qnomore – gotta love the free market

Anyone who knows me will know that I am irrationally exuberant about South Africa’s future. I believe my home country has a rich legacy, a wonderful heritage to share with the world, and a bright future. Of course, there are problems – but we’re sorting many of them out. We need more houses – but we’ve built close to 2 million in the last 10 years (can’t ask for much more, can you?). We need a better AIDS policy – that seems to be happening, now that the health minister (in an ironic twist) has fallen ill, and is on long term sick leave. Every decent economist I know is confident our economy’s fundamentals are solid – and our finance department and tax office are absolutely top drawer! Crime is a HUGE problem, and must be sorted out. We need more political will in this area.

But my friends at SA The Good News, and Guy Lundy, author of Reasons to Believe, and the great crew at HomeComing Revolution and the official crowd at the International Marketing Council all help me to be positive.

One of the biggest problems we have is the government’s Home Affairs department. This bunch of palookas are in charge of passports, id books, registering births, immigration and so forth. They’re in utter meltdown, and don’t seem to have any desire to sort themselves out. Passports take over 3 months to issue. Some people have been waiting more than two years for ID books (and you can’t access any government projects or bank accounts without one). It took us nearly a year to process our third daughter’s adoption. Anything you have to do there is just a nightmare!! And they don’t seem to care. They are currently 4 months behind on registering babies (so babies born in August are only just being registered and given ID numbers). My brother, who lives in London and had a daughter in August, still hasn’t had her birth registered, so he can’t get a passport, so he can’t travel home for Christmas with his new family. This is unacceptable.

But, in a free market system, every demand opportunity invariably creates a supply initiative. OK, I am talking about entrepreneurs. And, South Africa is filled with them.

I met one yesterday – a great company known as QNoMore. Simple – they will queue for you – anywhere, anything. But they specialise in sorting out Home Affairs stuff, like passports, ID books, car licenses, etc. I used them to apply for a new passport. While there I mentioned my brother’s situation. Francois, the guy I dealt with, leapt into action, and has done more in the last 24 hours than any of us have been able to do in the last 2 months on our own.

But what really impressed me was that just a few minutes ago, after 8pm at night, I got an email from him requesting some documents in order to take my brother’s case forward. He wants everything by the morning, so he can hit Home Affairs running tomorrow morning. He can;t promise anything, of course, but he is impressing me with his commitment to our issues.

That’s the heart of the future of work. People helping people. People helping people to navigate the insanely complex beauracracies our modern world has created.

For the record – if you need anything done in South Africa, contact the crew at QNoMore.

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