Why I was almost thrown out of South Africa

On my 2 p.m. arrival for a week-long work trip to South Africa a fortnight ago, an immigration agent flapped my passport while inquiring as to the purpose of my visit. ‘To appear in the Franschhoek Literary Festival’ clearly meant nothing to this woman, but hey, lit fests aren’t exactly Glastonbury. I only grew, shall we say, concerned when she announced that because my passport lacked two sequential completely clean pages, she was denying me entry to the country.

‘You’re kidding me,’ I said – quietly; I didn’t shout. Yet this reflex expression of disbelief was all it would take for the entire team of Cape Town’s gatekeepers to blackball me as a reprobate with a bad attitude.

‘You think I am joking you?’ the official said indignantly. ‘I strike you as an unserious person, who tells you things just for making fun?’ This huffing went on for some time, though it was amazing I could hear her from that high horse.

Pointing out multiple pages with plenty space for their small visa stamp only made matters worse. I was ushered to a chair on the sidelines while the hall emptied. By 3 p.m., another female official with long braided hair extensions informed me snippily that I was now booked on another 12-hour flight back to London at 7 p.m. I could appeal to the US embassy for a new passport if I liked.

‘But wouldn’t the embassy be in Johannesburg?’ I submitted meekly.

At this intolerable impertinence, the official threw up her hands exclaiming: ‘It is true, you are impossible!’ Hair extensions flying, she flounced away. Clearly anything out of my mouth down to ‘have a nice day’ would only dig my grave deeper.