Got an address? Prove it

You need proof of address. What do you do?

My friend is staying in my house having just sold her own, and will be for the next few months, while she waits for the purchase of her new house to make its way through layers of bureaucracy seemingly laid down when post was delivered on horseback, by a man in a cocked hat who said things like: “Forsooth, here be thine missive, fair lady.”

The first request from the property lawyers is for her proof of address. But I just sold my house, says she.

So where are you living, they ask. At a friend’s, she says – you can send all correspondence there.

Proof of address

But we need proof of that, they say – because if you’re homeless, then apparently you can’t buy a home – and coming around for a cuppa and to check her clothes are in the wardrobe is not an option they’re willing to consider.

Instead they need my proof of address, they say, and an affidavit from me signed at the police station saying she’s living in my house.

Huh? Right… So I look up my municipal bills, which come via e-mail. They list water, electricity and rates, but there’s a problem: they don’t list my address.

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Postal address

Instead, the address given is my parent’s old postal address, defunct since last year when the post office boxes in the local shopping centre in Benoni randomly shut down.

Instead, my mum had to go to a room at another post office between 9am and noon on weekdays, where a harried clerk surrounded by piles of letters looked like he might cry.

He needed to check her ID too, which she left behind in his paper mountain never to be seen again. But that’s another story. She never went back.

Are letters still a thing?

Does anyone use the South African postal service any more? I doubt it, not for sending letters. We use e-mail and apps for bills and couriers for anything physical, carrier pigeons at a push, but putting a stamp on a letter and into a box?

Tell the kids that and they won’t believe you! So my canny friend changed the address online of one of her accounts, printed out a statement and… voila! Proof of address.

And proof of nothing at all, except that, forsooth, the system isn’t working.

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