Home affairs and the psyche of identity

Reading the harrowing IOL article about a 24 year old woman who was driven to suicide because of an ID book delay reminded me of Athol Fugard's Sizwe Banzi is dead, an excellent play I went to see last year at the Baxter theatre. Written 30 or so years ago, starring Winston Ntshona and John Kani, the play deals with issues around identity and the ramifications of the lack of it to the psyche. Set in the apartheid pass-law hey-days, a man unable to get a job due to not having a pass, ends up assuming the identity of a dead person in order to survive.

I am sure for many, the article could also have also reminded them of the story about the 21 year old Kabelo Thibedi who held a Home affairs department ransom with a toy gun in November 2005 demanding the details of his ID to be corrected, after having waited for an initial issue for a number of years, and having struggled for 3 years to have the details corrected. The frustrated Kabelo Thibedi had lost academic and job opportunities due to not having an ID. The 24 year old woman who had similar frustrations as Kabelo wrote in an emotional suicide note: "I am going to rest with my father, where I will not be asked for my ID".

While we are sometimes sympathetic to Home Affairs given the the legacy that they inherited post-1994, the reality that it still takes so long for many people to get their identity documents so that they can find jobs and other opportunities remain disturbing. An ID is both a legal token of citizenship and identity in South Africa, these two cases demonstrate a torrent of frustration in the psyche of thousands of bona-fides whose citizenship and identity is not acknowledged due to inefficiency, lack of competence and corruption.

With the capable Mavuso Msimang as the new Director-General of Home affairs and the newly appointed turnaround action team headed by Kevin Wakeford to fast-track addressing the bureaucratic inefficiencies and curb corruption, one can only hope it will be easier to legally obtain citizenship that to buy it; and that hostage or suicides cases and other humiliations that are attributed to issues outside the immediate periphery of legal identity will become things of the past. Hopefully sooner than later!

Solidarity.

Ousmane Sembène: A personal appreciation

About two weeks or so ago, I went to the local second-hand book shop and picked up a few excellent books by African scholars with themes ranging from the post-independence discourse (Marechera) , the feminist bloc (Emecheta's Joys of Motherhood) to the Marxist challenge (Ousmane Sembène's God's Bits of Wood) and a few plays by Athol Fugard.

From the collection, Ousmane Sembène's epic novel God's Bits of Wood caught my attention and I have been reading it ever since. In God's Bits of Wood, the writer 'factionally' evinces the historic 1947 to 1948 railroad strike that took place in Senegal, the longest strike ever in the world in those times. Sembène, a Marxist thinker, was living in France before the stike, he went back to Senegal to join the railroad strikers in solidarity.

Sembène was born in the South of Senegal in 1923. He was highly acclaimed as a poet, short-story writer, novelist, essayist and later as a film maker. His well-researched work was centered around political and aesthetic debates around post-war decolonization & independence of West Africa and the shortcomings of modern African governments. He also explored the ironic contrasts between 'modern culture' and tradition.

Ever since I got hold of his book, I have been preoccupied with his work and have been doing some research around the 1947 railway strike. I was actually hoping to write do a posting contrasting the railway strike and the current public sector strike. It was with a heavy heart that I learnt this afternoon that he passed away after a long illness at the age of 84 on the 9th of June, just a few days ago.

With more than 8 films, 9 novels and countless essays and short stories, one can take solace from the legacy of his important contribution to post-colonial and modern debates in Francophone Africa.

Solidarity.

Propaganda: Does it thrive only on rhetoric?

South Africans are a very lyrical people. I am always amazed how we catch on very easily to certain phrases. I remember how after Shabir Shaik was convicted, the media got on with the phrase "Generally corrupt" like a squatter camp shack on fire. The phrase was big,it was used in a variety of contexts in bars, stokvels and other social gatherings. After a good weekend for an example, if someone would ask me how my weekend was, the reply would typically be "Generally corrupt", the query would have be adequately responded to.

Of perculiar concern, phrases currently doing the rounds are: The succession battle or The battle of the Soul of the ANC or The Polokwane conference or The presidential race. Our media has milked these out so much so that I get sick whenever I hear them. They frequently make headlines and advertisement billboards.

What really irks me about the articles that bear the above phrases in their headlines is that they are neither informative nor thoroughly researched and the format is consistent amongst most newspapers, to a point where I am beginning to suspect they are all written by the same person.

The format is simple: Get a a few potential ANC presidential candidates, write a bit about each candidate's profile, do a speculative discussion on a candidate's attributes on economic policy, leadership, support base and relations with the so called 'Left'. A superficial ranking on a candidate's chances is then made. There you have it, done! It works, It sells!

It is irrefutable that the ANC "succession race" or " the battle of the soul of the ANC" is an interesting topic for readers, what baffles me though is whether there is still interest in these stale articles. Could it be that the readers are just always hoping to get something different and new? I really think the whole ANC succession obsession is suppressing real debates.

Gatvol.

A bit harsh....

I ran into this piece rage a few weeks ago at the bathroom at Carnival Court (a bar & backpackers joint) on Long Street. I did not find it a corrective measure to discipline a typical five year old delinquent. A bit too harsh I thought.

Solidarity.

The Four Stages Of Life

bad_planning != open_source_is_bad

Well, even though I am not particularly passionate about my current job, I also take solace from the fact that at I am not one of the engineers who are bravely firefighting the eNaTis chaos that appears to me both as bad planning and an apparent lack of foresight. eNaTis is the government's ambitious plan to replace the previously inefficient and severely technically limited 14 year-old National Traffic Information System.(NaTIS).

While the government's motivation to replace the old system is both sound and logical, I think the way the roll out was planned and implemented was so rush-rush and ambitious that eNaTis' current unstableness not only irritates the public but the also seems to overshadow its intended initial benefits. eNatis was rolled out in provinces on a small scale in December 2006 then a National full-out national roll out performed on the 17th of April.

The pilot roll-out was marred by performance problems in that pilot phase, which clearly do not seem to had been properly resolved before the go-live date. Service delivery has obviously been severely affected. Also affected has been the Retail Motor Industry as they have reported lost in sales in the April/May period due to eNaTIs' erratic downtime. An unlikely casualty has been open source software, as eNatis is reported to have been implemented in Java, Redhat Linux and Jasper Reports (all open source projects).

Open source software has unfortunately become a casualty because of the perception that what is free can certainly not be reliable, hence cynics are quick to blame open source projects than the apparent failure in project planning and incremental piloting from the side of the government's and the eNatis developer.There are many successful open source projects: Google.com, Amazon.com, DaimlerChrysler, DreamWorks, US Department of Defense, to mention a few. It is both ill-informed and malicious to attribute the failure of badly planned project to the use of open source software.

Solidarity.

Too pleasant a banking experience

I am not sure if I am the only one, but whenever I am queuing at the the bank, the Post Office, or even chaotic traffic department in Greenpoint, I cannot help but always notice the inefficiencies in the logistical processes in these service places and in my boredom and irritation while waiting on the queue so I always conjure in my mind better ways in which they could improve the way they do things in to serve the customers (who they always claim come 1st) more efficiently.

I do not understand for example, I have to wait on a long queue for 20 minutes to buy a stamp at the Post Office, or to wait on three queues at the traffic department to replace a lost drivers license.I went to an FNB branch (my bank) this afternoon to collect a card and withdraw some cash ( that was 2 queues) only to be told that I could not withdraw the money yet as the money was still pending clearance, that in all, was about 45 minutes, my precious lunch hour gone!

From FNB (with a mild irritation), I had to go to a Standard Bank branch again to deposit some cash and was already pissed off thinking I might have to spent at least another 20 minutes. To my pleasure, that was not to happen, I was in-and-out in less than 5 minutes. In that 5 minutes, I had filled in the deposit form, queued and was assisted.

Too good to be true? Yes. You see, at Standard Bank branch I visited, they were doing a 'service-time measurement' survey, so when I entered the bank, I was given a magnetic card at the entrance and was explained to drop it off on exit. The card would be able to tell them how much time I would have spent at the branch. I took the card and looked at the clock to do my own counting.

After filling in the deposit form and joining a queue, a pretty lady wearing a well-fitting knee-length skirt with white high-heels was going around the queue and asking people how he can help them, when my turn came, I told her I had just come to do a simple cash deposit and was taken off from the queue gently escorted to an 'Express' till. The lady behind the till asked for my card (the one that I got at the entrance), scanned it and started helping me. After she had finished helping me, she scanned the card again on her side to record how long she had taken and gave me the card back so that I could hand it over at the exit. I was done!

When I left the bank, besides the fact that I was impressed with the technology they employed, I also left with a pleasant feeling that Standard Bank, or at least the branch I visited, cared about people who visit their branches. A few people in the branch too could not help but comment at the 'sudden' improvement in service delivery.

With the advent of online banking, teller banking took a big knock in my opinion as there became visible staff declines in branches. It felt good to know that Standard Bank was at least doing some formal research into how they can improve their branch banking. Perhaps your Post Offices, other banks, Traffic departments and most definitely Home Affairs would do well to take a leaf out of Standard Bank's book.

Big ups to Standard Bank!

Being on the safe side of the law....

I had a nightmare a few days ago. Here I was, in a very hazy mood, being arrested by the police for carrying something that is, lets say err... "illegal". I hardly remember my dreams but for this particular one, quite unfortunately, the memory still recurs.

Solidarity.

A necessary form of materialism?

According to Wikipedia, US marketing tags Valentine's day (a tradition that started in the Middle ages) as a Hallmark holiday, i.e. "a holiday that exists primarily for commercial purposes, rather than to commemorate a truly significant religious or secular event. The name comes from Hallmark cards, a company that presumably benefits from such manufactured events."

While business obviously makes a killing out of these days, one can only hope that the victims (in context) also salvage whatever feel-good sentimental little that they can out of the day.Whatever little, its fine, it does not matter.

Very soon we will be hit with Mother's day and Father's day posters in our shopping malls, both also Hallmark holidays, also accompanied by similarly concocted short-lived sentimental crap.

Friends & Lovers: Happy St. Valentine's!
Disclaimer: Sweetie, this posting does not apply to us :-)

Lala Ngoxolo Robert Kirby

It was with a lot of sadness that I learnt of the passing away of Robert Kirby, whom I had got to know and like through his M&G satirical political column Loose Cannon. While I had not met him, through reading his column over the years, I almost felt like I knew him very well, so much so that I felt like if we were in the same room, I would approach him and discuss a variety of issues.

Besides being a newspaper columnist, I learnt (with delightful surprise) that he had also worked in broadcasting, was a novelist and playwright. He died on Friday evening, apparently from a heart related disease.

Satirical journalism is almost non-existent in our print media, so it is in this vein that I feel Kirby will certainly be missed by his fans, mostly for being witty, comical and cynical.

May The Cannon retire in peace.