DOLEFUL DAYS

Jeremy Thomas joined the UIF queue — a trial that would give Kafka the willies

THEY like to do it just before Christmas. Clean out redundant costs, leaving their books to look forward to the new year. Leaving you to look forward to . . . This. Dark on a bitter May morning. The office opens only at 7.30am, but we old hands know what to do. We have formed a hundred-strong line down the wheelchair ramp to the side of the Randburg Labour Centre. If we are lucky we will be processed before lunchtime. Ten days later we may or may not see some cash in our accounts.

Nobody knows the amount, or for how long we might hope to receive it. Chatter among veterans suggests we ought to be doled about 10% of our pre-retrenchment earnings for about eight months. It has probably to do with how long, and how much, we have contributed to the Unemployment Insurance Fund. We will get some back if we sign in every month.

Whatever will be, will be. For now, we wait.

A day like any other. Workers stride from the taxi rank, swaddled against the frost, casting quick eyes at the cast-offs whose number they could one day join. It is a scrofulous part of town, this mean corner of a bleak brick mall.

Churches (Christ Fameland Chapel International; Kingdom Grace Centre) rub hopeful shoulders with Letsatsi Finance & Loan (“As Easy As 1, 2, 3”), Hielohs Celebrity Hair, Dreamfinders Trading and Emmy Liquor. It is a long way from life as it was.

When the doors of the Labour Centre open, our motley queue heaves forward. Three security guards, presumably dragooned by the Department of Labour into a broader remit, herd the bewildered beasts into a fluorescent antechamber containing 49 maroon plastic chairs.

Skew posters show President Jacob Zuma and a manly dame named Neliswe Mildred Oliphant. Three small prints of the national flag are gummed to a wall. There is a motto: “Our Aim: Service Excellence.” There is a water cooler with no urn. A blank, big-bellied TV set.

Some among us are directed to a desk and ordered to produce identity documents, and then to sit. Others, bafflingly, are told to form a standing line behind the chairs, and to wait. Still others are ushered to the portal of a second door. Beyond that, nobody knows what to expect.

We are all as befuddled by the bureaucracy as the person next to us. A few blurt their exasperation but keep their tone low. Proud as we are, we do not want to be banished from this source of grim solace.

The laid-off chemical engineer whispers that she pretends to her kids she’s going off to work when she comes here. She teeters, as do we all, between humility and humiliation; dignity and indignation.

“All I’m saying,” mutters a honey-blonde matron under turquoise mascara, “is that it is MY money. I have been paying UIF for years and years.” Quite so, my dear, but hush. This May morning we are spared the presence of Lenny. For two summer months in a row that frightful martinet ran the show. “People,” he’d shout. “I do not want to see anyone here who should be at the Department of Social Welfare or at Justice. And if you do not fall under Randburg Labour Centre, I do not want to see you here. You must go to Soweto.”

This hip-cocked turkey would stand there: cheap flared denims, square-toed shoes, floral shirt (untucked), shaved head and neck tattoo. Hectoring us.

And then Lenny disappeared. So, three months hence, we resign ourselves to the random instructions of the security guards. Much better. We never begrudge the lamentable Lenny or the guards their toil: they have jobs to do; we do not. We show respect.

Ah! There is a commotion. A security commandant is holding up her hand! Does it mean “wait” (some more)? No! She means five people, next in line, who she funnels down a corridor (past another inexplicable queue), and around a corner. Oh joy, we live in faith that beyond lies a desk and a human being who will speak to us.

But no. Around that corner lurks false sanctuary — another teeming room. It contains six rows of five chairs (for maternity and illness benefits, we discover) and, out of sight, a further holding pen. There are 34 grey plastic seats and 15 in plush, padded maroon. As we mill, the security lady tells us to . . . wait. We will be called. In due course, by strict order of arrival, we round the corner and sit. (The significance of the 15 padded chairs escapes us.) We wait.

My first visit to the Randburg Labour Centre, on January 28, was marked by a delightful confluence of catastrophes. First, after two hours of twiddling thumbs, Lenny told us there had been a power failure. “People,” he shouted, “this just is what it is. You can wait if you want. But if you go you will lose your place.”

I waited. Lunchtime came and went, and when Eskom clicked back on I was barely in time to snag a seat at the table of Jub-Jub, the chap who would be in charge of my dole application. Jub-Jub was bored and well-fed, yet apparently willing to tap my details into the system for appraisal, ready for next month’s judgment day.

No, he said, it was not possible to apply for benefits online, despite the many misspelt posters in the labour centre that suggested we save time and do so. It doesn’t work, he said, behind eyes that never left his terminal.

Slumped before Jub-Jub, telling him yes, I’d accept work in Welkom or Mmabatho if I had to, the national computer server crashed. Oh well, said Jub-Jub, you’ll have to come back tomorrow. “And queue all over again?” “Yes.” So I did. And four months down the line, there I was in May, battleshot but unbowed.

My compadres and I had learnt a few things, which we murmured to the fretful neophytes among us. One unexplained queue was for those who had failed their monthly assessment and were summoned to join the parade to see The Supervisor (who would query “certain procedures” in an offhand manner and tell you to come back next month). Another, signalled by the guard throwing up both outspread hands, unspokenly commanded you to stand in the “10-day” line if you had not received payment in the promised period.

It ended, as we had guessed, after eight months. Some monthly payments never arrived, supervisor be damned, and on September 21 I was told the Department of Labour’s largesse had been exhausted. Ten working days later (yes, exactly!) I was delivered my final handout.

I had spent most of 2015 in a strange moral quandary. The application form each month required a declaration that you had not been “employed” since last applying. What did it mean?

The 58-year-old bloke who once sat next to me, neat in slacks and lounge shirt, whose application form (guiltily espied) said he earned R10 000 a month as a driver before he was made redundant — what if he ferried a passenger here and there for pocket money? Had he therefore been “employed” and was guilty of fraud?

How about the many, many young claimants in beanies and low-slung jeans: what if they hopped on a bakkie and did some piece-work on a building site for a few days? Blowed if I knew.

As a washed-up journalist, I delayed writing this story until I could righteously declare that I had not contracted a “job”, of the type I once enjoyed, while claiming UIF benefits.

That does not mean I didn’t scrape beer-and-fags change by joining my fellow jetsam to pen the odd ream of public-relations guff. The nature of PR, bless it, is to always look on the bright side. These days that must be worth something. LS

This hip-cocked turkey would stand there: cheap flared denims and neck tattoo She teeters, as do we all, between humility and humiliation; dignity and indignation