As if you didn’t know, South Africans like complaining. It takes us a day and a half to get through to the presidential hotline, the last-resort call-centre-cum-agony-aunt for a nation racked by service delivery failures launched this week.
Frustrated by the non-stop busy tone, we become concerned that the hotline has overheated and crashed. So we call up Vincent Magwenya at the presidency. Don’t worry, we’re aware of the problem and we’re working on it, he tells us. “When we reach certain high call volumes, a message that says that we’re experiencing extremely high call volumes is supposed to run,” explains Magwenya. “And that function is not working.
On Monday, ground zero, the centre received more than 173 88 calls, he says. “You just need to keep trying.” And so we do.
Our hard work pays off — 30 hours later one of us gets the ring-tone. Stunned out of my stupor I (Faranaaz) clear my throat, sit up straight and try to remember the point of the operation.
Fortunately, there is a voice prompt: “Welcome to the presidential hotline. For English press one, for Afrikaans press two —” This, at least, is familiar territory. Then “To register a new query, press one. To follow up on a previous query, press two.” For the next 10 minutes I hear scratchy guitar music, interspersed with a woman’s voice insisting that “working together with government, we can do more” and telling me how much money government plans to spend on public works in the next three years (R787-billion) and how many jobs it will create (four million).
Then, finally, a useful snippet — the hotline hours are 6am to 10pm, Monday to Friday. If we’d known that on day one, we’d have started dialing at 5:59.
When the “agent”, Vuyo, eventually picks up the phone, she’s not too chirpy. But who can blame her after the 2000 calls an hour Vusi Mona, head of communications in the presidency, says the agents are fielding?
I bend her ear about the shocking service experienced by customers of Johannesburg City Power. Her side of the conversation largely involves a succession of “Hmmms” and “Ahas”; her sympathetic nodding is almost audible over the line. Or maybe she’s just nodding off.
She asks for personal details “so that we can be able to allocate you”. She wants to know my ID number, telephone number and the municipality and province of residence. “Thank you for your call. Somebody will give you a call today and give you a reference number. After three days they will give you a call on your cell to update you. Or you can call back,” she soothes.
But wait — what happens next? After a moment’s thought she asks for the City Power manager’s name, which I provide, with the name of the person I explained the problem to.
And then she wraps things up with: “Thank you so much for your call.” But wait, I insist, what happens now? “We’re taking it to the presidency office. They’re the ones who are dealing with — ”
The line goes dead. Maybe it was high call volumes. Or maybe Vuyo just got tired of my bitching.