How to sell a car in Namibia in three easy steps—yeah right!

Selling our vehicle has been an interesting exercise into the inner workings of African bureaucracy. Of course no part of this process is computerized and so one must advance through the steps collecting the all important “official stamp” of the kingdom without which one had better not present himself at the next level. I'd never thought I would come to view American bureaucratic systems as being efficient (at least some of them especially regarding car sales), but this experience has permanently altered my perceptions.

We knew a bit about the process prior to embarking upon this adventure from having purchased the vehicle from an individual in the first place. We knew that a police clearance of the vehicle was the first hoop through which we had to jump. We didn’t know though that the clearance in and of itself consisted of several steps very little of which is explained or indicated by signage or handout or verbal cue. We located the correct building down on Banhof and Independence, parked our vehicle and presented ourselves at several windows to determine what needed to be done. It was basically those who were waiting in line, essentially the customers, who explained the process to us. No one person of course could explain all of the details, so we put it together piecemeal from each of the individuals we encountered along the way. At PHASE ONE, we waited in the vehicle until we could pull into the parking bay. Once parked, we propped the hood like everyone else, we were told we needed to complete a form. The guy with the forms, however was nowhere to be found. Once he did show, and once the form was completed, no one even bothered to look under the hood. The papers were then submitted to some women who sat behind what looked to be end tables in the alcove of the stairwell leading up to the second floor. They stamped the registration form with great enthusiasm. They then indicated that we should wait a few days before proceeding to PHASE TWO of the process.
The following Monday, we presented ourselves at the entrance marked PHASE TWO. Here there were at least posted notices telling the clientele to first go to Office One. Of course, the woman who inhabits Office One was not present. So, we took a seat and waited and waited. Several customers asked if someone would be coming to assist us and were told, “She is coming just now.” Finally, a woman arrived with a liter bottle of a name brand soft drink in tow and entered the office. Reid went in armed with copies of the registration, copies of his passport, his international driver’s license, etc. Our little stack of paperwork had become quite thick. She matched up the names and numbers with the documents, wrote a few things into a notebook and stamped, stamped, stamped.

It was on to Office Two which fortunately was adjacent. Several women inhabited this office and gave us essentially the evil eye when we arrived with our stack of documents. There was not one single object of technology in sight. They too were recording everything by hand in their little notebooks filled with forms and carbon paper. We received a couple of stamps from Dame #1 and a few more stamps from Dame#2 after paying the appropriate fee. When they deduced we were foreigners from the “duh” nature of all of questions, they did drop their air of being put upon and projected a somewhat more friendly attitude, but only somewhat and we ascertained that we needed to go up to the NaTiS (Roads Authority) Bureau in a different section of town to complete the Road Worthiness portion of the process.

Armed with all of our documentation replete with the appropriate stamps, we headed for NaTiS in the Northern Industrial sector of Windhoek. NaTiS is billed as your one-stop transit authority where you can meet all of your transit needs. We now needed to complete the Roadworthiness test to make sure the vehicle is fit for the road. We arrived about 8:10 in the morning, but that was actually a bit late. We should have gotten in line in the wee hours, sort of like waiting for rock concert tickets to go on sale, so that we’d have been up there in the queue. As it was, we were clueless as to which queue we needed to line up in. The guides directing us spoke little to no English, they grabbed one of the clients who translated. We were in the wrong queue. Additionally, another form needed to be procured and completed. We headed for the right queue behind a retaining wall. To our surprise, the wall was hiding a mass of cars equivalent to a 50 meter section of Los Angeles freeway traffic during the rush hour standstill. It was already 35 degrees Celsius and no cars were advancing.

Reid went to retrieve the correct form. He returned to our car to fill it out and then headed back to the “office” to pay the fee. He returned yet again, but without the form, just the receipt for payment. Everyone around us though seemed to have the form in hand. What to do? Absolutely no signage even hinting at the process. A couple of guys wearing uniform shirts with the logo of some local car dealerships stood ahead of us in line, surely they’d know what to do. Indeed, one kind young gentleman named Vernon took us in hand and ran our document down for us. He then proceeded to explain the process in intricate detail. It appears he does this everyday for a living for the car dealership where he works. Bless him! He even filled out some of the missing info on the form for us.

The inspection process, and that’s all the Road Worthiness test essentially is, took place in three steps. After several hours of waiting and advancing in tiny increments, we finally encountered the first “inspector” who checked out that the signals, lights, wheels, engine and doors were in order. This took maybe 45 seconds in total. The freeway of cars then narrowed down to one lane so that they could straddle the pit and have the undercarriage looked at, step two. It was a mad jostling to position the cars (if cars can jostle each other) in the one queue. Once the cars had been run through the pit, they were parked in the area to await someone to drive them round to their waiting owners at the gate, hence the completion of step three. Just as we approached the pit, we were stopped to wait for the inspectors to clear out the waiting cars. That took another 45 minutes or so as the hot, hot Namibian sun climbed higher in the sky.

When we did get our car over the pit, the inspector indicated that we had a bit of an oil leak that needed repair. We then had to park the car and wait yet again until the lot was cleared. The young lady who drove our car around tore off the bottom of the form and handed it back to us so that when we returned, they’d be able to locate the original form to which the stub had been attached and we’d not have to go through the entire process again. She put the form in a drawer of one of those plastic stacker organizers. Nothing was entered into a computer, so we hope that they will still have the documentation when we return. We won’t be holding our breath on that one.

Soooooooooo, Reid’s going to the mechanic today who will hopefully be able to correct the leak in a timely enough fashion for Reid to report back to NaTiS to complete the retest. Retests are only performed from 8-9 a.m. and 1-2 p.m. Ahhh Africa!

We’re trying to maintain a sense of humor about all of this, but sometimes it’s just not funny. My neighbor who is of Afrikaaner origin says one day, she’s going to get tired of laughing and have to move out of Africa. It’s really a good thing we got started early in this endeavor because it’s taking weeks and weeks just to make a simple car sale! When we bought it, it took weeks and weeks so we knew it wouldn’t be easy, but it does make me wonder about the people who really have to live here and try to function with that type of bureaucracy for things that should be so simple. I don’t even want to imagine what one has to do to buy a house around here! Well at the current 11.75% interest rate, most people don’t have to worry about that one…….