South African diplomats
abroad, though many of them are good at doing their job, are constantly seeing
their efforts undermined by colleagues who are alleged criminals and cadres
making exorbitant demands who never think about doing the job they were put there
to do, as repeated and urgent queries by South Africans in different countries
are met with unanswered phones and emails and dead-ends.
The latest, according to a
report in the Sunday Times today, is the consul general in Los Angeles,
Thandile Sunduza, who is alleged to have rejected more than 30 properties
offered to her by her own department, the department of international relations
and co-operation (DIRCO), and wants something on the elite Rodeo Drive in
Beverly Hills. She was apparently accused of making other demands, being
“uncouth” and lacking a full grasp of her job.
It is one of many such
stories about staff in South African embassies, especially those who are not
career diplomats but have been given or, according to a recent letter to DIRCO,
bought the job. During the Jacob Zuma years, cadres, sometimes failed
politicians or people who allegedly had some dirt on Zuma, were sent out to
fill the highest posts of ambassador.
The DIRCO Minister Naledi
Pandor, appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa, is now left with the fallout,
embassies that for a decade have not only been dysfunctional but often don’t
have a boss. SAPeople, in dealing with the issues of South Africans abroad, has
on numerous occasions tried to get information out of embassies, many times
without success, or, in the case of the high
commissioner in London, Nomatemba Tambo, a curt message saying “I’m
afraid I don’t intend to engage in an ongoing dialogue on such issues.” These
are civil servants, mind you, paid for by citizens’ taxes.
The Sunday Times report
will come as little surprise to South Africans living in the LA area who have
been struggling for months to elicit any response or support from the SA
Consulate despite continued phone calls, emails and even visits to the office.
For one South African,
whose passport expired at the end of September 2020, he has been battling to
hear back since January when he submitted his renewal application. (Sunduza has
apparently been in the LA post since around February.)
“Due to Covid, I expected a
delay, but I haven’t been able to get in touch with anybody at the Consulate
for months,” he told SAPeople in August. In mid-September he was finally sent a
letter stating that consulate members were working remotely and requesting
patience. The letter was “not reassuring”, didn’t address his renewal, and gave
no indication of when services would be properly administered again.
“I called the person who
sent the letter, using the phone number in his signature of the letter, and
surprisingly he answered. He was working from home, but unfortunately didn’t
have any additional information.”
In a subsequent call he was
informed that “they are still working from home and they have no idea when they
will receive diplomatic bags with renewed passports. In the meantime my
passport has expired which leaves me in limbo. I just can’t believe they don’t
have a simpler system to streamline these kind of things.”
Today he told SAPeople:
“Still waiting unfortunately. I did email them last week at the Consulate and
they told me that they are still working remotely but that they have been
receiving diplomatic bags with documents. I guess I’ll just continue to wait.
They said to email Home Affairs in South Africa for any further updates which I
did twice with no response.”
A South African in Seattle
shared her similar frustrating experience with SAPeople, with no luck receiving
a response from the LA consulate, her nearest foreign mission. “I’ve tried
calling several times when the office is reported to be open by their website
(9am-12pm) and either get cut off or it goes to voice mail that never gets a
response. I’ve also re-sent my questions by email and haven’t had a response.
“It’s frustrating because
we South Africans are entitled to a passport and mine has now expired (in early
August). I can’t even access a list of instructions for how to apply for a new
passport — from the LA consulate website.”
The desperate South African
in Seattle finally found a list of requirements
for renewing her passport on the Washington D.C. website, and submitted her new
passport application and payment to the LA office. According to UPS, her
package was successfully delivered… but she has still not heard anything from
the Consulate.
She told SAPeople today:
“Ten years ago when I last made a passport application, the LA office was
helpful and answered emails with questions almost immediately. They also
previously let me know when passport application materials were received and
that they were all in order.”
Expats in the United
Kingdom are suffering the same headaches, where the website has been down
since mid-August, phone calls lead to a “dead end”, and emails are ignored.
Many South Africans are asking if the way they are being treated by the very
people who have been appointed to support them, is even legal.
The high commissioner, Nomatemba Tambo, briefly answered
SAPeople questions on behalf of South Africans in the UK in August,
but when we followed up for clearer answers, she sent a curt message, “I’m
afraid I don’t intend to engage in an ongoing dialogue on such issues.” She
added that “whatever operational inconveniences our nationals are experiencing
will be resolved in due course as I stated yesterday.” That was on 20 August.
Two months later, and the problems seem to be increasing, judging by the cries
for help we receive daily from South Africans in the UK who cannot get
hold of their embassy. (In the past week we have again written to Ms Tambo and
her office several times, in search of answers for these South Africans. She
has not replied.)
No longer able to download
application forms, South Africans in the UK have to send postal requests for
the forms to be sent to them. The SAHC states the forms will be sent within 5
business days, but many are still waiting after a month. One expat in London
told SAPeople: “It appears SAHC have effectively stopped servicing SA citizens
in the U.K. and I wonder if there is not some breach of law or responsibility
in this regard that can be investigated?”
DA Shadow Deputy Minister
of Home Affairs, Adrian Roos, said in a recent podcast
for South Africans abroad that he will raise the urgent matter in Parliament of
the UK website being down.
Across the world, almost
guaranteed problems await any South African citizen
wanting to get a passport. Inaction or inefficiency from Home
Affairs and DIRCO belies the fact that South Africa has plenty of embassies and
representatives in over 100 countries (117 heads of delegation, according to
the DIRCO website, 14 of which are vacant).
Delays for passports and
other documents last for up to six months, sometimes over a year, due mainly to
an archaic system, which in many cases is run inefficiently, in which
applications are sent in diplomatic bags to DIRCO in South Africa, before being
sent to Home Affairs to process… and then returned to DIRCO to send back to
overseas missions. (Roos points out that so much time could be saved by the
larger missions offering online applications, similar to the procedure within
SA.)
As many as 70 percent of
South Africa’s heads of mission are apparently political appointments, often
with no training to run an embassy abroad. As recently as this year former
human settlements minister Nomaindia Mfeketo was appointed ambassador to the United
States.
South Africa’s former
ambassador to the Netherlands, Bruce Koloane, was recalled last year
(and then resigned) after he gave evidence at the state capture enquiry about
his involvement in the controversial Gupta plane landing at Waterkloof Air
Force Base in 2015.
In 2016 Sibisiso Ndebele
was recalled as high commissioner in Australia because of allegedly
getting R10 million in kickbacks from tenders when he was a minister. The
charges were withdrawn in 2018 and he is now high commissioner in India.
In the same year (2016), SA
was embarrassed by the revelation that its high commissioner to Singapore
– Hazel Francis Ngubeni (55) – had withheld the fact that she was jailed in New
York for a couple of years for smuggling cocaine. In Singapore drug trafficking
can lead to the death penalty. Ngubeni, who was formerly an SAA air stewardess,
was jailed between 1999 and 2001… but omitted to disclose the conviction when
nominated for her role in Singapore in 2013. DIRCO subsequently withdrew her
security clearance and her employment contract was terminated.
Zindzi Mandela, the late
daughter of Nelson and Winnie Mandela, and former ambassador to Denmark,
was often in the news for undiplomatic statements, most notably her apparent
support for the Economic Freedom Fighters.
In October Peter Fabricius
reported in Daily Maverick that South Africa’s deputy ambassador to Sudan,
Zabantu Ngcobo, and her partner were being investigated for allegedly hiring
the embassy driver and his accomplice to kill the intelligence officer because
he was sending home damaging reports about Ngcobo.
SA ambassadors are
reportedly paid a minimum annual salary of R1-million, excluding living
allowances, free accommodation and other perks that can double that amount,
according to BusinessInsider.
Sunduza, a former ANC MP
with a degree in sports from the Vaal University of Technology, worked for the
Gauteng Department of Health and its Department of Sports. She made headlines
in 2014 when she wore a tight canary-yellow dress to the opening of parliament
that elicited many negative remarks on social media, and she burnt the dress,
according to City Press, in 2015, saying “That dress was a flop and it was the
designer’s fault.” (The Mail & Guardian called her dress one of 8 Things
that Broke the Internet in 2014.)
Faced with the mounting
problems and glaring issues at many foreign missions, in June President Cyril
Ramaphosa signed into a law the Foreign Service Act,
which “provides for the minimum requirements a person must meet to qualify for
transfer to a South African Mission (and) regulates the appointment of Heads of
Mission and the requirements that such persons should have in order to be
appointed.”
In October, the DA called
on DIRCO to refer to the Zondo Commission into State Capture allegations
contained in a letter from diplomats Francis Moloi and Nyameko Goso, dated 9
October 2020, which alleged that the ranks of ambassadors, diplomats and senior
officials were filled with cadres and political appointments who were forced to
make donations to the ANC from the moment of appointment.
In the meantime, SAPeople
has launched a petition to help South Africans abroad receive a more efficient
service. After our repeated requests to DIRCO and Home Affairs officials fell
on deaf or deliberately blocked ears, SAPeople teamed up with the DA, who will
be able to raise the concerns in Parliament and effect urgent changes. The
petition already has over 8,000 signatures. It requires 20,000 in order to
be debated in Parliament. Previous petitions have had no impact because
they did not receive enough signatures, so it is vital that this petition
reaches its target.
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