To whom it may concern,

My friend and I had the unfortunate pleasure to get our driver's license renewed at the Rayton Municipality. We went early, 7:50 and were first in the row.

At the first point of entry, we stood in a row waiting at the closed, locked doors. About 08:15 we found out the door had been unlocked in the meantime, without opening the door, nor inviting the persons in. We entered the building and there were no one in sight to help or direct in any way. After about 15 minutes of standing around not knowing what to do, the person behind the information counter arrived and we were given forms in an unfriendly manner to fill out and were directed to go to the eye testing side of the other side of the building.

We proceeded around the building to the next door. I was 2nd in the row. The door was still locked. We waited about 20 minutes for the door to be opened. A woman by the name of Sarah unlocked the door, looked at the row of people, closed the door again in an abrupt manner and went in again without saying anything.

After another 10 minutes, Sarah then opened the door again for a moment and shouted "come in !" in a very unfriendly manner, then turned around and closed the door abruptly behind her. The first person went in and came out. ... We waited about 10 minutes ... Sarah opened the door again and shouted "next person come in!" and quickly closed the door behind her. So I went in. Not in all my life have I come across a person so rude and ill mannered as Sarah. She was unprofessional, curt, rude and abrupt in her way of talking to me and others. It seemed as if she had an excessive dislike in me or White people in general, and showed it openly.

After sitting through a very uncomfortable, humiliating eye test, I left the office - the rest of the row was still waiting outside the door, waiting anxiously to be called in. I stood there waiting with my friend to be called in. We waited another 10 minutes before Sarah stormed out and shouted in a very angry way and on the top of her voice: "COME IN, I CAN'T COME OUT AND CALL EACH OF YOU ONE BY ONE EVERY TIME !!!" There were only White persons in the row.

My friend had an even worse experience than me with Sarah and was very shaken and traumatised after her encounter. The rest of the people in the row experienced exactly the same appalling treatment by Sarah.

I can't help, but to come to the conclusion that Sarah is very unprofessional and an utter racist who doesn't mind showing it openly to the White customers.

I don't feel that any law abiding, tax-paying citizen of South Africa should be treated in such a manner by an officer of the municipality.

Although we were first in the row and very early, it took almost two hours to finish the route of getting my driver's license renewed.

I trust that this letter will lead to staff training and ultimately better customer service by the Rayton Municipality in future.


Kind regards

MJC

I fully agree with your statement and have sympathy for you unfortunate experience. Service at the Rayton Municipality seems to be very far and in between. On the 5 December 2011 I have applied to the Rayton Municipality for Electricity to be connected at our new home. As I am writing this it has been 3 Months since then, with all excuse upon excuse, but no electricity connection has been made.

We started to do inquiries, by telephone and in person as of January 2012 and continued to do so throughout the whole of February 2012 as well. The application to have electricity connected to our house has either "been held up at Pretoria" or "a Computer Fault" has caused a delay.

The feedback we constantly receive from a lady by the name of Estelle, working at the Electricity Department, is that she is checking on it daily. That is to say if she is not on leave or sick, which has been several times, since December 2011.

In the mean time we are running a Generator in order to have electricity, costing us a small fortune and making our neighbors freak out every now and again, although they do seem to understand out predicament after explaining our situation. Having said that I do not think they will be so forgiving after a few more weeks.

It is now the 7 March 2012, and I am hoping with fingers crossed, that this too will soon be a bad memory.