This guy makes a living by selling spots to people at Durban Home Affairs
Call it what you want, but this is South African innovation...
When you think about things like passport and smart ID applications, birth and death registrations, and even licence renewals - anything that involves government authorisation really, there is this immediate sense of tension.
And the reason behind that tension is thinking about the long queues that we have to navigate.
They are anything but appealing and leave us stressed considering the time it takes to stand in the queue, notwithstanding if the systems are offline.
If you have been to Home Affairs for anything, you will know sometimes you have to set aside more than a day just to get inside.
So it is with great interest that we heard about this guy, 24-year-old Nathi, who lives south of Durban.
Nathi's work is anything but conventional. He earns a living by waking up extra early and saving spots at the front of the Home Affairs queue.
He carries ten chairs to his nearest Home Affairs branch and waits for people to sell these spots to..
If you're wondering what a spot in the front of the queue costs, well, he sells each spot for R100.
He went on to share with IOL Business that the security guards are on a friendly basis with him, but every now and then they do ask him for money to stay quiet about his business.
"On a good day, Nathi says he can get R800, but this depends on several factors, the weather, the person’s patience or lack thereof and how early he wakes up." (MSN)
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He went on to share: "People can be incredibly rude. They view me as inferior to the muck on their shoes because I perform this kind of work. I have approached folks who treated me like just another tsotsi and received slaps and punches as a result." (MSN)
This may seem unethical to many people, especially to those who wake up early to go and stand in the queue for themselves, as on the surface it is unfair.
But on a larger spectrum, we can at least appreciate that he is trying to earn money honestly.
Image: Supplied