Stille Post

If you post a letter in Germany, it will arrive the following morning. 

With a bit of luck, a letter sent in England will probably reach its destination within a week.

In South Africa, you can consider yourself lucky if the letter arrives at all. 

This is best illustrated by taking a little detour:

In the summer of 2008, I unexpectedly got a call from my mother. She had received a postcard from me from South Africa and was angry that I had not told her that I had been on holiday to Africa. The call took me by surprise as I had been slaving away in the Warwick Library for months writing my Master’s thesis. After a lot of confusion, I realised that my mother had just received a postcard that I had sent her from a trip to South Africa in 2006! The card had taken pretty much two years to get from South Africa to Germany; my father soberly stated that the card certainly looked like someone had swam it to Germany. 

This little anecdote illustrates quite nicely the pace and efficiency with which South African mail operates. It should therefore not come as a surprise that people are not worried if birthday cards arrive a week late, wedding invitations after the couple is back from their honeymoon and post cards … well, potentially never. 

Given this impressive record of service delivery, it did not at all surprise me when I heard that the South African Postal Service had been on strike for over a month – and no one had noticed it yet!