With a wink and a nod, the little green book was slotted through the window and I was on my way.
Past the envious queuing stares, I am on my way to DHL to send my sister-in-law her new passport — and to wait for her thank-you call so I can gloat about how good I am at this. That’s what it takes.
Either you make a few “incentives” available to make things happen, or you rot in a queue and spend weeks being thrown from one dingy office to another. It started with a passport application at Zimbabwe’s Johannesburg consulate.
A year later, after several visits and a repeated “very soon” response, her patience finally wore out. With her old passport weeks from expiry and her bank demanding a valid document desperation set in.
And so I took her tatty application receipt back with me to the Zimbabwean capital in the hope that matters could be speeded up. I start at window number six at the passport office.
This was applied for a year ago, I tell the women through the gauze. Leave your details, I am told. Check back tomorrow. “I’ll have to go and look for the form,” she says, pausing, giving me that knowing look every Hararean understands.
First thing next morning, I am back at window number six. Check back again next week, I’m told. And, again, that same look: “Someone will have to look for the form. It’s not easy to find.”
I make a call to an in-law related to someone in the passport office. Days later, the form is found. I need to come in and pay a “top-up fee” to get the application processed.
“Someone had to look for this form,” comes the gentle reminder. I get it. And so, inside a folded letter that I’ve written, pretending to be my sister-in-law authorising me to collect her passport, with the official $250 “urgent passport” fee, I neatly pack two extra $10 notes.
An hour later, crisp new passport in hand, I saunter past a queue of envious stares. It’s a scenario many Zimbabweans in South Africa will be familiar with.
Desperate for legal South African papers, which they need for legitimate Zimbabwean passports into which the South African permits are pasted, they have to cut through a cordon of red tape and corrupt officials.
A cut in the cost of passports and the threat of deportation from South Africa have swollen the crowds outside Harare’s drab Makombe building, the passport office. The queues form early.
At six in the evening on Tuesday this week, fires were already being lit outside the gates as queuers prepared for sleep, hoping to be at the head of the long line at 8am the following morning.
Scammers stalk the buildings’ grounds, promising to ease your suffering — for a fee, they promise to “run with your papers”.
They are part of a network that includes passport office staff, ever eager to add an extra dollar or two to the government’s $150 monthly wage.
A chain of greased palms, and the queues and grime can be avoided. Inside the building, in the gloom and dust, tempers run high.
In one room, I meet a woman, “a diasporan”, all Burberry handbag and high heels, giving two officials a loud lesson in citizenship law. Her seven-year-old son may have been born in Norway, she shouts, but that doesn’t make him Norwegian.
Still, they insist on seeing “papers” proving his status. I can relate to this. My sister was born in Malawi at a time when our parents, both Zimbabweans, were living in exile.
Two weeks ago, she put in an application for a new passport in Johannesburg. To this, she was told, she must attach a letter from the Malawian embassy stating that she is indeed not Malawian.
And so I return to Makombe building. It’s a page from Kafka — standing in a slow-moving queue to submit evidence that my sister really is a citizen of her own country.