Good vibes while waiting at Home Affairs office
TRAVEL is an adventure and, if you are heading somewhere that requires a passport, the adventure starts in the Home Affairs department. For me, the closest office of the department is in Wynberg, where the official opening hours are from 8am to 3.30pm.
Friends who had recently applied for travel documents warned: “Don’t even think of arriving at 8am. If you arrive any later than 7am you haven’t a hope of being attended to.”
So two geriatric friends hauled ourselves out of our beds at 5.30am (I didn’t even know there was such a time) and set off for Wynberg in the pre-dawn gloom, negotiating heavy traffic.
Hey, what’s everybody doing awake at that silly hour? Don’t you people have beds?
We arrived at the entrance to the Home Affairs office before 7am to find a queue of people several hundred long. By 7.45am the excitement was electric and people were beginning to bunch up.
Occasionally, an official would emerge and herd us all back into line. There were two queues, and an argument broke out as to which one was the official one.
Finally, at the stroke of eight, the doors opened and geriatrics and school kids in uniform were allowed in first. We all had numbered tickets and from there on it was simply a matter of sitting patiently until your number was called.
The system is well organised, but obviously inadequate to cope with the volume of customers. All counters were manned and the people manning them were efficient, helpful and friendly. What looked chaotic was actually well-organised chaos. Photo booths took pictures, clerks captured data, people shuffled from area to area. Cashiers collected payments. Hardly any paper changed hands.
Electronics made it all relatively easy. A public address system called people up one by one. There were some longish waits, but everybody was served eventually. Ours were routine matters – passport renewals and smart ID card applications. We had arrived at about 7am and were on our way home by 10am. Not bad at all.
But I couldn’t help feeling sympathy for those with more complicated problems than ours. Imagine if your informal house had burned down with all your papers in it and you had to start all over proving your very existence – applying for a new birth certificate, ID card, residence permit, marriage licence, parent’s death certificates and so on.
If my visit to the Home Affairs office did one thing for me it made me realise how very fortunate I was to be living the life I do. It also made me glad to see how people of all colours, religions and ages mingled together in a friendly and supportive way.
We all need, from time to time, to rub shoulders with fellow South Africans from different backgrounds. Our future could be so bright if only we hadn’t handed it over to the idiot politicians.
Last Laugh
Two friends met and were discussing the weather. “It was really cold in our suburb this morning,” said one. “How cold was it?” “I don’t know what the actual temperature was, but I think I saw a politician with his hands in his own pockets.”