My First Encounter With South African Bureaucracy

Followers of my blog may remember I asked Ms Dig to send over my raincoat (because it was cold and raining) and some other items about four weeks ago, which she promptly did by airmail.  As at yesterday it still hadn’t arrived so I personally went into the post office yesterday and asked about it.  Lo and behold it had been sitting there for two weeks and they hadn’t got around to doing notifying us about it (because if someone is willing to pay $100.00 AUD for air mail, then it is obviously not urgent).  They brought the package out and I was all excited until they informed me that I owed R2300.00 (about $360.00 AUD) in customs import duties!  I asked how can I owe import duty on two items that I have owned for 7 years and had posted to me because I forget to put them in my luggage, and four items worth about R400.00 that I was donating to a registered South African non profit organisation?  The post master was sympathetic and said I have two options, pay the import duty or write a letter to customs asking for a re-assessment, and he will send the parcel and letter back to Pretoria for customs re-assessment.  So it looks like I will not get my parcel in the short term.  So much for air mail.  I somehow think I am about to go through the same process once the surface mail package turns up!

The moral of this story is, if you post anything to South African do not put a realistic new replacement cost on the Australia Post label.  Remember everything from Australia is very cheap!

And on the brighter side, I am now the proud owner of a South African mobile phone and a new modem from a different service provider.  Let’s see if that makes my internet connectivity and access better.  I also brought a new camera, so ‘watch this space’ in the near future for exciting new pictures.

Mind you, I am worried about the elephants as they haven’t been seen in the last 24 hr (plenty of spoor (tracks) and droppings though), which leads me to believe they are plotting something!



And finally, how cool is this South African 2 min noodles in boerewors and biltong flavour (mind you they both taste like beef ones to me!).  They also have pizza, crispy chicken and cheese.