Rant on State Inefficiency

Today I went to the very centre of the city.

I spent four hours on foot, dodging bad taxi drivers and trying to maintain a 360° view so as to prevent becoming a snatch and run victim. I also spent those 4 hours being one of only two white South Africans in, say, a 1km radius.

Now, I know I've been living in South Africa my whole life, but... I was scared. Scared because I could see the shapes of revolvers in some men's pockets. Scared because I didn't like the way the young boys tried rubbing up on me. Scared because, I guess, I wasn't quite used to the kind of streets I was now traipsing through.

I think I started getting used to it though.

What I couldn't get used to, though, was the complete inefficiency.

It took the lady at the court half an hour to make a photocopy of someone's ID in the room next door. Home affairs, Social Service Agencies and the courthouse: they all have ridiculously long queues, buildings that are in such a state that they should be deemed inhabitable and employees who have close to no clue what they are doing.

And they seem to take tea breaks every half-hour.

I understand fully that with our economy, things are not always available as they should be, and people don't always have the education they should have. Fine.

But is it that difficult to send a clerk or any other employee to a course to teach them to look at people when they talk to you? BECAUSE I CAN'T HEAR YOU WHEN YOU ARE TALKING TO THE FLOOR!

At home affairs, the lady taking my details almost declared me MALE! Which must mean she was obviously paying no attention to my decisively female voice or the fact that I was wearing pretty earrings and a shiny hairband and makeup for pete's sake. It's not that difficult.

And at social services nobody had any idea what we were talking to and when we asked someone if his name was so-and-so, he gave us an ugly look, said, "yes, so?" and walked on.

Yes, verrrry professional.

Now, dear government, if I am expected to go on a course with my domestic helper so that we can understand each other's language better, why can you not send your employees on courses to make them more efficient.

It's not rocket science!

After today I am fed up and just about hopeless. I am actually surprised that anything gets done in this country.

Because even if I one day figured out a way of solving some of our country's problems, there would probably be too much beaurocracy and inefficiency to put it in place.