The South African Post Office has been operating for 231 years. This is according to the state entity, which takes pride in having been established in a small office in Cape Town in 1792 with a primary objective of offering mail services.
Over the years, the entity expanded and established a wide footprint across the country, even in remote rural areas. In 2021, the entity had about 2,048 branches.
Its offices with the famous red, blue and white emblem became a landmark in many South African communities. For women in the rural Eastern Cape during apartheid who had husbands working in the City of Gold, the Post Office played a remarkable role in delivering money monthly that sustained many families.
The company offered reliable services and enjoyed good profits for decades. Like the cliché “all good things come to an end”, this was the case for the Post Office, accounting for R19bn in losses over the years.
The downward trajectory in profits has been sustained for 17 years. According to the entity, it last made a profit in 2004 and the decline in revenue started in 2006. The billions invested by the government in the Post Office has been like putting sand in an onion sack. A futile exercise.
Two men entrusted with resurrecting the entity, business rescuers Anoosh Rooplal and Juanito Damons, believe the entity’s biggest failure was lack of adaptation to modernisation.
The story of a KwaZulu-Natal woman Sanja Hanekom, who received a parcel from New York in March, 13 years after it was posted, gives a literal meaning to what the business rescuers describe as “unreliable logistics fleet”.
Hanekom’s surprise delivery might give hope to some of the Post Office customers who have not received their parcels now held hostage by building owners owed by the entity.
Like other state entities such as Transnet, Prasa and Eskom, sleeping on the job resulted in the Post Office birthing a trail of private companies as millions of South Africans sought service delivery.
While the private companies offering services have over the years widened their network, the Post Office remains one of the cheapest and most accessible (if its branches are open) for many South Africans.
Back in 2017, the entity’s Fastmail, which many used for job applications or sending important documents, cost R21 for delivery anywhere in South Africa. This was the go-to service for new graduates in rural parts of the country when applying for work outside their provinces (this was when companies and government departments demanded physical applications).
More than 5-million South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) beneficiaries rely on this entity for grant payouts. Most of the grant beneficiaries who brace the long lines are pensioners and people living with disabilities. They are not only from the rural areas; queues snake even in the heart of Johannesburg in Marshalltown.
There might be many reasons other than “better the devil you know” for beneficiaries choosing the Post Office. One of these is that the Post Office grant payout does not have bank charges.
Those who receive R350 get it as it is. One might argue that bank charges can cost about R10, but that amount makes a difference for a household relying solely on the granny’s grant — including unemployed adults — to survive. The R10 could pay for a local taxi fee to get home.
The Post Office, however, has failed even in this role of offering this service to the poorest of the poor. Grant beneficiaries, especially the elderly, wake up before the “chicken alarm” to line up for hours but sometimes get turned away because branches run short of money.
For many beneficiaries when payday comes, they hardly have any food left.
The entity's business rescuers have proposed the Post Office stop paying out grants, arguing the service is no longer profitable.
According to a recent Sassa report, the Post Office paid out grants to 7.2-million people in March 2022. This dropped by 2 million as it had only 5,115,092 beneficiaries by September 2023.
In September about 600,000 Sassa beneficiaries collecting grants at the Post Office did not receive payouts on time due to a Post Bank payment system migration glitch. Some people had to wait for only a few days, but others waited a week to two.
The wait meant drinking boiled water while cooking a cup of samp for pensioner Esme Njosana before taking her high blood pressure medication to avoid collapsing from hunger.
This is just a glimpse of the starvation many went through. Rooplal and Damons stipulated in their plan the entity needed R3.8bn to rise from the ashes. Judging from the document, the bailout is in the pipeline and is likely to be granted.
Is the Post Office worth saving? It clearly depends on who you ask, but one thing remains certain: it would be a great loss to our society if an entity that holds the potential to support the poorest of the poor crumbles in the face of bad management.
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