Home Affairs

Apologies, I know I haven't blogged in ages. Mainly because blogger.com has been giving me hassles. But also because I have been powering on with work - I have quite a serious amount of work to do at the moment!!

Now blogger.com seems to be working again, so I resolved to blog. But I keep starting posts and then losing focus.

There is just one thing I do want to comment on though. I stumbled across this article on iol. It is about a young guy who managed to get a job, he just needed to produce his ID book to start working. But Home Affairs messed him around, told him he couldn't get it for whatever reason. And he ended up committing suicide.

My flat mate said she saw Minister Dlamini-Zuma speaking about it on TV. The minister was broken about it, tearful.

And you know, I am sure that she is a caring lady. And of course, of course, she isn't personally responsible for this tragedy.

But to be honest (and a bit brutal) I think it is about time that these kinds of high up officials realise what their departments are doing. When things aren't working, when ID books are getting lost or sold, taking months and years to process, when work permits are withheld for no reason other than the belligerence of Home Affairs staff who want a few hundred bucks for the effort of giving you the correct forms. When these government departments are messing up, people's lives are being messed up. People rely on the services of these departments. When they are not working, it causes people real problems.

It is not a small problem. It is a huge problem that impacts on many people's lives.

A kid I know has spent close to four years (FOUR YEARS!!! FOUR YEARS!!!) trying to get his ID document sorted out. He must be about 20ish. Somehow his name and ID number have been duplicated by someone in Joburg. Does this mean that some Home Affairs official in Joburg sold his ID so someone? I have no idea. But what it does mean for him is that Home Affairs still won't give him an actual ID book. Which means that his NSFAS student loan keeps refusing to pay his fees. Which means his results get withheld. It means he nearly lots his pace in residence at the beginning of this year, and very nearly lost it again this term. I've been helping him shout at people about this for the past 7 months. To no avail. Still no ID book, still empty promises by Home Affairs.

Come back after two weeks, he is told. How many months or years do you keep that up?

So I say, yes, Mrs Minister, stand in front of the TV and cry. Go home and lie in your bed and cry. Not because this is your personal fault, of course not. But because there are people crying all over our country because of your department. There are people who queue over and over again, only to be told to go away. There are people who travel long distances to get to their nearest Home Affairs office, only to be met with unyielding bureaucracy, with closed doors, with inefficient systems and disinterested people. There are people who eventually resort to buying IDs, work permits, residency papers. Not because they are corrupt people, but because the only way to get things done is to grease people's palms. And if you have no money to buy them... well, sorry for you.

We know you just stepped into your job. We appreciate that you really seem committed to it. We really hope you do well. We really hope you manage to turn things around.

But for the moment, we want you to cry. Every day we want you to go into the office under the weight of the helplessness and hopelessness of thousands of South Africans who contend with your department. And then we want you to fix it.

And then we will rejoice with you.




* I just found a more detailed story about the Minster's response here. "She said the department was a "difficult" one, which had never had a proper culture of service." - indeed!

A question on blank spoiled votes

Question for the floor:

I heard today that there were a surprisingly high number of blank spoiled votes in the April election in the GHT region.

Was this because:

a) These were people who did not want to vote (for whatever reason) but felt they needed to be seen to vote, because of real or perceived intimidation.

b) These were people who had supported the ANC in the past and perhaps still support the ANC, and who believe in the importance of voting, but felt they could not vote for the ANC in this particular election (for whatever reason). But out of loyalty to the ANC they also could not vote for another party.

c) These were people who believe in the importance of voting but felt that their views and concerns were not represented by any of the parties on the ballot.

d) Other reasons (please expand!)


I'm curious because at the talk where I heard this fact, people proposed a couple of reasons for the blank votes. And I had my own thoughts. And I'd be interested to hear what other people think...

Whats happening to our server?

My brother John is a geek. He finished his Computer Science Masters earlier in the year, on artificial intelligence and it's application to internet worms (or some such thing). Now he works in Jobug spending half his life writing perl scripts and the other half driving to and from his job. He blogs about his semigration** to Joburg here.

The other day he sent me a transcript of an internet conversation he had with a friend. South African current affairs in geek speak...

(11:40:06) Alex: maybe if we had competent governement... oh wait, thats a pipe dream
(11:40:22) John: Dude, a lot of the current government is competent.
(11:40:26) John: Some parts aren't great.
(11:40:38) John: But quite a lot of it is, at least, substantially improved.
(11:40:49) Alex: well.. i guessd their not entirely incompitent.. but i think they should be the best
(11:41:05) John: Think about this for a second:
(11:41:10) John: If you were running a server.
(11:41:17) John: And it permanently ran at 10% load.
(11:41:30) John: And that's all you'd ever had, so you'd never been able to test it.
(11:41:40) John: And suddenly it hits 98% load.
(11:41:43) John: What is the server going to do?
(11:41:51) John: What's gonna happen?
(11:41:56) Alex: very likely fall over
(11:42:00) John: No.
(11:42:07) John: The term you're looking for is "undefined behaviour"
(11:42:11) John: It might handle it.
(11:42:12) Alex: ah
(11:42:14) John: It might fall over.
(11:42:15) John: Now.
(11:42:39) John: Our government, 15 years ago, catered for 10% of the populace. Then, in the course of about two years, began to cater for more like 98%.
(11:42:51) John: You wonder why home affairs queues are so long?
(11:43:00) Alex: yeh true


** John tells me that semigrating is moving withing your own country, but to an area that is so different that it feels like you have moved to a new country. Semigrating, like emigrating, only semi-emigrating... The jump from East London to Joburg is apparently big enough to feel like you have moved to a whole new country - semigrating!