Ave Maria

It is said that the only threat to security in Kinshasa are the forces of law and order.

Rather a bold statement, and one which many would deny. But the fact is that some bad things go on, and many people feel more fear than hope when approached by the police or soldiers.

But I’m not going to write about that: it is getting rather heavy. But it is an unarguable fact that officials, whether in law and order or any other role, occupy a very special role in Congolese society. That’s because, in a land of scarcity, they have the power to grant or deny things.

Interestingly enough, this is not considered such an appalling thing by the man in the street. Traditional society was run on authoritarian lines, and in traditional settings the chief requires to be shown respect. How this is done may vary, but traditionally it would be by giving him something which is proportionate to the favour required.

What I found very interesting in Ghana is that there is a standard first (but necessarily final) step in approaching a chief: giving him a bottle of schnapps. Yes, schnapps. Not whisky or brandy or vodka, but schnapps. Then if it is a really big deal, it can be followed by a cow, your daughter in marriage, or whatever.

In Swaziland it is normally a chicken or goat. But wherever you are these traditions are strong that no one thinks twice about it.

So, in the Congo, whether in the rural areas or urban areas if I want something, let’s say a driving licence, or an electrical connection, I must decide what is an appropriate contribution, which I then make very discretely.

BUT THAT IS BRIBERY. Yes, of course it is, but it’s worth it. To the ordinary man in the street it is not seen as a crime at all: it is simply the cost of doing business. So while we make complain bitterly about, for example, transfer duty when selling a house, we nevertheless pay it: it is part of the cost of the transaction.

In a country where the resources are so few, transactions must be prioritised, and Congolese officials are open to suggestion in these matters. Is this so different from the politicians in the US whose suggestibility is the focus of the army of lobbyists? And these same lobbyists, who get paid more than the politicians, have only one motive. Getting priorities and values and even principles changed. They have a whole panoply of inducements, both subtle and somewhat less so, to achieve their ends. How different is this to the supplicant at a municipal office who wants a water connection?

This is where it gets interesting. The Congolese man in the street, particularly where the transaction is a big one, will also employ a lobbyist. Well you could call it an intermediary. If he is too junior to speak to the man himself, let’s say a Minister, then he will employ or persuade an acquaintance to do it for him.

Much the same applies to expatriates when their car is stopped by an apparently irate policeman for a minor infringement. History tells us that if they don’t have an interlocutor, the whole scene can drag on for hours. And that’s got nothing to do with the French – native French speakers have the same problem. What they need is, of course, a Virgin Mary who will approach the deity (well, policeman, but he likes to see himself as the deity) with respect and humility without either side losing face. And the Virgin Mary’s represented, of course, by the driver who is inured to the ways of the law and who knows when to talk and when to shut up.

However hard it might be to see it from the other side, we should try to do so. The policemen get paid $20 or $30 a month. And not regularly – sometimes pay is months late. They have wives and children to support, and being a state employee are expected to behave with largesse whenever rural family members come to town, with school fees, with funeral costs and so on and so on.

So can you blame them when they ask for a little something? A colleague recently had a confrontation of this sort. The policemen tried all sorts of angles – threatening her with imprisonment, refusing her permission to move, the threat of huge fines and so on. The whole dialogue seemed to last about an hour. When he realised his strong arm tactics weren’t working, he suddenly changed his tactics. “If you give me a little something, I’ll let you go,” he said. He dropped his mask of power and in a flash became a softly spoken family man who only needed to feed his family. It was curiously touching, and reveals more about what is going on than he realised.