Post-apocalyptic: should the Post Office be saved?
The state-owned entity has guzzled R8.4bn in taxpayer bailouts in the past five years, and there’s only a 68% chance that a parcel you post will arrive where it’s meant to. Is the liquidation of the Post Office the apocalypse that the government thinks it is? Or is the private sector already doing all the things the Post Office once did?
04 May 2023 - 05:03
Back in 1792, two Dutchmen swung open the doors of the first postal service in South Africa. It was a low-key event: the post office operated from a pantry in the Castle of Good Hope and would be open for just one hour a day, from 9am.
Over time South Africa’s postal service, like its global peers, was put through the wringer of the information revolution. What began in that Cape Town pantry all those years ago would be unrecognisable today, in a world that has now lived through the telegraph, the facsimile, the telex, the internet, e-mail and now e-government...
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