Richard 

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

1378565477

O Tichmann 

+27 833970723

Bananas

 Reports of corruption, incompetence and buffoonery dominate the news.

It was good to read a tweet on something completely different: the struggle against banana abuse.

Apparently, a deputy minister valiantly defended his fruit bowl from an audacious banana raid. That is his version of events. The other party involved reportedly claimed that he was defending his own fruit bowl from a similar onslaught. One hopes that the layers of this banana saga will be peeled away.

The tweet:

"The complainant - a 33-year old male parliamentary staffer, alleges that deputy minister, Cde Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo inappropriately touched his genitals before trying to push him onto his bed. 

Dhlomo, in turn, counterclaims that the man invaded his space & “took a banana” from his fruit basket without permission before he chased him away..."

I was surprised to read of 'inappropriate' touching of genitals, as I was unaware that an appropriate option exists. Perhaps that is why Mr Malema boldly spoke of having parliamentarians by the scrotum. 

Dr Dhiomo is a medical doctor and deputy minister of health. He was born in uMbumbulu on the KZN South Coast. This explains several things. Bananas are important to the economy of the South Coast. As a health expert, the good doctor knows  how important bananas are in improving the immune system and reducing the risk of disease, among others. It follows that he would repel any raids with commendable vigour and every means at his disposal. That need not exclude pushing aspiring raiders onto beds. Being from KZN myself, I imagine that the doctor's technique was refined by having to repel those impertinent coastal monkeys from time to time. 

It was prudent of the gentleman not to take the invasion of his space lying down. I am sure that from such seemingly small incidents are such things as land invasions born. Go back into Putin's history. I guarantee you that you will find a trail of space invasion and  banana snatching. Probably from an early age. Left unchecked, look where it has got us to! 

Of course there is the alternative  version that suggests that bananas were the last thing on the deputy minister's mind. Sigh! This promises to be as difficult to prove or disprove as an allegation involving masseurs and ministers (just plucked that one at random from my fertile, fevered imagination).

One can but hope that before it all went banana shaped, the meeting was fruitful.

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

1378565477

O Tichmann

+27 833970723

Ubuntu

I needed to travel to the Northern Cape. At one of our retail giants, I enquired about ticket prices and travel dates. "No", said the helpful assistant. "We do not give senior citizen discounts". Disappointing, but there it was.

 I returned a few days later to buy  tickets for a two stage journey. A different helpful assistant was behind the counter. The ticket price had gone up by R200, which I thought was rather dramatic for an interval of a few days. However, this particular assistant did give senior citizen discounts. So all was well that ended well - that far. 

No sooner had I purchased my tickets, than I received SMS's from the bus companies advising that my journey would be cancelled if I did not pay up within the specified.time A little bizarre, as simple logic would suggest that I could not be holding two tickets in my grubby hands had I not paid for them.

Thus began the joyous game of "all our lines are busy, please be patient". After the customer service person had blamed the retail giant for an unfortunate misunderstanding, we parted good friends, promising to meet up for tea at some time on the future.

The next challenge was that my pick up instructions for the first stage of the journey were somewhat confusing. They read something like:

'Pick up at Caltex service station drop off JTV'. Several possibilities suggested themselves. Would they pick me up and then drop me off a few hundred metres  down the road, just to add a fun element to the trip? Was this perhaps a game of 'choose your favourite pick up point'? I called,  just for the heck of it. After we had confirmed which of the two points was the pickup point, I pointed out to the service person that this was rather confusing. For example, why mention 'drop off' when all that I needed was to be picked up. We then had a slightly heated discussion. The essence of her argument was 'This Is How We Do It and it would be terribly inconvenient to do it any other way'. The essence of my argument was 'I am the customer.  I need clarity and not to be left clutching my luggage and scratching my head at the wrong rendezvous'. The service person terminated the conversation with what a suspicious person might have considered huffy abruptness. I am not suspicious. I do understand that we customers need to be more considerate and not disturb the even tenor of the lives of our suppliers.

I had made a similar trip from Durban station more than two years ago.  The escalators were not working then. They were not working now. Our guys are consistent. Few things in this life equal the joy of lugging suitcases and bags up two dead escalators.  A large, cheery sign greeted me at the top  'PRASA Welcomes You To The Future'. I looked around the dark, malodorous station with its indoor potholes. Would that future involve a zombie apocalypse, then? The place certainly looked like the set of the movie.

At the set time  of  the rumbling stomach,  I visited a fish shop which sold  everything except fish. It turned out that the shop had changed hands but the effort of removing references to  fish had proved too much for the new owner, exhausted from the Herculean labours of wheeling and dealing. Perfectly understandable. 

There was a sign in the shop announcing that cellphones would no longer be  charged because of the misbehaviour of customers. I felt the guilt of my entire race descend upon me - the race of customers with a penchant for misbehaviour.

Anyway, the bus itself was bound to be an improvement. The driver sternly warned us that we were on no account to leave the bus unless he expressly announced that we may do so at a rest stop. Suitably chastened,  we paid attention. He went on to say that the toilets were for Number One only and that Number Two would require special arrangements.  He mumbled something about the bush which I didn't  perfectly catch. I have always been confused about what exactly each of those numbers represents. I was not about to display my ignorance of that most basic of life skills to a bus full of strangers.

The bus  just managed to cross the discomfort to comfort divide. There were minor challenges  - cellphone charging ports not working, no water in the Number One toilet. Little things that shouldn't trouble the reasonable traveller who enjoys eating with unwashed hands after a bit of number one.

And that's how we roll (downhill) in South Africa, customer service excellence and Ubuntu our rallying cry.

I suppose one might summarize it along these lines:

1. Both government and large swathes of the private sector live by the dictum that South Africans are not deserving of their best (or even moderate) efforts. Ubuntu is cunningly hidden and disguised.

2. Customers are too weary or pessimistic or cynical to demand better for their taxes and rands.

No real surprise. We have been fed mouthfuls of this manure for years by a corrupt, callous govt that thinks it proper to raise pensions by R10. Their own increases, of course, commensurate with the value that they add.

Viva New Dawn, Seven Pillars, Ubuntu and all the other inspirational stuff.

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

1378565477

O Tichmann 

+27 833970723

Border Control

The ANC's tame channel gave hours of 'news' to the introduction of border control guards.  Obviously almost as important and newsworthy as assorted funerals and ANC conferences.

Now  that the horses have bolted and are spraying dung all over the country, our ever-proactive government tries to lock the stable door. Why does the ANC celebrate things that they should have done long ago and done much better? If (eventually) doing parts of your job is cause for celebration,  then we've all been short-changed on the pomp and ceremony.

The ANC's passion for border control and law and order does seem to have been cleverly disguised up to now. A cynical friend says that it's just possible that  this initiative may have a tenuous link to upcoming elections. 'Huh?' I responded.  I cannot understand the cynicism of some of my friends. What has the ANC not done...., pardon, done to deserve it? We may not have electricity but we have a minister. I think that we even have ministers of intelligence.

We may not have water but we have new taps, as an ANC worthy wittily pointed out.

People have been warning about the porous border problem for a long time. One thing about the ANC, they do catch on eventually. They've caught on recently to how apartheid is still on the rampage and making them look bad.

Another cynical friend warns not to expect too much from the border conrol initiative. We know, says he,  that whatever our efficient govt touches turns into compost. I think that's harsh. Compost is useful.

 Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

1378565477

O Tichmann 

+27 833970723

Delusions of Normality

Doctor, I'm being plagued by the most awful nightmares imaginable.

And how does that make you feel?

Clammy, sweaty, frightened and with a vast emptiness in my soul.

The soul is a construct we shall examine in the next session. But tell me about these dreams.

Well, Doctor, it's night after night and there are so many. Just last night, I dreamt that my call to the SASSA helpline went through in ten minutes and the service was excellent.

Doctor shakes his head, a frown gathering on his large, intelligent forehead.

Then there was the one in which I was able to make an online booking at Home Affairs. I breezed in and out in two hours.

Hmmm!

What does that mean, hmmm? That sounds bad.

There, there, calm yourself. Breathe deeply and think of the Springboks. Go on.

There was the one in which taxes, petrol and food prices were lowered because the deadwood and thieves in politics had been removed and vast sums of public money recovered.

Sweat gathers on patient's brow. His hands and voice tremble.

Then, I dreamt -  a stifled sob - that it was 2025. The ANC had been thrashed at the polls, gone into exile in Limpopo and the Eastern Cape. The EFF had reinvented itself as an off-the-wall comedy show and there were even a few signs of normality and commmonsense returning in South Africa. Oh, God!

Buries his face in his hands, shoulders shaken by great, uncontrollable sobs.

The doctor presses a glass of rare Joburg water on him and a box of tissues made in China.

Do you actually expect any of these things to happen?

A shake of the head and another wipe with the tissues.

Then we're not so far gone that what you have can't be easily remedied. Wahnvorstellungen, Delusions of Normality, first identified by Erich von Strumpfnagel during the Hitler years. A condition affecting those who fail to understand and accept that the inmates have been running the institution for some time. Spend a few days in the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and at Home Affairs. I can guarantee you that not a single illusion will remain to haunt you.

Oh, Doctor, how can I thank you?

By paying cash. SARS is disembowelling me.

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

1378565477

O Tichmann 

+27 833970723

The MTN Maze

Dear MTN

Please let us have your correct customer service number. Each time I call 135, I get through to a circus. And it's not even  entertaining.

You remind me so of Mr Zuma at his scintillating best. Just like his "Listen carefully", your "Please pay attention to our menu items" is followed by the purest gobbledygook available on the planet.

I am not interested in mobile money or any of the other treasures on offer. I just so desperately want to ask a breathing human being why the internet is suddenly not available, even after one of your technicians 'fixed' the problem for a few hours. That option (human conversation) is not on the menu, as far as I can discern.

Your recorded message tells me that you are improving your IVR (or something) - an automated service that I landed up at every time, regardless of menu choice. This would happen after a mind-bending journey through many-layered, intriguing but useless menu options. Why don't you just improve your service, period? You do realize that these Monty Python experiences are what send people postal or into institutions.

I eventually chose the fraud option and got to speak to a human being. At least, I think she was human. I asked her how one gets to speak to a human at MTN. "Dial 0 after 135". Why not include that among the menu items? Of course, it didn't work, but took me, to my delight, back into the mysterious MTN maze.

As your service seems to be based on the government model, let me quote:

"Consistent energy availability will ultimately lead to the end of loadshedding"

Well, consistent internet availability will ultimately lead to the end of frustration. 

The same message to you, as to our caring government departments. We are customers, not supplicants at your temples of indifference, inefficiency and buffoonery.

A postscript: many calls later, I was informed that there had been an unauthorized intrusion at a nearby tower. I was relieved that it was not an authorized intrusion. It would have been helpful to know that sooner, instead of fiddling around. But then again, I suppose  technicians work in mysterious ways. As, it seems, do our service providers. Incidentally, the problem is not a major one, I was told. That would explain why it's for only two days that I don't have internet. I imagine that we'd be looking at two years for a major problem.

Yours in the struggle to find real service.

Richard 

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

1378565477

O Tichmann 

+27 833970723