How a home affairs blaps created Anger

If our Department of Home Affairs was responsible for compiling America’s extra-judicial hit list, Barack Obama would be in serious trouble. You see, their employees have slippery fingers.
And after Seal Team 6 had lined up the US president in their crosshairs, a departmental spokesperson would have shrugged his shoulders and said: “What’s an ‘S’ between mortal enemies?”
Crossword-solvers know a single-letter error can turn their world upside down. A letter can make a difference in other contexts, too. President Jacob Zuma wouldn’t get into trouble for boasting about his impressive election, would he?
Two weeks ago, his ex-wife, Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, made me angry. That’s not true. She made my son Anger and she made me furious.
I adopted Khwezi three years ago. About 18 months ago the adoption order was granted. I had to reapply for a birth certificate for him so he could get my surname – Ancer.
I filled in forms. I stood in queues. I filled in more forms. I stood in more queues. I paid and was eventually told that all I had to do was hope Pretoria played its part. Well, Pretoria didn’t play its part. With a slip of a finger Khwezi’s surname came back as “Anger”.
Smoke poured out of my ears as I thought of the forms and queues that lay ahead in a bid to untangle the one-letter error.
I’m no shrink but I wondered if the error was an unintentional slip of the government’s resentment towards me. After all, I am a journalist and the media is the target of the government’s rage.
I guess I should be happy they didn’t burn my son’s birth certificate as advocated by Nelson Mandela Bay chairman Nceba Faku. Well, Faku too.
The anger goes all the way to the top. The error, I decided, was subconscious payback for my very first Angry Utterances (10) column, written during a Zuma love child scandal, when I wondered if the clue “What those who have sown their wild oats become? (7)” had something to do with the prez.
In other words, President Zuma, the Anger surname blaps is a Freudian slut, er, slip. Or as the Daily Telegraph put it in its crossword: Kind of shrink underwear giving revealing glimpse! (8,4)*.
When I realised it was unintentional I reckoned I should embrace my Anger – so I gave Khwezi a hug.
“Khwezi’s surname is all the rage,” I told The Shrink. “If I supervise him is that Anger management? And when we feed him are we fuelling Anger?”
She sighed, but I wasn’t finished. “And when we drop him at school and turn to wave are we looking back at Anger?”
The Shrink asked why I was no longer angry. I explained my Freudian slip theory.
“Sometimes,” she said, “a mistake is just a mistake.”
When I saw the correction on Monday in one of the world’s most prestigious newspapers, The New York Times, I realised the government makes mistakes, reporters make mistakes, and what’s important is setting the record straight as soon as possible.
The New York Times spelt Lieutenant Schwenk’s first name incorrectly – it’s Milton, not Melton – in his obituary published on June 29, 1899. Let’s hope it won’t take Home Affairs 112 years to fix Khwezi’s surname.

* FREUDIAN SLIP: A “kind of shrink” is a FREUDIAN and SLIP is a type of “underwear”, which gives us a revealing glimpse of what you really mean “when you say one thing but mean your mother”.