New law is a strange attempt to save the post office

Whenever you walk into the post office to renew your car licence and they say that they don’t have paper or the machines are down; obviously that’s because the post office isn’t empowered to do enough. Presumably, the law doesn’t allow them to buy their own paper or to function in the modern age. At least, that’s the reason we’re being fed for the introduction of the South African Post Office SOC Ltd Amendment Bill.

Because what do you do with an entity that can’t do what’s asked of it? Expand its mandate of course. Now you’ll be able to delight in the disappointment of even more services available but inaccessible. Remember how great it was when the post office launched its online motor vehicle licence renewal a few years back? Try go to that website now. I had no idea that maintaining an existing website required some legislative intervention.

According to the presser, “The new law enables the post office to serve as a hub for government services and other agency services, and as a digital hub for businesses and communities”. Forgive me, but I was unaware that the post office wasn’t allowed to be a hub for government services until now.

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It’s splendid to know that there is a desire to address the over-reliance on government funding for the post office and it is going to be making its own money. Question is, why hadn’t it before? Why is it that even government agencies have to be tempted by legislation to prefer lesser services from a failing government entity?

Remember when you could get your Sassa grant at the post office? Remember when you would get notifications of your parcels arriving instead of having to go check? Remember when going to the post office was never a shlep? Did all these things change because the law wasn’t adequate? History may suggest that that’s not the case.

So will changes in law save the post office? Probably not. Certainly not without some actual organisation but no amount of law can make that happen.

That’s not the most curious thing though. What government services do they envisage these legal changes will provide? What could the post office possibly offer on behalf of the government when we have the memory of the services they used to offer and no longer do?

Is the post office going to email a monthly newsletter or government gazette digitally? Are they going to set up a small business courier service that will magically be better, cheaper and more accessible than those that exist in the private sector? Why in all the years of the problems of the post office have we only heard now that the stumbling block is the legal framework. It seems fishy to me… the kind of fishy when you try post a snoek from Kalk Bay and it eventually arrives in Gauteng.

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If the state was really serious about supporting small businesses then an awkward legislative change that means very little is not as helpful as offering free invoicing software or having a centralised national jobs board/database. But, you know, that means that some real work would have to be done. It’s not like there’s a State Information and Technology Agency or anything.

At some point, you need to actually action some plans but that doesn’t seem to be one of our strengths. I guess that’s why it’s taken years for Transnet to finally decide that it can open its network to the private sector… at least what’s left of it.

Imagine if we actually prioritised seeing results. Imagine what results we’ll be getting from the post office after this new law. Keep imagining.