South African bureaucracies are characterised both by ambitious reach and by acute limitations, both born of apartheid legacies. This is in clear evidence when it comes to deceased estates, the focus of this paper. Here, legal deracialisation meant that a system of administration previously for the white minority was extended to everyone. An exacting formal process now confronts a large non-white population unfamiliar with the relevant law, the process, or the habits of submitting to either. As commentators have noted, South Africans more generally offer only limited consent to being governed, or to conform to social order sanctioned by the state. At the same time, bureaucratic institutions are themselves now staffed by a younger generation of often non-white professionals, who understand the gaps between legal arrangements and popular practice. The result inside the department that handles deceased estates, where officials are both legally trained and immersed in on-the-ground complexity, is bureaucratic anxiety. But, short of legal reform, the task is to reform people. The outward-facing response is workshops and community meetings intended to produce citizens ready to engage in formal process. By doing so, the bureaucratic state constitutes its public.