In 2012, we made a conscious decision to emigrate from South Africa to New Zealand, mostly for personal reasons. The procedure involves a formal process which kicks off with the submission of a lengthy formal Expression of Interest. The applicant is required to submit certain original documents, one of which is the Birth Certificate. Here follows my account of part of my attempt to apply for such a document from the SA Department of Home Affairs (DHA):
If I may continue with my quest to obtain Unabridged Birth Certificates…
…Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?…
I glance down at my wrist-watch. 10:00am
I have tried the Atlantis DHA office, but it appears that the sole employee is simply a law unto himself, and one would do better by buying a Lottery ticket than taking a bet on whether he would be at work on any particular day.
I have therefore considered the situation in detail and very carefully, and, after two minutes deliberation, I have decided that I shall try the DHA office in Bellville, Boston Estate to be precise – quite an upmarket old Apartheid stronghold in the Northern suburbs – I guess that they should cater for the professional likes of someone like me – wearing my black public service attire.
So, off to work with me and this afternoon I will concentrate on Boston. It’s about 25 minutes’ drive from Atlantis to our office in Century City. On a good day.
This was not one of them, as I hit a road-block less than 5 km outside Atlantis. They call it a ‘Ride-Go’ for some reason: I would think of it as a ‘Wait-Stop’. They use a number of ladies to man the two end of the length of rural road under construction. I use the word ‘construction’ loosely, as it really consisted of five or six men standing next to their vehicles chatting.
Used to ride the highway
I used to know where I was going
Now this shady dirt road is feelin' cool beneath my feet
Used to ride on
To get to where I was going in a day
Now I've got to stop
And go and stop and go along the way
I come to a halt at the huge ‘STOP’ sign. I am second in the queue, behind a huge blue truck, the driver with radio volume at 9.5, was rapping to the oomp-chooka, oomp-chooka, oomp-chooka! Will they never find anything resembling music?
Sniff, sniff! Urgghh! My early morning stomach heaves. The most horrendous feeling. Three other vehicles draw up behind me, and there’s no chance of a possible exit in any direction. The huge blue truck is merrily discharging liquid from all corners upon the tarmac surface.
Liquid rotten fish, or special shark bait dead fish, or hyaena/hyena lure most aptly described the liquid. The stomach heaved once more. My stomach. So, I held my breath.
I’m not good at holding my breath. I eventually surrendered and gulped down a lung-full of the foul air, but held my nose tightly closed until my nostrils pained. It didn’t have the effect I’d hoped for, though.
“About twenty minutes or so.”
This was the terrible news I extracted from one of the ‘Ride-Go’ lady attendants, who was quite obviously oblivious of any odour in the air, let alone the vapour of death! “The road is closed for about twenty minutes, or maybe a half-hour at a time,” she advised in answer to my question.
Suddenly, my ordeal in the Urine Wing of the Altantis DHA office did not seem half bad anymore.
3:00pm
I’d finished my trip from Atlantis to the office without further mishap, spent a reasonably successful half-day writing many letters to various property owners about all sorts of aspects of the properties and answering their queries.
It is now 3:02pm and I am easing into a parking bay outside a barber’s shop in Boston Street. I drive a Toyota – not a new Toyota, but a model which is particularly popular with young Xhosa men who love them for their reliability and taxi properties. If you’re a Toyota driver, you always make sure that you park where you are least likely to be minus a car when you get back. Of course, I had no guarantee of safety in this spot, but it was the best one on offer, and time was running out.
Three minutes later I was approaching the DHA building in Voortrekker Road. Ahead of me was a group of youngsters – I’m always wary of such situations, so I push my ID book deeper into the safety of my pocket.
The pavement is quite narrow between the shop-front and the parking kerb. There is an amputee sitting in a flimsy ramshackle of a wheel-chair, his back to the shop-front. The other three are gathered on each side, like a Roman arena. Wheel-chair guy has his pants undone and is busy spraying urine across the pavement, trying to reach the window of the parked vehicle. The steady stream and resultant yellow pool is unbelievable – what had this fellow been drinking? There is much merriment, and the group members are totally oblivious of me, as I step off the pavement and dodge a couple of taxis in the traffic in an effort to avoid any of the wind-blown pee.
At the DHA mall entrance, six over-friendly photographers of various ethnic groups fairly assault me, in an effort to get my business. I protest, “I don’t need photos, I am going to get certificates.. Sorry, no thanks…”
They all seem to think that their’s are the best passport photos available in the world. And at such a bargain price, too!
At the bottom of the stairs up to the DHA hall, I am accosted by about a dozen ragged urchins, some seem no more than four or five. There are a couple large motherly women half-lying virtually across the step, with blankets and shopping bags. Probably waiting for friends?
I manage to negotiate my way to the top. It’s 3:10 – that leaves me 50 minutes to get my chore done.
The hall is noisy, the rays of the slanting sun through the dusty atmosphere of the huge double-volume service venue. My ears close and I can hardly hear anything other than the blood pumping in my head.
There’s a single reception queue on the left, manned by a tiny Indian lady wearing a colourful sari, protected from the jostling noisy crowd by a stout steel mesh grid.There must be more than fifty people standing or sitting in this reception queue.
I spot a security guard leaning against a pillar near the back of the hall. “Hi, young fellow, how are you this lovely afternoon,” I enquire.
He looks quizzically at this strange white man, “No, fine.”
“Look,” I move a bit closer, but not too close, “I simply need to fill in an application for a certificate and pay them some money. I do not want my fingerprints and ID or Passport, just to pay for the Certificate…”
It turns out that there is simply one choice in this place. Go to the back of the Welcome queue. And don’t be in a hurry. It won’t help. It was another one of those Ride/Go situations.
It seemed as if half the city’s population was in the hall. People of all ethnicities, colours, shapes and ages. Or perhaps they simply live there, it was hard to tell. There were groups having picnics of Kentucky Fried Chicken, there were those simply drinking from cans of coke and lying against the wall. I wondered where these people relieved themselves, as there seemed to be no sign of ablution facilities.
The strong smell of urine under the stairs in the entrance foyer… now I understood.
There were three nanny mothers breastfeeding their young. What’s the chances of that happening elsewhere in the world? Three at once.
Over in the corner, a large mother has beating the living day-lights out of an impossible nipper, who simply couldn’t wait a week or two like the rest of the population. She stopped the beating and looked around. She wiped the perspiration from her forehead, and then she climbed into him again for making such a noise with his crying.
It appeared that no-one had the courage to come to the aid of the kid, in fear of being beaten up as well!
There are a few other queues at other metal grid windows, but it is quite evident that they as for phase 2 customers – those lucky folk who have waited in the welcome queue, who then got their forms filled out and paid their fees. The elderly Portuguese fisherman explained this process to me in broken English.
“You must be prepared to wait maybe one days, maybe two. That’s what I am trying to say all the time…It is not too easy, that’s what I’m trying to say. Understand?”
I thanked him with a cheerful smile, and wished him the very best of luck. Hell, what a life. I am so lucky!
Dear reader – I have a confession, and I’m not proud of it. I am impatient.
I will attempt to get my unabridged certificates at some other DHA office – maybe Guernsey or perhaps possibly somewhere in Alaska? I turn, wave a farewell at the young security guard and the Portuguese fisherman and leave the hole of hell.
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