Nobody signs a delay

A refusal has an author, a date and a reason, and can therefore be challenged. A delay has none of these. South African administrative law had to make separate provision for 'failure to take a decision' precisely because the machinery of review presupposes a decision to review.

The applicant who approaches a court about delay is offered, as relief, a further process — with its own timeline. The remedy for delay is more delay. Practitioners live this daily: the Home Affairs file that is never refused and never granted; the appeal that waits on a record that never arrives. Delay is the form power takes when it wishes to be unattributable.