no way to run a country
Saturday, 13 January 2007 04:10 pmSo, my unfortunate father is sitting immured in the wilds of rural southern France1 without a passport. He's eligible for South African citizenship, and has applied for ID and a passport. This took place at the end of May last year. The process is supposed to take two months. The South African embassy in Paris has a "don't call us, we'll call you" policy even in the face of a 7-month delay. So I undertook to try and apply gunpowder and ginger and other galvanants to the process from this end.
I've tried the local Home Affairs number in Cape Town every day this week, at a tasteful array of times: it simply rings endlessly until it cuts out. The government website has a great deal of cheery information about ID and passports, and a whole bunch of contact numbers for the Pretoria head office. I've rung them all. Half of them give the long beep signal which means they no longer exist; the other half simply ring endlessly until they cut out (see above).
Either (a) everyone with any actual ability to answer a phone is still on holiday, or (b) it's a particularly nasty and baroque plot to ensure that the only way of doing anything is to actually physically go to a home affairs office. There they will force you to queue for anything up to six hours for the privilege of being passed from desk to desk staffed with minions with a fine grasp of the nuances of ignorant incompetence. Eventually you will reach an inner sanctum where your brain, cleverly reduced to liquid form by the waiting process, will be sucked out through your ears and used to feed the incomprehensible alien overlord who staffs and runs the rat-maze simulation which is our government bureaucracy. The jelly-form alien parasite with which they replace the lost grey matter will send your empty, mind-wiped shell shuffling zombie-like back into the world, unable to protest at the horror of it all. You'll never find out what happened to the application. My best guess is alien toilet paper.
The current plan is to call the Ghostbusters2 and kick the doors down at 8am sharp on Monday morning. With rocket launchers. I ain't taking no lip from alien overfiends.
1 Tormented by wine, duck, pâté, scenery, la belle langue and the complete inability to visit family. It is a significant point in favour of my family life that he doesn't consider all of the above to be cause for rejoicing. Reason #1784562 why I really want a proper job that will pay me enough to actually travel.
2 Or possibly the dreaded stv, whose uncanny resemblance to Simon Pegg has to make him good for both zombie butt-kicking and a certain amount of expertise with alien overlords.
I've tried the local Home Affairs number in Cape Town every day this week, at a tasteful array of times: it simply rings endlessly until it cuts out. The government website has a great deal of cheery information about ID and passports, and a whole bunch of contact numbers for the Pretoria head office. I've rung them all. Half of them give the long beep signal which means they no longer exist; the other half simply ring endlessly until they cut out (see above).
Either (a) everyone with any actual ability to answer a phone is still on holiday, or (b) it's a particularly nasty and baroque plot to ensure that the only way of doing anything is to actually physically go to a home affairs office. There they will force you to queue for anything up to six hours for the privilege of being passed from desk to desk staffed with minions with a fine grasp of the nuances of ignorant incompetence. Eventually you will reach an inner sanctum where your brain, cleverly reduced to liquid form by the waiting process, will be sucked out through your ears and used to feed the incomprehensible alien overlord who staffs and runs the rat-maze simulation which is our government bureaucracy. The jelly-form alien parasite with which they replace the lost grey matter will send your empty, mind-wiped shell shuffling zombie-like back into the world, unable to protest at the horror of it all. You'll never find out what happened to the application. My best guess is alien toilet paper.
The current plan is to call the Ghostbusters2 and kick the doors down at 8am sharp on Monday morning. With rocket launchers. I ain't taking no lip from alien overfiends.
1 Tormented by wine, duck, pâté, scenery, la belle langue and the complete inability to visit family. It is a significant point in favour of my family life that he doesn't consider all of the above to be cause for rejoicing. Reason #1784562 why I really want a proper job that will pay me enough to actually travel.
2 Or possibly the dreaded stv, whose uncanny resemblance to Simon Pegg has to make him good for both zombie butt-kicking and a certain amount of expertise with alien overlords.