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NO DOUBT internet retailer Amazon’s decision to stop using the South African Post Office to deliver its goods in SA because of rampant theft will infuriate many South Africans who will now have to pay a premium for deliveries. Also, the Post Office would have lost a significant source of revenue which it will have to recover from you know-who. Besides, it is downright embarrassing.
Amazon’s decision is by no means the biggest blow to SA’s deeply tainted international image, but it certainly is one of the better indicators of how crime in state institutions affects us all, rich and poor. And, as always, it is the poor who rely on the Post Office more than anyone else.
Still, those may be the least of the issues raised by Amazon’s scrapping postal deliveries in SA.
Rampant Post Office theft is nothing new, of course. It has been going as long as, say, rampant theft at SA’s international air terminals, or police service corruption. It has been going on as long as poor government policy and weak political leadership dashed almost every reasonable prospect of government service delivery.
Failures, even such catastrophes as the HIV/AIDS pandemic, can be explained away as the consequence of hubris, ignorance or bone-idleness. In those instances there is hope yet of a turnaround as public officials become wiser. But in the face of institutional crime, SA is powerless.
Still, the country, and international businesses such as Amazon, took the promises of a clampdown at the Post Office seriously, especially accompanied by a statement from management last year that theft was down 69%. But when it promised to clean up its act it was before Eskom turned off the lights and before the crisis in service delivery precipitated a xenophobic rampage across the country. Now everything is changed.
Amazon would not have taken its decision lightly, since it stands to lose a substantial number of customers, but it would have been based purely on the numbers. Crime has simply made it unprofitable to do business in SA.
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