The Princess and the Phoenix

Looking back at the earlier story about my princess friend (written almost two years ago, in May 2010 to be precise, and called Two Policemen and a Princess) I noticed that my first Congo blog was written exactly two years ago. So welcome, dear readers, to our second birthday party, and congratulations for ploughing through so much drivel. And thank you for your feedback, which has been fascinating.

The said Princess, when I first wrote about her, was the head of our office in Katanga. Unfortunately, a few months later she committed some financial malfeasance – minor, I must stress – and was, as our American friends insist on euphemistically calling it “let go”. She was a dynamic person and had been selected for the job thanks to her achievements as an activist in civil society, though her royal connections undoubtedly helped. It was a great loss.

The news had not reached me until this week that she has come back to life as the Bourgmestre of the most important Commune in Likasi. (For those who don’t know the French system, towns (headed by Mayors) are subdivided into communes. Likasi has three communes, with populations of between 100,000 and 160,000 each, each headed, in Belgian parlance, by a Bourgmestre).

We go to her simple office. It is Saturday morning, but the staff are all there. Her eyes shine bright – “You see what we are doing?” she asked, almost like an eager school child showing a painting to a loving Mother. “How clean it is? Did you see what we have done with that roundabout? And the street signs – for the first time streets have names.” And so on.

Then she started to talk about the problems she is facing in the nine months since she was appointed by the President. How the Mayor refuses to share the receipts from the Markets, which should properly come to the Commune. How he was reluctant to even meet her and wasn’t collaborative.

The grave vine told us about the problems with the Mayor. He is, apparently scared of her clean government approach, because has been trying, more than anything else, to cover up the process by which he accounts – or does not, as some would say – for the receipts from the numerous taxes that his citizens pay. He’s also probably jealous, thinking that her high profile changes, which have hit the press, make his efforts look inadequate. What’s more he and the princess come from different political parties, so it’s his duty to run her efforts down. (Being a Bourgmestre is a high risk job – one of the communes that we work with has had three of them within one year. Even though they are appointed, it seems that they can easily be made scapegoats for anything that goes wrong.) But this has not yet killed her energy, and she’s determined to make a difference. And she doesn’t seem scared of these political tactics: indeed she may be politically more powerful than he is.

We also heard about the struggle she’s having to convince her staff to act responsibly, and do their job. For so long they have been used to arriving late and leaving early, often using office time as a cover for running their businesses. She’s trying to get them to see themselves as public servants, whose duty is to serve. It’s not easy after decades of maladministration, infrequent salaries and no resources.

She left us in no doubt about her determination to get proper revenues for the Commune, and start providing proper services. To which one can only say: Best of British Luck!