Going nowhere fast, well not with John anyway.

The time finally came to head back to Home Affairs yesterday to see if I
could collect my extended visa, a Spousal Visa. Now as far as we know I am
'entitled' to a 2 year temporary residence visa as Sue, my spouse, holds an
SA passport. Anyway, we have learnt the last couple of visits to Home
Affairs to get there before 09h00 as it is fairly quiet and you only have to
wait for 30 minutes or so instead of 3 or 4 hours to get the good or bad
news.

Now the only real requirement for me to get this visa is to prove that I am
married to Sue, hence a copy of the marriage certificate supplied with the
application. All straight forward. You would think. I get to the front of
the queue, get called up, hand in my application receipt and wait as the man
disappears into the back office. The man eventually comes back with my
application, 'there is a problem'. 'Oh, what problem?' I ask.

'You need to provide a divorce certificate for your wife's previous
marriage' he tells me.

'Err, sorry?' I reply, very confused. He shows me the print out from their
system of Sue's details with, according to them, the details of her husband,
John, and the marriage in 1997.

Sue comes over to see what is happening, and is just as stumped as me. We
try to explain that their system is wrong. The system was updated in 2003.
Sue realises that this must have been when she got her passport renewed with
her new name and supplied the marriage details. They obviously updated her
record with the wrong information. The man disappears into the back office
again. Several minutes later he comes back and tells us to go upstairs to
the marriage department and see the supervisor. We do as directed and
explain the situation to her. She takes our details and copies our documents
and says she will phone head office and see what they can do and then call
us. Back to the man downstairs who makes us wait a bit, then stamps my
application receipt so that I wont get thrown out of the country when my
current visa expires, well not for 30 days anyway!

So how long is it going to take to sort out their system with the correct
details? Back at home Sue tries the various phone numbers given to us
earlier. The helpdesk, no help. The head office, permanently engaged, and
the odd time you get through they try and transfer you to someone to help
but no one answers the phone. Finally Sue tries the helpdesk again, even
less help apart from telling us that we need to apply to get the details
amended, may take 3 to 9 months! Sue gives up.

To our surprise just before we head out the door after lunch the phone
rings, its the lady from the marriage dept at Home Affairs. She has passed
our details to head office and they will investigate their archives and get
back to her. Who knows when.

So now, we wait. Until the marriage details are corrected immigration wont
issue the visa. It makes you wonder how many thousands of details on their
computers are wrong, you read stories in the papers here every day, all of
them much much worse than ours, peoples lives destroyed with the
inefficiencies.

Hey ho, you just have to laugh. Wonder where John is though? Perhaps he was
the one who stole our vehicle (as we were told at the Swazi border)! Don't
things usually come in threes, what next??