There’s No Place Like Home Affairs – Passport Nightmare Leads to Hope in Pretoria

The last month has been a very interesting trial in patience and acceptance, as well as a tremendous learning curve on what South Africa is really like. I live outside the country and thus get all my news on our country via the media…and it’s not good.

It began in December with a lost passport during a holiday in Europe and me hurtling off to the South African Embassy in Paris for a solution. I was told I had two options: 1) Apply for a new passport right there in Paris, and then wait around for four months for the new one. Yeah right. 2) Get a quick Emergency Travel Document and go to South Africa and apply and wait a mere two to three weeks.

The Emergency Travel Document took six days to issue, but in the defence of the Embassy, there was a weekend in the middle.

A trip to South Africa to get a new passport was next. I had not been back for a while and the media had had its way with me… a country of rampant crime, corrupt leadership, a ruling party that’s lost sight of its ideals, mad driving, a plummeting currency… chaos.

I even decided to leave my good camera behind because I was sure to be mugged when I stepped out of the door.

Online research on the passport application process is awkward and difficult. The Department of Home Affairs gives poor information and they certainly don’t answer their phones as a rule.

So I relied on the review sites for my ‘How To’ advice, and they present a picture that leaves you wondering if it wouldn’t be better to just apply for refugee status with the UN.

I arrived in South Africa and stayed with an old friend who works for government as Deputy Director General in the Department of Higher Education. Herein started my first revelation. As we all know the universities have been in a state of chaos with the #feesmustfall campaign. The media runs riot with stories of how uncaring the government is over the issue.

Well, my experience has been something quite different.

Over the last 19 days I have seen first hand how the Deputy Director General, the Director General and the Minister of Higher Education have been working themselves to the bone. What I’ve seen are people who truly care. They have been in meetings, radio talks, and TV interviews all day, everyday, often starting at 6.30am and sometimes finishing the last one at 10.30pm.

As far as I can see they have met with every elected and legitimate student body and university organization that there is, and certainly my friend has done so with dedication and commitment. My very strong impression is that they have been doing this because they really, genuinely care for the universities in this country.

Yes 19 days in the country for the new passport, that’s not too bad I suppose. It started out pretty bad though.

On the first day I picked my way hesitantly through the traffic to the Home Affairs Office in Centurion, Pretoria. I didn’t get hijacked, my second string cheap camera did not get stolen and I even found the minibus taxi drivers quite polite. But then I do live in Tanzania.

I presented myself at the Centurion Office and found a queue that ran 250 yards OUTSIDE the building and down the road!

Of course being South Africans, the banter was entertaining and the sense of cameraderie was tremendous. Vendors had set themselves up along the pavement, some selling cooldrinks and others taking passport photographs.

Some applicants had brought along deck chairs, sun umbrellas and cold boxes. My good humoured new queue buddy commented that we should set up a stall selling boerewors rolls. We certainly had a captive market.

I arrived at the tail end of the queue at 7.15 am and finally got to enter the building, somewhat sunburned, at 10.45 am to join the next set of queues.

When finally I got to the counter at around midday and got my application processed, the very professional and calm official told me they would send me an sms when it was time to collect my passport in about ten weeks.

Ten weeks!

With a sense of looming bankruptcy, I tried to explain that I live outside the country and that I could not stay away from work that long. I explained that I was not earning money while I was away from work. I explained that I could have applied from France or Tanzania but had been told to come here because it would only take two to three weeks.

But the woman behind the counter smiled sweetly and told me that it was beyond her control and they would send me an sms in about ten weeks, then looked over my shoulder and shouted “Next…”.

I spent the next five days sweeping the website of the Department of Home Affairs looking for numbers and trying to get someone helpful. I made a hundred phone calls that went mostly unanswered. I found a hotline that I could not get through on. On about day three I found a number where you can give someone your ID number and they trace the progress of your application. Mine had not even been started yet.

There were even a couple of red herrings. I found a person who listened very patiently and understood the situation, and then emailed two officials at The Centurion Office and copied me in. No reply. I emailed them as well. No reply. She emailed them a second time. No reply. Despair was following closely behind hope at each turn.

One thing that did impress me, was that I could find the phone numbers and email addresses of all the important people in the Department.

Now I just had to get one of them to answer their phone. By now I was trying everyone, and finally got hold of a man, who I think was the Director of Communications for the Department! He told me that he was the wrong person, which of course he was, but that he would sms me another number.

Click, the phone went dead.

A despair moment. I was just about to start my research again when a message came through. He had sent me the number of Albert. I forget who Albert is, but he was important and he was in a grump that day: “Ten weeks is rubbish. NAMES. Names, I need names” he barked. Just as I was about to also become aggressive, he said “Hold on” and was gone.

Soon he was back and on a three way call with an angel! Her name is Baba Mlenzana, she is the Regional Director for Tshwane, and from that moment on she took over the case with grace and good humour that totally disarmed me.

Baba told me she would try her hardest to get it ready for me in a week so that I would not get fired from my job. She went to the Centurion Office and cracked the whip. She returned every phone call and sms and told me that she would not let me down. I also spoke to her Personal Assistant Elsa Van Der Merwe, who walked outside to another set of offices to follow up on the progress, and then phoned me back.

And sure enough one week later my passport was ready.

I collected it and for the next two days was still getting phone calls from the Centurion offices checking if I had got my passport! All in, once  Baba and later Elsa stepped into the fray, it took exactly one week.

I will never lose my passport again, promise.

These past 19 days have shown me another side to South Africa, a side that is seldom shown in the press, which seems to be becoming more irresponsible and sensation-seeking as each year goes by.

It has also shown me that the hysterical howling on social media is even more irresponsible. Few people deny that we have big leadership problems in South Africa, but what I’ve seen is that there are also some very good people working for government, people who care and who work very hard indeed.

For those of us who were university students during the apartheid era, can you imagine if we had demanded a meeting with the Minister of Higher Education? Firstly we would been told to go to hell and secondly, if we had got the meeting and then walked out halfway through, we would have been thrown in jail!