It's a funny country (3)

Sometime in June the Governor of Kinshasa decreed that all taxis had to have stripes along each side in the national colours of blue and yellow.  Within days most had complied, but the instruction was so vague that no one knew how wide the stripes should be and just where they should be painted. Police tried to enforce the rule, but somehow it didn't really catch on. So o o a few days later the Governor came to different decision. Starting from a few days away (I'm not sure, but it was less than a week) all taxis should be painted yellow. On the appointed day the police were out in force, and any non-yellow taxis was taken off the road. Literally within two days all taxis were yellow. It must have made a fortune for spray painters and paint manufacturers, but it happened. And if you're thinking what is the fuss about, painting a few cars, you're wrong. It's literally thousands: looking along the streets of Kinshasa about one in three cars is a taxi. They're mainly little things, usually quite battered, and driven without any regard for other users; and packed to the brim with long-suffering passengers. But in a city with very few buses they are the mode of transport that most people use.

But that's not all. The Governor had a similar idea about supermarkets packing shopping in plastic bags. Possibly after seeing Blue Planet, or hearing one of the many scare stories about the terrible impact that plastic bags are having on the environment, he banned them. Seven days notice. And it worked! There's not a plastic bag in sight now.

In a country where salaries are often paid late, where air traffic is in a state of complete chaos, where roads are allowed to revert to jungle, and tax collection is the art of the deal rather than complying with the law, one can only marvel about the level of compliance with these decrees.  It showed that it can be done, and one can't help wishing that this level of discipline was applied more widely.

A carefully whispered opinion is "if only we had someone like Kagame running this country" - whispered because Rwanda invaded the DRC, and Kagame is considered a threat. But is any politician likely to make discipline and the rule of law a priority, as in Rwanda? That's not the history so far.