Not Fair

About three months ago I made an outfit for my two year old granddaughter for a wedding. It was a modern, almost animé-like outfit, and I knew she would look gorgeous in it. She has a bouncy, bubbling kind of  personality and I was looking forward to photographs of her in this outfit which took me hours to construct. It never reached her. The wedding came and went and still the package had not been delivered.

My sister and I made a few outfits for a small shop in Pretoria and sent it a few days before I started on my granddaughter's outfit. It is now three and a half months later, and the package never arrived at it's destination. I place photographs of some of the outfits that was made for the shop. These pictures were taken by Gustav Snyman.

Well, this is South Africa, and things are a lot different here than in any western country. The postal workers are on strike and had been so for almost four months now. They haven't got paid any salaries, and they are really angry, but then, who wouldn't be? You can see on these photographs the path of destruction they had left.

I'm disappointed to say the least ... and angry too. There had never been problems with the postal service in South Africa, but this is ridiculous. Many a shop all over the country had already closed their doors because of this. Our own manufacturing of special clothing, mostly larger sizes, has also came to a complete halt.

A week or two ago it was also on the news that the postal workers on strike, went back to the post offices and ransacked the storerooms. They had opened the packages and took whatever was of any value, so I don't think our package of clothes has any chance of reaching it's destination.

The problem is that to make up for the lost money of the postal services that apparently can't be traced, the pension funds are getting plundered to pay salaries, etc. So where is that going to lead us? Definitely not to better pastures. Thousands of old people who depend on their pension isn't going to get any. It is also very risky to send anything by post in this country.

At the moment there are 90 million postal articles that has to be sorted once the strike has ended. Right now there is no end in sight. So, wherever you are, if you need to send any kind of post to South Africa, better wait another month or so. Perhaps the strike would have ended by then.

... And Christmas isn't far off ...