Red tape, Schmed tape

For all the hoo-ha about being a paperless society, I'm a little in awe of how much paperwork is required from us these next few months. One of the "perks" of being on the hardly-recognized South African passport is that is makes international travel a nightmare: it feels like we're presumed guilty (as terrorists? illegal immigrants? bad tourists?) and needing to produce a forests' worth of documentation to prove that we will do no harm, take only pictures and leave only footprints etc. Apart from the many hundreds of dollars and hours of time required to procure this next set of visas (we have to apply IN PERSON, and pay IN CASH), the paperwork requirements include:
* passports, identity cards, residency papers, photos etc (the stuff you'd expect)
* bank statments for the past 3 months
* letters from employers (kind of hard for me, that one.... maybe I should have Jeremy write a letter?)
* records of every visa issued to us in the past 10 years
* the full names, addresses and phone numbers of every single member of our immediate family (!?!?)
* letters of invitation (to be signed by the City Hall of the Dutch city our friends stay in!... oh, and copies of their passports too)
* travel information (they say "don't book your flight, because we can't guarantee you'll be granted the visa", but then they require detailed itineraries. But what are you supposed to do when airlines only hold bookings for 48 hours...)

... and that's just what I can remember from the list. There's more I'm forgetting I'm sure. Draconian, isn't it? Wish me luck: this is going to require all the bureaucratic patience I can muster!