Zimbabwe Absurdity

She didn’t smile or even try when I greeted her with my cheery best “Good morning, how are you?”. I wasn’t too surprised; working in a windowless box in a government building in a dreary part of town would also have made me dour. I vowed to at least get her to smile before the session was over.

It was only when I went to renew my British passport before a visit to Cape Town in May that I thought to check up on my Zimbabwe passport that I knew was up for renewal this year. Oops, it had already expired. A phone call to a friend, whom I knew had renewed his Zimbabwe passport recently, and I was told it wasn’t too difficult at all and older folk like us even got to use the express queue. I didn’t even have to supply passport photos as it was all done “in house”. I waited until I had no more excuses then told Fabian, my company driver, that he was taking me into town.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been into the centre of Harare and I know that it’s run-down but it was still an education. The once pristine Harare Gardens are overgrown with weeds, the grass hasn’t been cut in ages and the children’s swings and roundabouts are falling over and in need of more than a bit of maintenance. Rubbish abounds.

We got to the entrance of Makombe House where passports are renewed and issued and other government business is done. We were stopped at the entrance amongst a crowd of touts, vendors of sticky treats and drinks, and other hopefuls. Fabian explained to the official in “control” of the melee that I was disabled and needed dropping off closer to the building and we were waved through.

I wandered into the first processing area I could see and looked lost. It wasn’t long before an official told me I was in the births registration area and was directed over to the passports queue. I joined what I thought to be the correct queue and was approached by another official who, after hearing what I needed, directed me to the Emergency Passports office. “Now we’re getting somewhere” I thought.

Fabian arrived from parking the pickup truck and provided valuable assistance. He went off to another office with the form I’d filled in and it soon emerged that I’d not brought all the necessary copies of documents; strangely they wanted to see a copy of my UK passport. It used to be illegal to have dual citizenship in Zimbabwe then a few years ago someone took their case to the constitutional court and it was found that it was not forbidden. Why they needed proof my dual citizenship I’m not sure. A hasty WhatsApp to Marianne and a photo of the relevant page arrived. I was charged 3 US$ for it to be printed out! Eventually all documents were deemed correct and I was shown through to the the windowless box for photographing and fingerprinting.

After trying and failing to get the fingerprint machine to record my prints, trying another office and succeeding we were back in the original box. Another official, slightly less dour, gave me a printout of my photo and personal details – which were wrong. I don’t have brown eyes or black hair. Well what little of the latter is still there is grey, as Fabian reminded me. I looked at the photo and said, in a loud voice, “Who IS this handsome person? I don’t recognize him!”. Both officials erupted in giggles which only got stronger when I added “So what is the joke?”. Mission successful.

A mere two-and-a-half hours after arriving I was finished. I turned down the offer of an emergency passport to be ready in 48 hours for an added US$100 and turned over a mere US$175 for the week later version. No-one asked if I wanted to pay in the local Zimbabwean currency.

On the way out of the car park we passed the original passport office. A colonial era building it was looking more than a little decrepit and didn’t look like it was being used for much. Curiously it still had the old Rhodesian coat of arms molding on the fascia and it had been painted in the not too distant past. We both chuckled at the irony.

The senior foreman at my work was not impressed at the cost of the passport. “They process a least 100 passports a day – what do they do with the 17,000 dollars? Look at the state of the roads and the general filth”. It’s just another symptom of the pervasive corruption that’s endemic in this country.