Getting a licence to smile…

‘Don’t lose your temper …” were my wife’s words as I left the house. After 30-odd years, she knows me well. And she has seen the evidence of my Irish short-fused temper when I come up against inefficiency … and particularly bureaucratic inefficiency.

So, she didn’t expect it to end well as I headed off to the Randburg licensing department to renew my driver’s licence. She knew it hadn’t started well two weeks previously, when I first tried to do it. After standing in a line for 20 minutes (it never moved at all in that time), with my pre-printed and filled-in forms, I went up to the reception counter to check whether I had everything I needed.

“Is closed,” was the response from a surly jeans-wearing clerk, not even bothering to move from his “civil service slouch” position. Apparently, they were only taking 300 or so fortunates per day, which was all the inefficient system could manage.

“So, it didn’t occur to you to put up a sign saying that?” I raged before stomping off, dropping words you wouldn’t hear in church…

Round Two saw me arriving just after 7am, hoping to get a good place in the queue ahead of the 7.30am opening time. A total of 46 people ahead of me (we were later each given a number, scribbled on our forms) had the same idea. Oh well … at least I had a book, a newspaper and social media via my phone.

I expected to watch paint dry for most of the day, having seen comments on Facebook from friends who tried earlier in the week, after the offices had switched over to “new machines”.

Suddenly the line lurched, and we went forward … right on to the stairs to the First Floor. I felt I could reach out and touch that Heaven. Little did I know that the Pearly Gates of the Randburg licensing department were still two and a half hours in my future.

Talk to people in the line, said my wife. That will help the time pass. My wife talks to anyone, anywhere, any time. Even though I’m a journalist, it still takes me some time to break the ice.

Soon, the conversation was of the “just another day in Joburg” variety: a woman described being held up at gunpoint in her home. The thugs made off with most of her valuable possessions and documents (including driver’s licence), as well as her bank card, threatening that if she gave them the wrong PIN number, they would return and rape her. To emphasise the point, they left one robber behind.

Fortunately, he didn’t know how to work his gun, she said, recalling how she’d said: “Just shoot me, then!”

Then we all talked – we being northern suburbs whiteys – about our kids. One in Amsterdam, one in London, one in Houston. And the time did go by. In just under three hours (and I was Number 47 in line, remember?) I was done.

Handing over my documents and money, I had to lean closer as the cashier said something. I thought one little bureaucratic box hadn’t been ticked properly and I would have to go back. “That’s a nice picture,” she smiled.

Sorry?

“You look good in that picture …”

Thank you ma’am … even if your sweetness exceeds your taste.

I’m still smiling.

Citizen acting deputy editor Brendan Seery