Spitting mad over red tape

The one “good” thing about being a former colony should surely be that we get to jettison the things we don’t like from our past, while choosing what we will keep, thank you very much.

I say yes to gin and broekie lace on houses, yes to high tea, castles, wine-making, and waterborne sewerage.

However, sometimes we get wobbly about what not to keep. We get excitable about symbolic things – statues, street names – but cling to others for no discernible reason, like colonial school uniforms, titles, pomp and circumstance and rules for the sake of rules.

And bureaucracy, the endless form-filling, soul-sucking South African bureaucracy.

I was reminded of this when my son’s passport got lost. Or quite possibly it was never found. Maybe it never existed at all. Who can tell?

Two years ago, I noticed his old passport would shortly expire.

The London High Commission warns of a four-month turnaround, but I’m in Ireland – not part of the UK, for those who haven’t been paying attention for the last 100 years – and so we applied via the Dublin embassy on December 9, 2016. Yes, 2016. Then we waited. And waited. And still we wait. On March 30, 2017, I sent the first of many e-mails to the embassy requesting information.

In June I tried again. Ah yes, they would submit an inquiry to home affairs.

Ditto July, when they submitted another inquiry, having had no response to the first.

And then in September, December, February, May, June, July, September ...

I have sent 28 e-mails. I have received 23. I have spoken to the embassy staff on the phone several times.

I have been advised not to reapply because, should our first application have been gobbled up by the SA bureaucratic behemoth, a second will throw everything into confusion, the “system” will flag a potential fraud, and the process will grind to a halt while there’s an investigation. This could take several more months, even years.

Two weeks ago, I finally sent an official written complaint to home affairs. The response? Why, they’re investigating of course ...

Meanwhile, I’m looking for a statue to tear down.