De Rebus

Letters to the Editor

• PO Box 36626, Menlo Park 0102  

• Docex 82, Pretoria 

• E-mail: derebus@derebus.org.za 

• Fax (012) 362 0969

Letters are not published under noms de plume. However, letters from practising attorneys who make their identities and addresses known to the editor may be considered for publication anonymously.

Has our administration collapsed

As an attorney practising in South Africa for the past 20 years, I find there is less and less reason to be cheery.

I tried to analyse the source of the frustration and came up with some interesting thoughts. As attorneys we are obliged to liaise and deal with government departments, municipalities and clients.

It is particularly difficult to obtain documents from government departments. Anyone who has applied for a rates certificate, letter of executorship or permanent residence can tell you how poor South African administration really is. Correspondence is not acknowledged and phone calls are not answered by the employees of the public office. My experience has caused me to ‘rank’ the offending departments as follows:

• Home Affairs Department – forget about getting any answers from your local office to any correspondence. Consider yourself lucky if you do.

• Master’s Office – telephone calls to private offices are seldom answered. They just let the phones ring at the extensions. Exceptions do exist, but correspondence is rarely replied to timeously.

• Municipalities – generally take their time to respond. One very bad experience was with a municipality in Mpumalanga. For weeks the official in the rates department successfully evaded countless telephone calls, e-mails and faxes requesting rates clearance figures. Our law firm tried to complain to senior management, but were given the cold shoulder.

• Department of Human Settlements – they gave me a very hard time and ignored correspondence for months. Telephone calls met the same fate.

The list goes on. Your clients demand service, but you are hamstrung because government departments just ignore correspondence. This creates pressure on the professional and makes attorneys look incompetent in the eyes of their clients.

I believe the situation is getting worse instead of better. Time delays are getting worse. Perhaps some of our colleagues would like to add their voice and maybe arrange a toyi-toyi outside the Master’s Office? Surely my colleagues share my frustration? Let us hear from you.

Ismail Dawjee

attorney, Newcastle