Just in time

It was 22 January 2012. The posters being put up were truly special: the Rolls Royces of poster-making. They were printed in full colour on thick plasticised fabric, with brass rings at each corner to prevent tearing when nailed to walls or strung up between trees. They were advertising a conference to discuss the Congo’s latest report on the subject of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) to be held just three days later – the 25th.

We all know that the topic of conflict minerals is a hot one. While blood diamonds used to be at the top of the list (and remain a hotly debated subject in Zimbabwe) now interest is very much focussed on the mines in the Congo. It is alleged that the motives of the various warring factions/countries in the East of the DRC are primarily to get possession of the mines there, which include diamonds, gold and coltan. The last one is a little known but highly important mineral in the manufacture of cell phones. Certainly, there’s massive evidence to show that all neighbouring countries are benefitting from the smuggling of these minerals, whether by armed gangs or organised crime, so there must be something fishy going on.

As one of the world’s leading producers of coltan, the Congo, with its endless wars, has come under increasing scrutiny. The activist lobbies in the US began to link coltan with war crimes, exploitation, rape and numerous by products of the industry. The EITI was intended to reduce the scope for armies and bandits to gain financially from mined minerals by requiring certification at the source. The theory was that if you can stop the illegal trade in minerals you’ll stop the fighting.

The United States led the fight, when, in an extraordinary piece of logic, it included a passage making it illegal for US manufacturers to use minerals that were not certified as part of the Dodd-Frank Act of July 2010 entitled “Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act”. This is a massive, 849 page piece of legislation which was intended to regulate the financial industry. The legislation may have been just what was needed as far as Wall Street was concerned, but its impact on the Congo was disastrous. Hundreds of tiny mines, consisting of nothing more than a few men with a wheelbarrow or two and shovels were put out of work because they had no way of getting their production certified. Some minerals still get through by smuggling (it’s interesting that exports from Rwanda and Burundi of these minerals, even though they don’t have any mines, continue), but the impact of the law has been to wholly negative, not least by reducing prices as the goods can only be sold under the counter. Meanwhile the fighting intensifies.

There’s another story about mining in the Congo. In 2009 the DRC revoked the mining licence of First Quantum Minerals, a Canadian company that had invested $750 million in a new plant to process copper tailings. In effect, not only did First Quantum lose the licence, but they also lost the investment which was, effectively, expropriated. (After a lengthy arbitration they were compensated for some of their loss). Having thus acquired a very lucrative asset, the Congo government sold it to Dan Gertler, and companies in the British Virgin Islands linked to him, for a fraction of its real value (the figure of $30 million has been used). He is a young Israeli entrepreneur with a flair for making friends in high places and keeping his money in tax havens. Dan Gertler then sold the mining rights to another mining company for hundreds of millions of dollars. The proceeds were then, allegedly, shared between him and his protector, President Kabila.

In September 2011 the IMF, as part of their due diligence procedures, asked for explanations from Sodimico and Gecamines, both state owned mining companies, concerning sales of assets at below market value and without publicity to Gertler. This was in connection with the IMF's proposed loans to the DRC worth $561 million to strengthen the economy.

These dealings are public knowledge. However what is less well known is that payment of the latest tranche of the IMF loan, about $85 million, has now been suspended because the government has refused to disclose details of the Gertler deals. It (the Government) even had the cheek (I was told by the IMF representative) to demand a renegotiation of the loan agreement, while refusing to allow the last three IMF inspection teams entry into the country.

Gertler’s shady dealings have not gone unnoticed in the stock exchanges of the world, and in December 2012, it was reported that Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation (ENRC) had spent $550m buying itself out of a DRC copper-mining partnership with Gertler, in order to protect their good name. They accused him of making the majority of his $2.5bn fortune from "looting Congo at the expense of its people". So when we talk about transparency in mining, it’s clear that the Congo might squirm a little.

But no, as the poster shows, they are trumpeting their adherence to the principles of transparency, and their wholehearted support for the EITI, even though it looks like a bit of a sham.

But wait: the report to be discussed at the conference on the 25^th is for the year 2010. That’s all right then – let’s let bygones be bygones.

Gotcha!

Readers will know that the police here have a bad reputation. One of the first indications of how bad it was came from someone had been running a police training programme for several years: “the only threats to law and order in this country are the army and the police”, she said.

Several stories of harassment by traffic police, especially of women drivers, reinforced the stereotype.

But occasionally it is good to be wrong, and here’s a case to prove it.

Our driver is a man who sees himself as one of the ruling classes, if only by association. He will not be bossed around by anyone, and while not arrogant can be highly argumentative if he feels that his point of view is not being understood.

He came to me recently with a request to borrow money to buy a piece of land on which he wants to build a house. It wasn’t a huge amount of money, so after all the usual warnings about being careful that he bought it from the real owner I gave it to him - $600.

Two weeks later the deal was done. He had a bit of time on his hands because we were out of the country, so he went to the said plot and started cutting the grass and clearing out debris etc.

His work was interrupted by a gang of three youths. “Who are you?” they asked. “You must account for yourself. What are you doing on this land?”

“I,” he replied, drawing himself up to his considerable full height, “answer to no one but the police. If you are police then you have the right to ask me the questions. If you are not, and I can see that you are not, I do not need to answer, and I shall not.”

This wasn’t what they wanted to hear, so they attacked him. What happened in the melee is not clear, but what is certain is that he was struck on his right eye by a massive rock, and was left, semi-conscious, lying on the ground bleeding and half blind.

Passers-by found him and helped him get medical treatment. Fortunately, the sight came back to his eye within a day and his vision seems to have fully recovered. The other cuts and bruises healed relatively quickly.

The day after his attack, nursing the massive black eye as evidence, he went to the police to lay charges against the youths. Within a day the gang had been located. One was arrested, and although the other two escaped (it’s not clear whether any money changed hands to facilitate the matter), he was in court within two days. We willingly gave our driver time off to attend the hearing and witness the young man being sentenced to several months of what is surely pretty close to hell.

I was sceptical about the apparent ease with which the police found the suspects. How did they arrest them so quickly? Was he sure that the one in dock was truly the culprit?

“Yes,” he said, “of course it was the right man. They know what they are doing.”

One could end it there, but the case reminded me of another one: a friend of ours had his passport stolen by pickpockets in the centre of Kinshasa. He too got it back within a day. Not bad, as police work goes.

Endangered species

Pandas, tigers, frogs, polar bears? . . . no none of those. Plumbers and electricians. In the Congo.

I often feel guilty about the fact that I write too much critical stuff about the Congo, and it may sound as if I just want to run it down but I can, hand-on-the-heart state that that’s not my intention.

Make no mistake, there are big problems here. Everyone agrees about that, including the government, the President and his people.

Get a Congolese aside for a few minutes and the complaints are endless. Justifiably. But when I write critical stuff it’s not supposed to be the “you must try harder” type of criticism, but rather to illustrate the difficulties which its Government, President and people face.

So here goes – another comment which could be seen as criticism, though, taking a historical perspective one could say it is the result of a Darwinian selection system, a classic case of endangered species.

We all know how species survive: it is through reproduction, and if the conditions are wrong for reproduction then the species is doomed. E.g Pandas and Tigers, especially in zoos. If you also have the problem of nasty predators, as Tigers do, then the chances are not good.

Enough about Tigers – what about the plumbers and electricians (P&Es for short?

Long ago the economy of the Congo was collapsing. There was hardly any money for public employees, no one was investing in new building and the outlook was bleak. At that time, the publicly funded Trade schools, which were supposed to be training the said P&Es virtually stopped functioning: they had few tools and no materials with which students could learn their trade. As times got harder and harder, the schools demanded ever larger financial contributions from the students, while giving less and less in terms of tuition. At the same time, construction came to a halt, so there was no way of learning on the job. And then came the two pillages, the mass lootings, which systematically destroyed all factories, most offices and many private houses and finished off the already fragile economy under Mobutu. It takes a long time to recover from that damage, especially when there is, in effect, no working government. So even when Kabila’s father came to power there was nothing more than a tentative stirring of economic activity.

That’s all changed, so now there’s a lot of building, and people are demanding higher standards for their water and electricity. So the few P&Es that are still alive from the period when Trade schools were operational are now working for high wages for high powered construction companies. Where does that leave the rest of us? Without.

So there you are: reproduction impossible because no one teaches anyone how to do it any more, and the high powered predators that take the best out of the system.

That’s why, dear reader, when I go to Kalemie and my room has no light, and the bathroom no water – even when, the Manager says, they were both working yesterday – the Manager can complain with justification that there aren’t any P&Es in Kalemie. Another hotel in the same town was almost as bad, and I’ve realised he wasn’t just telling a story – he was correct. Likasi, the same: to get someone to mend a leak in a water pipe serving a basin was, according to the Hotel Manager, practically impossible. Our own experience in our flat with P&Es is much the same.

Everywhere you go you see the results of incompetence by would-be P&Es, people who maybe have a few weeks of working alongside an expert, but who neither have the tools nor the skills to do the job properly. But so desperate are people for some help, they’ll employ anyone, no matter how useless they are. The results are all too clear, and sad.

I recently read that there is a world-wide shortage of welders, but not P&Es.  So, why don’t some of them come here and teach the young Congolese how to do it? That would be real development.

Back from the hols

It’s always reassuring when you’ve been away to come back to familiar ground, and sure enough some things in Kinshasa are still the same. The army of street sweepers, whom everyone predicted would vanish after a few weeks, or months at the most, are still there, vainly trying to find something to sweep up when each has little more than a 100 metre stretch of road. The electricity is still going off with regularity, and the police are still looking hungry for something.

But other things have changed. For example there was a Christmas tree in the arrivals hall at the airport: a small one, admittedly, no more than one metre high, but a Christmas tree all the same. Well, a plastic Christmas tree.

Shoprite, a South African supermarket that opened its doors with much fanfare earlier last year, has a massive glut of mince pies and Christmas cakes – having overlooked the fact that such delicacies are not on the diet of their Congolese customers.

The Minister responsible for the sector under which we work has had a press conference to launch his new web-site. “This,” he proudly proclaimed, “will provide all the data anyone needs to know on the sectors for which my ministry is responsible.” I looked at the site. It’s very smart: most pages are headed by pull-down menus below which are pictures of the Minister at public events. But there’s not much below the pictures. On one page there are copies of two speeches he has made; on another there are the names of key staff. On a third there’s a policy statement that’s more than a year old. What is missing is, unfortunately, any link with the official web-site of one of his sections (prepared with input from us), which contains all relevant legislation, data giving the population, area and a mass of other details of all local government units in the country, training guides and much much more. But then he wouldn’t refer to that, would he?  It’s financed by foreigners.

The most important change is to see the drawn, but victorious, faces of so many Congolese people. Like most of us, of course, they knew that the world was going to end on 21^st December. As if to confirm all the predictions, the previous day started with massive rainstorms. As the streets flooded, so did the determination of the ordinary people to stop the apocalypse by going to church and praying. They prayed all that night, and all the next day. It was all worth it: as dawn broke on the 22^nd they were able to experience the thrill and relief of knowing that God had listened to their prayers and decided not to end the world this time.

Sounds absurd? It’s true - really.

Times past

Here’s the shortest ever - a Christmas special.

You are in the offices of a commune with a population of 260,000 – a subdivision of the City of Lubumbashi, probably the most prosperous city per head of any in the DRC. The commune is responsible for a huge range of different matters such as providing markets and community centres, ensuring the provision of education and health services, social welfare and the like.

There are four offices: that of the Bourgmestre (the boss) and just three others, all opening out onto a narrow access veranda.

The accountant (for there is only one) is asleep at his desk, because there’s no money either coming in or going out.

To one side of the accountant’s office is the office of civil registries. Beside the entrance door is a poster: Register your birth here: IT IS FREE! There is a steady stream of people waiting. They are unusually quiet and respectful because there should be no noisy quarrelling at such an important occasion. The events are lovingly entered into massive tomes provided by UNICEF.

The accountant’s slumber is interrupted by an insistent tapping. It is coming from the office on the opposite side – that of the Commune Secretary who is writing a letter. For this he has hauled out his ancient typewriter, and is banging out the words, letter by letter, his fingers hovering, ever so slowly, over each letter before pecking it fiercely. The typewriter itself, like the steam engines on the railways, the post offices throughout the country and much else that we see daily, is a much depredated survival of the Belgian past. It is virtually the only machine in the whole office. There are no computers, no air conditioners, often no power, and indeed not even any filing cabinets (everything lies on rickety shelves).

It is no surprise that the letter, so kindly written on our behalf, is exactly like those fake examples of old typewriters much loved by advertising agents and movie makers, where the letters are purposely out of alignment thus giving the page “character”.

I’d love to reproduce the resulting letter we received, but cannot for obvious reasons of confidentiality. But to give you an idea of what it’s like, here’s a part of it.

Happy Christmas

A captivating tale

When the notorious M23 rebels were about to capture Goma, the guards at its Munzenze prison decided to get out while the going was good. From what we understand their last act was to hand the keys to one of the prisoners so that their captives could follow their example, which they did.  All 1,175 of them.

The prison was built by the Belgians at least 60 years ago to accommodate 150 prisoners. It had been allowed to get into such a bad state that it received the attention of the American Bar Association which went so far as to provide funds to improve it. The UN peace-keeping force had also made some additions. But in spite of that its reputation was nothing short of grisly.

To return to the story. Prison guards are generally considered to be OK types, so after their “escape” they could mingle freely with the townsfolk and quickly vanish. For the prisoners it was a different story. For many members of the public the idea of having thieves, rapists and murderers wandering around their streets was too much, especially when they were unsure whether the M23 was friend or foe. This created, according to the news reports, a state of psychosis as well as an opportunity for revenge, so the hapless prisoners’ freedom was marred by being beaten up. Eight were lynched to the extent of being killed.

Meanwhile, the opportunistic public, always on the lookout for something free, looted the prison, taking bedding, doors, windows, fittings and furniture. By the time the M23 left the town the prison resembled the aftermath of a massive bombing raid.

The prisoners were mortified. They had lost their home and their restaurant service, but they appealed to the authorities to allow them back. This “patriotic” gesture was warmly welcomed by the Governor of the Province who provided them with mattresses, blankets and food. However, many still remain unaccounted for, so he has promised a reduction in the sentences of those who come back home soon.

Isn’t that sweet?

Doing business

The latest “Ease of Doing Business” study has been published by the World Bank. Not surprisingly the Congo is 178 in the world, 5 from the bottom. The documents shows that in the DRC’s case the total value of taxes payable adds up to 339.7% of profit (compared to, for example, the UK where it is 37.3%), and will take 336 hours to manage per year. Importing a container takes on average 63 days at the port of entry, and costs $3,285. (It’s 6 days in the UK).

It was a nice surprise to meet an aid worker who’s here to try and improve the business climate. He’s not expecting to revolutionise things in one go, but hopes that by the time he leaves, the DRC will at least be better in some respects. He’s lucky to have job that can make a discernable difference, and good luck to him.

Meanwhile, you can’t help thinking that if life’s so tough for business why does anyone come here?

But they do. Last year we boggled, with incredulity, at a shiny new billboard on the main road into town:

“Welcome to the new Kinshasa” it said. “Announcing the Cité du Fleuve, a new exclusive island in the middle of the Congo River.”

And to prove that they weren’t lying there was an artist’s impression of a Dubai style island development, right in the middle of the mighty river. What wishful thinking!!

But little by little news trickled out that work had actually begun. Huge dredgers were creating the island by pumping vast quantities of sand just to the north of the main city. Someone said it was being funded by a British hedge fund, which put a totally new perspective on it.

And then, this invitation arrived in our email boxes. “Enjoy fabulous pizzas at the Cité du Fleuve” complete with a photo to prove that it existed.

So, one Saturday, off we go. The journey takes one through some rough areas which makes one wonder whether they’ll ever attract the sort of client they need, but suddenly you are driving on a causeway onto the island which already has tarred roads, street lights and other symbols of modern development.

The pizza place is not much more than a small kiosk, but it serves attractive tables under large umbrellas at the water’s edge. As you sit you can watch regular traffic of dug-out canoes bringing supplies to Kinshasa. On the inland side of the road they are building the new houses.

As if to prove a point about the problems of working here, the developer has opted for steel pre-fabricated houses. There’s one completed already and several more are going up. They’re very nice, middle income type houses – not as fancy as the billboard suggested.

Their logic is that although importing stuff is slow and expensive, it’s less hassle than dealing with endless unreliable suppliers. But what a wasted opportunity for developing local skills and manufacturers! I wonder if the business climate were better whether they would have taken that decision.