I have written positively about my experiences with the Randburg branch of the Department of Home Affairs previously.  Unfortunately, the situation is no longer as it was and I think to a large extent that relates to the problems that have now developed with the requirements in terms of full unabridged birth certificates.  Parents now need these to travel with their children and it has led to a surge of people at all of the various branches.  The queues are ridiculously long and I’ve had staff members standing in queues for up to 5 hours before being “assisted”.  One has very little success with the Director-General, Mkuseli Apleni, who proudly advertises his contact details on posters throughout the branches, but if you call him you will get a different story.  When one of my staff called him he told them that while it was his department, the particular thing she was phoning him about, which was citizenship, was not something that he oversaw – which is a rather peculiar answer if it is his department!

I have written approximately four or five letters to him over a span of a few months and I have yet to receive the courtesy of even a reply from him.  His department is in a shambles, and when the rock starts it normally starts at the top and when you have somebody who does not reply to their correspondence and cannot even delegate somebody to actually reply to it, if he is amazingly busy, one can hardly expect that your staff members are going to keep a proper work ethos.  It brings to mind the tragic story of a young man who committed suicide outside one of the branches some years ago, because they would not give him an identity document, and the reality is that in any Western democracy if such a terrible incident had occurred, heads would have rolled and I would not be surprised if the Director-General would have been fired.  It is a pity in South Africa that similar action is so seldom taken.