Plebs versus Home Affairs

My wife and I went to the Paarl office on 27 Dec 2019 to apply for new (Maxi) passports. The office building is clearly not designed to accommodate the number of people attending daily, resulting in long queues outside the venue in all weather conditions. We have spent more than 4 hours standing outside, and a further 1,5 hours inside since our arrival early morning until we finally left. Processing of the passports happened very quickly, but when we returned to the office to fetch them on 05 Feb, we were back to queueing outside with numerous others. The most disappointing fact is that we were misled into believing that our Maxi passports would contain 60 pages (and specified as such on the application and receipt forms), as it only contains 48 pages. I specifically enquired about this from the official serving us, but was told that the number of pages “had been reduced” without simultaneously reducing the fee. All in all: a very disappointing experience at an ill-equipped venue and too few staff members present to deal with the vast number of South African citizens and taxpayers forced by the system to comply with all sorts of red tape.