First published in the Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper.
The estimates of expired licences are huge, more than the broken system can accommodate. The system has been usurped, like so much else, by con artists and middlemen, who have bribed corrupt officials so that the only way a hapless motorist can renew their driver’s licence is to pay a bribe. It’s not even a secret.
Everybody knows. And, like so much else, nobody in government does anything about it. Inexplicably.
Just as I feared I would be made a criminal because the grace period would expire, Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula announced the amnesty would be extended until next year.
Finally, Mr Fix, as he loves to call himself, has been able to fix something – by kicking the problem down the road and extending the truce until next March. Meanwhile, over on Planet ANC they have the problem in hand. It’s all about motivation, is how I think Gauteng transport MEC Jacob Mamabolo was trying to explain.
I caught his 702 interview with Mandy Wiener, where he was holding forth on the “platforms” this service is available on. One is web-based, the other in an app and two are good old email.
I haven’t heard email called a platform for at least a decade, except by a government lackey caught in the crosshairs of media attention for failing to do his job at all. At the very least, one would imagine part of the job description of an MEC for transport, especially for the province that is the country’s economic heartland, is to make sure the corrupt criminals don’t break the system, and to actually get licences issued.
Mamabolo told Wiener that about 130,000 people hadn’t shown up for their appointments.
Is he the only person in the country who doesn’t know about the rampant corruption in the licensing system? In case he doesn’t, let me mansplain it for him: corrupt employees within the licensing department and traffic centres work with so-called agents (a fancy name for scamster or con artist) who block-book all of the available slots and then sell them for a handsome profit. Corrupt staffers get a kickback.
Instead, the MEC has to go on radio and TV and grant innumerable media interviews to explain exactly what the difference is between “book a slot” (as practised by, well, everyone on the internet every day) and “request a slot”.
So, I googled “request a slot” – expecting at the very least that someone in government had thought of buying a few Google ad words, before organic growth kicked off. I couldn’t even find the relevant government website, which luckily I already know.
At least Mamabolo admitted to eNCA that “we are fighting one of the most highly organised criminal syndicates, that has been making lots of money from an inefficient and extremely corrupt system”.
I felt slightly reassured that I wouldn’t be fleeced when I arrived at the licensing station I selected – but not that it wouldn’t happen down the process. My calm immediately dissipated when the MEC displayed such an alarming lack of knowledge about cybersecurity that I shuddered.
“The eNatis system is in a secure location, in an area that is classified as a national key point,” he blurted out. “The system is highly protected.” It is “for the IT technicians and experts to protect the system further”.
Welcome to the ANC’s future, where even the most basic of government services have been overrun by criminal syndicates – and all the officials can do is ask citizens to “request a slot”.
Mamabolo went on and on in every interview I heard or read about “partnership with the people”.
I don’t want to partner with the government. I want them to deliver the services that we taxpayers fund – not use meaningless words like ‘partnership' to explain away the state’s inability to rid itself of the corruption it has allowed to take root. This is unlikely to ever happen with the current crop of, frankly, underwhelming ANC politicians. DM168
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper which is available for R25 at Pick n Pay, Exclusive Books and airport bookstores. For your nearest stockist, please click here.
This article is more than 3 years old
Driver’s licence renewal: Transport department’s Mr Fix should focus on his broken service delivery system
Like several hundred thousand other Gautengers, my driver’s licence has expired. I’ve tried to book a slot to renew it, but finding an ANC staffer who has been paid their salary is easier than getting any kind of booking at a traffic department. A friend’s desperate daughter sat outside the Sandton testing ground for four hours recently.
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