When I flew all over SE Asia recently, it was all on my Irish passport. The SA Home Affairs person didn’t even query why there were only two stamps in my RSA passport – out at ORTambo and in at Durban

A year or so later I still hadn’t got around to renewing my less useful passport. I approached passport control at OR Tambo with some trepidation (but reasoning that I should be OK since I had one valid passport with the appropriate visa for my destination) and sure enough was taken aside to a little room full of about 30 miscreants like myself where two officials were taking turns to capture everyone’s passport details onto one computer using two fingers each. I came very close to offering to type in my own details. In the end I was let off with an ‘endorsement’ in my expired passport and a stern warning.

I was advised to check in and out of ORTambo with a RSA passport and then use the Irish passport for its ease of access and first world acceptability elsewhere. On finding, to my horror, that my RSA passport had lapsed, I rushed down to the Piemburg Department of Home Affairs with requisite filled in forms for a speedy renewal

“Sorry baba, we have just changed all the rules for renewal. You have to get a thumbprint verified by Pretoria HQ and only then will your passport be procesed”

This doen’t sound like a train wreck….”How long does this take”, I enquired tremulously

“Haw baba! If your thumbprint isn’t on file, it could take 5-6 weeks” – long after my intended departure date. “Another problem is; everything has to be sent by our new camera to Pretoria, but it is stolen”.

This PC suite was mounted at the entrance to the Passport Aplications public area. One tripped over it on the way in. (presumably to show off). But the camera – installed on Thursday has been stolen by Tuesday, so no applications could be processed at this time.

My courier company again came to my rescue and after a traumatic hour at Umgeni Rd Dept Home Affairs, wheels were set in motion to secure a passport and see me on my way to visit my babies in Asia

After decades of prevarication, I decided to exercise my rights as an Irish citizen, by reason of my father’s birth. Being a “slim maar snoep Saffer”, I read the Instructions on the Irish Consulate Website carefully, gathered all my documents, filled in requisite forms and made a pigrimage from KZN to Pretoria Irish Consulate.

To my absolute horror, behind the counter stood an incredibly grumpy looking head hunted cadre from the RSA Dept of Home Affairs. She distainfully sifted through my laboriously accumulated documentation and arogantly threw them back at me muttering about “incomplete/wrong documents, some of which badly needed to be laminated, as they resemble the dead sea scrolls”

This further galvanised me to get some emergency exit papers from this hell on earth. So I engaged thew services of a very expensive but efficient emmigration courier company.

Six months later, many Rands spent and my passport arrived with a terse note enclosed (probably from the same woman who had rejected my application) “In future we will not accept any documents that have been laminated. I have made a rare and generous exception after suplications from your emigration agents”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry

Do you think he would have applied for refugee status, if he had the benefit of an Irish passport?

Imagine you did not have that Irish passport — what would you be saying then?