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Doing a disservice

HOME, sweet home.

These were NOT the words that came to mind as I headed towards passport control at Oliver Tambo.

I’d just spent the best part of three days in Mozambique. I was there to give a day-long presentation on the media to an eclectic bunch of people – four Bhutanese, a Vietnamese and delegates from Zambia, Kenya and Mozambique.

The course was presented by Danida Fellowship Centre (a self-governing institution under Danida, the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and organised by consultancy NIRAS.

That’s fellowship as in learning, by the way, not as in friendship – but on this course, there was plenty of friendship in the air. It was an absolute pleasure to work with a group of people who were so engaged and enthusiastic.

They were there to develop practical skills, some of them from SMMEs in the home countries, some from government departments, all concerned with integrating sustainable, ‘green’ growth into their operations.

‘Green’ and ‘growth’ do belong together in Mozambique, it seems: participants were taken to see various initiatives aimed at making Mozambique’s growth (astonishing in our South African terms) more sustainable.

You could feel the energy in the air driving through Maputo. Of course it’s run down, and there’s at least one famous building that’s still just a shell with a tree growing through it; but there’s a lot of construction going on as well.

The owner of the wonderful, quirky Gallery Hotel where the conference was held, Koenraad Collier, was bubbling with enthusiasm as he laid out his plans for the hotel to me – a hotel he bought more than 10 years ago and has been gradually refurbishing ever since. (He’s eagerly awaiting new roads to replace the present game-drive experience, and a bridge to replace the present ferry boats.)

Business people crowded Maputo Airport when I was en route home, and with a smattering of the most basic Portuguese words, I could understand that some had come from Tete, where the commodities boom apparently continues.

There was a sort of eagerness in the people, from top business execs to the humblest – and I did have contact with some quite humble workers.

The ferry that takes you across the Baia de Maputo from Maputo to Catembe and back again is definitely not a plush tourism experience.

But the crew, who seemed not to know a word of English, were pleasant and helpful, dealing smilingly with my concern when they placed my suitcase, unsecured, on the roof of the ferry. (I had visions of losing my clothes and toiletries to the silty waters of the bay.)

And then, after a pleasant LAM flight, I was back in dear old Joburg. I had an hour and a half before an evening appointment – plenty of time. Ha ha.

I arrived at passport control to the usual long queue snaking back and forth – but soon realised there was something wrong.

The queue was not moving at all – in fact, not one person was passing through passport control. The rows of people slowly became a bit edgy, and after a while a Chinese whisper rippled back to reach the passengers off our flight: the computers were down.

“Great!” joked the man behind me. “Now we have to wait while they find the supervisor and the supervisor has to phone the boss at home and the boss has to call the IT company that has the contract…”

In the end, we only had to wait about 20 minutes before the screens were live again and the queue moving, but it was more than enough time for people to build up a head of steam.

I wondered, as I blasted off into the traffic like a warthog from its burrow, if any of them would jump a red robot or bash someone’s bumper (or worse) en route home.

I also wondered what it is about South African service…

First of all, let’s talk about the communication failure here. It wasn’t as if the electricity was off: they still had access to the intercom; could they not have broadcast a message which would have informed those in the queue just what was going on?

Half the frustration in situations like this lies in not knowing. People can cope with delays if they are not of unknown provenance and therefore of unknown duration. (And those who’d heard long-wait horror stories – remember Roxette’s beef a few years back? – would have the fear in our minds that it might be a very long delay indeed.)

If using the intercom wasn’t an option, why not send the staff, seated uselessly at the computers, along the queue to tell people what’s up?

And finally, what about contingency plans? Electricity is not going to be on all the time; computer systems do crash.

But even only with battery powered units, you can surely record the names and passport numbers of passengers (you could even, unthinkable as it sounds, do it by hand in a ledger book), so that, even if progress was much slower, the queue was actually being processed.

And ladies and gentlemen, take a leaf out of your Mozambican neighbour's book, and, in the inimitable words of Nat King Cole:

Smile, though your heart is aching
Smile, even though it’s breaking
When there are clouds in the sky
You’ll get by
If you smile through your fear and sorrow….

 - Fin24

*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own.
 
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