In a country that is notoriously bent, slow and inefficient, being an honest citizen can get you into a whole load of crap.
So we leave South Africa with some newly purchased photographic equipment for my stint in Kruger and Upon exiting South Africa I had to declare it. Over my “tax free” allowance of about 200 quid, I had to fill in about 300 forms. I then went to the tax refund clerk and was then told that I would receive a cheque in Rands at the place I’m staying in about 6 weeks, that I would not be able to cash anyway since I don’t have a Swazi bank account in my name.
Upon arriving on the swazi side of the border I had to go though the whole mess in reverse, but for some reason, because my South African V.A.T. had been “refunded”, I now had to pay sales tax, oh, and right now or I’d have my goods confiscated. I could soon see that I was not going to win this on it’s merit, even though I could not understand why I had to pay tax twice, and on asking where I how I claim the tax back when I leave Swaziland I was told that I couldn’t.
It turns out that I was not supposed to hand in the forms on the Swazi side of the border – Tax Optimisation you see. Now the wife who knew this, was beating my child so didn’t tell me, My brother-in-law who knew this was talking to some bloke on the border about his trip to Kruger and so didn’t tell me, and my Sister-in-law who knew this was busy cooling down in her car so didn’t tell me. We were now left with 3 options.
- Pay the flippin Tax.
- Jump the border and pray
- Back into into South Africa slowly
Now, bollocks if I’m gonna pay tax twice – I hate doing it once, so that option was out. Border jumping was considered – yes, while the guards do have guns and spears they are lousy shots, but the car is a big target and we’d loose our insurance deposit, so that ideas was skipped and we backed out out of swaziland and went on the lamb. Three hours later we planned to attempt the border again. This time, the lack of technology would work in our favour… not a computer in sight – phew, passports were checked, stamped and we were in – but now we are trapped her until such time as them deporting us doesn’t matter.