Bureaucracy and South Africa’s new Immigration Act rules

I just read an interesting overview of South Africa’s new Immigration Act rules which have just kicked in which require international travelers entering and leaving South Africa to produce birth certificates and identity documentation for kids and parents. Two things stand out for me.

The first is the administrative headache traveling to and from South Africa with children these regulations have introduced. It’s not impossible but now we have to travel with unabridged birth certificates for our children and adequate ID for ourselves so satisfy customs officials that the children we are traveling with are, in fact, ours. Wow!

The second is just an illustration of bureaucracy at its finest which I had a little laugh about:

Rakuoane on Monday said the governments of Lesotho and South Africa have agreed to constitute working committees of officials of the two countries who would develop an agenda to address strategic issues relating to movement of Lesotho citizens in South Africa.

So, basically, they are putting committees together to meet to discuss what to talk about when they meet, for real. How many business meetings does this sound like? Far too many, I think.