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.
Zimbabwe Absurdity 
Criminal ethics
30 05 2025“Boss, come and have a look at this” Mapeno, the gardener exclaimed, clearly excited. He held up two expensive day packs. “Where did you find them?” I responded. “Over here right by the gate” came the reply. “Are you sure they don’t belong to the builders?” I asked. “No, I already checked with them”. I wasn’t surprised, they didn’t look like the sort of day packs a Zimbabwean builder could afford.
I was just about to go to work so he brought them over to my truck and we started to go through them. Diaries with copious notes on what looked like engineering projects, a wallet with South African gun licences, credit cards and no cash. Two South African passports (one full) in one pack in the name of a male and another in the second pack with a woman’s name and photo. This was obviously stolen property but why had it come over the wall into our property? And how was I going to contact the owners?
Fortunately the diaries had contact phone numbers in them albeit different ones. I tried both – one did nothing and the other was unreachable. Maybe I could contact the South African Embassy and give them the passports and then the owners would likely go there and then be able to contact me. I was on the way to work when I realized that WhatsApp works everywhere irrespective of phone number so I entered the unreachable number and called. It was quickly answered. “Is this Mr M and are you missing a couple of day packs?” I said. “Yes we are – did you find any passports?”. I answered that we’d found three and asked what they’d lost. A laptop and US$2,000 was the response. “It was just stuff, the passports are the most important things, at least we can get back home tomorrow” he added.
They had stopped for breakfast at a café at a local shopping centre and left the laptop and day packs on the back seat of the pickup in plain view. As they sat down to breakfast thieves smashed the back window, grabbed the packs and computer and got away in a waiting car.
“While this is not Jo’burg you still have to switch on. Thieves hang out in car parks just waiting for that sort of opportunity” I commented.
“Yes, we know that now” he replied. “Please send me your address so that I can come and pick up our stuff”.
I wasn’t there when they arrived but our maid phoned me to confirm who they were and wrote down the registration number of their pickup truck. I did wonder why the thieves bothered to “return” the day packs and their contents – a distinctly curious form of criminal ethics. If I were they I’d have kept the rather smart packs and dumped the contents into the nearest ditch.
Crime in Cape Town is an altogether different league. One could easily be lulled into a false sense of security by the first world shopping centres, immaculate roads and civilised driving standards (traffic lights are actually respected) contrary to Zimbabwe. Tourism is booming – the driver we used from the airport told us that in December 2024, 1.6 million tourists came through the airport – tourists we met on Table Mountain commented on how cheap Cape Town is. People are positive about their future and investing and developing in agriculture – rare attitudes in Zimbabwe.
Visiting Oaklands Estate near Wellington in the Western Cape was a case in point. David, a friend of my cousin, bought the abandoned racehorse stud in 2009 before occupying it in 2011. The derelict buildings have been renovated into tourist accommodation and the old stables will once again house a stud. Hillsides are being planted to proteas for their flowers for export. Other stables have been converted into a conference centre and come the tourist season the accommodation is full. I asked David if his positive outlook was down to living in the Western Cape. He answered “Pretty much. You can still avoid the corruption bullshit if you want to”. The Western Cape is relatively well run compared with the other provinces in South Africa. It is under the control of the Democratic Alliance with Alan Winde as the premier.
While Oaklands Estate is far enough out of Cape Town to not be overly attractive to criminals, the township of Guguletu is an epicentre of crime. The taxi driver was quite clear on this: “If you are a person of colour” – he tapped his own light brown skin – “or a white, you stay out of there” – he gestured to the left of the motorway. It was a maze of corrugated iron shacks, broken fencing, goats, rubbish and bizarrely – satellite dishes on nearly every dwelling I could see. We asked him about the white tourist who’d been killed there earlier in the year. “Actually there were two who went in there” he responded “but one survived”. “You see that road up there?” he gestured with his right hand to a road sweeping a curve over the motorway into the township. “There was traffic backed up on the other side of this road so both asked their traffic navigator apps for an alternative and it took them into Guguletu. One guy was robbed of his car and beaten up but got out to a hospital and survived. The other was a doctor and they shot him. Dead. You don’t mess with the gangs in there – they run the place.” I mused that they were probably not the type that would return high quality day packs over a suburban wall in the expectation that they would be returned to their owners.
We arrived at the airport and said goodbye to Mario. It was time to head back to Harare. I got chatting to the porter who was assisting us whilst Marianne filled in forms to get VAT back. I asked him where he lived. “Oh, Guguletu” he replied. When I asked him how he coped with the gangs and crime he shrugged “God looks after me”.
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Tags: africa, Cape Town, crime, Guguletu, South Africa, Table Mountain, travel
Categories : Agriculture, Economics, Environment, horticulture, Social commentary, Travel