Our Christmas present to the Governor

Last Monday there was a public announcement: all cars must have road licence disks for the current year (cutely called “vignettes”) by the following day. Massive numbers of police would be checking cars, and those without a disk would be severely penalised.

These disks are issued by the city of Kinshasa, and the proceeds go to it and the Province which shares the same boundaries. The only problem is that, as far as I know, they are not sold at a regular place. For example, one year the sellers located themselves in the middle of a roundabout. On another occasion they were in the forecourt of a petrol station.

On Monday our driver, when he brought the news, said that the sellers would be stationed at a very busy commercial centre about five kilometres away. We gave him the $100 we thought it would cost, and off he went.

Seven hours later he was back. He told us that some people had been queuing since 6.00 that morning, but when he arrived he was only number 38 in the line. By any definition that should mean he would be out within an hour or two.

But no, this calculation ignores the possibility of a simple queue-jumping system. Namely that if you offer $50 to the supervisor you can be seen straight away. To make matters worse, a lot of the queue jumpers were agents wanting to buy for tens or twenties of cars. As a result, by the end of the day, they had only reached number 33 of the honest queuers.

Our driver is not one to put up with this stuff in silence, and by shear force of personality he was served, so that by 5.00, he was back at the office with the vignette itself.

Meanwhile there was talk around the town about how the money would be used. The consensus was that this was a fund-raising exercise by the provincial Governor to buy votes in order to stave off the current impeachment process against him (due, partly, to allegations of corruption). And, of course, for his Christmas festivities.

The next day traffic was very light as most people hadn’t had time to get their vignette. But by 10.00 that morning news that changed everything went viral, as they say: the Director General of the Kinshasa Tax office and his deputy had been arrested for corruption. This gave people the confidence to emerge again, and we’ve seen no road blocks since to check compliance.

Aha, you will say. The Governor impeached, and his tax chief arrested for corruption. Obviously, they’re cleaning up the system. Putting Kinshasa, not to mention the Congo, on the straight and narrow.

Alas, it’s not like that. These events are highly selective. The Governor has made himself unpopular in many ways, and is paying the price. As for the tax collector – sure, there’s probably plenty of evidence. But he’s one in a cast of thousands. So why pick on him?