TV

A few weeks ago we were alerted to the fact that The Head of State, as he’s typically called here (rather than President, which allegedly doesn’t sound so impressive) was going to make an important announcement at 4 p.m. Some people joked that he would announce that he had resigned; or maybe he was seeking political asylum in Britain so that he could see the rest of the Olympic games. Presumably it would be about the war in the East which is beginning to look increasingly unwinnable. Does he have a Syria on his hands?

Anyway, not unusually, he didn’t appear at four o’clock and we gave up watching after five. To this day I don’t know whether he ever did appear. But while we were waiting, the TV station (the state broadcaster, of course) filled in the time with the standard fare: dancing.

Dancing is very useful in this country because everyone likes music, and the theory is that if you ever have a message to convey it should be accompanied by dancing. Since 99% of all the music here has a particular beat, then you can be sure that the dancing will be more or less the same no matter what.

This message was not lost on election candidates, most of whom included dancing crowds in their videos. Nor is it lost on advertisers. Need to sell shampoo?  Show people dancing with happiness with their new hair.  Need to inspire people to worship? Show them dancing inside the church. Want to advertise the latest instant soup? Why not have everyone dancing with joy because it tastes so good.

This is not hi-octane dancing. The norm is for people to simply stand, hands at the side, wiggling their hips and smiling inanely. Feet are allowed to shuffle a little, but one must not fling them around: that’s much too western.

The big advantage is that, as TV material, it’s cheap. It requires no special “Strictly Come Dancing” floor or other props. We saw someone setting up a shoot recently by the river. They had a cheap boombox with a CD in it, a home-movie style video camera, and a team of eight girls dressed in identical kit. And that was that. After half an hour it was in the can.

It is so loved that some people will even prefer it to the daily soaps. So TV stations know that they don’t have to worry that people will turn off if they fill available time with dancing, and they have almost limitless supplies to do so.

But there comes a time when the standard model doesn’t seem quite right, so while waiting for the President to come on, the station decided to screen something different.

Scene: an operating theatre, with a bloodied almost dead girl on the table. Someone is trying, in rhythm with the music, to resuscitate her with periodic but delicate shoves to the chest. They put an oxygen mask on her. Getting bored with the helpless case in the operating theatre, the scene changes to the ward where nurses are dancing around more horribly wounded patients. A doctor comes in (we know he is, because he has a stethoscope round his neck) and with a beatific grin sashays through the ward, his chorus line following him, ignoring the poor patients. And so it continues, for a good fifteen minutes, crossing between mutilated bodies and jolly dancing nurses all to the relentless beat of happy music.

I was mocking it, much to the consternation of my politically sensitive Congolese colleague. “They,” he said, very seriously, and without any sense of irony, “are expressing the national outrage at the conditions in the East.”

Cleanliness 101

Kinshasa is getting really excited because the Francophonie Conference is to be held here. That doesn’t sound like much, but in fact it is quite a big thing. It’s not just a language conference, but more like a Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference for the family of French-speaking countries. It’s held every two years, and normally attended by Heads of State by over 50 countries. Like the commonwealth it has its own secretariat and acts as a cultural and developmental organisation.

Tradition has it that the conference is chaired by the host nation. President Kabila is naturally very excited to have this role, but less than thrilled to hear that Francois Hollande is probably not coming. Like many people, he (Hollande) is said to be reluctant to legitimise Kabila after last year’s dodgy election.

So what’s Kinshasa doing to prepare itself? It is said that Kabila has managed to get a Chinese billionaire to refurbish an office block, the one-time Zaire Chamber of Commerce, (a 23 storey white elephant of the Mobutu period that has lain unused for decades), as a conference hotel and venue. It’s certainly got a magnificent position, right on the river, but whether they will be able to make the interior suitably presidential is not so sure.

And . . . wait for it: they are sweeping the streets. One of the problems of this town is that the soil is very sandy and somehow the streets are always edged with sand. Someone from on high has recently decreed that this sand is unsightly, so an army of street sweepers have been consigned to do the necessary. Wherever they work large signs are erected on stands in the centre of the road proclaiming “Cleansing of Kinshasa”. We were astonished last week, coming back from a restaurant after 10.00 on a Friday night, to see them still at it. The same on Saturday and Sunday. 

It’s a laborious task. First the sand is swept into little heaps, then the heaps are collected in a wheelbarrow and put onto a bigger heap, then shovelled into large bags, and finally the bags are taken somewhere in little trailers pulled by a motorbike. It’s only done in the posh areas, of course. As part of the cosmetics, grass verges are also being trimmed, and leaves being swept up too. The only thing which doesn’t seem right is that we are about two months away from the Conference, so what’s it all for? A dry run, to see how long it takes?

Meanwhile, a mere block away from the immaculately swept streets and trimmed verges, the litter along the river spreads like an evil pox. In spite of the fact that litter bins are available, the scene is disgusting.

There’s something else which isn’t so savoury along the river. That’s the dog poo. There are a few – mainly American, it must be said – owners who carry around little plastic bags and dutifully pick it up. For most of us, it doesn’t seem that important unless the dog is insensitive enough to do it on the footpath. In that case it’s shameful and must be covered up by soil or otherwise made harmless. But we tell ourselves that in this climate within a day or two it’ll be washed away, or else sterilised by the sun, so it doesn’t really matter. In reality, of course, the excuse is just a cover for our laziness. Obviously, unlike the city fathers, we haven’t learned that cleanliness is next to godliness.

One block away they are sweeping up the sand and leaves: here, it's someone else's job
(It's not all as bad as this: there are parts of the river bank which are pristine)

African grey parrots, imparting their wisdom

But then, to help everyone forget the squalor, the parrots in the trees above make a noisy contribution to the debate. They tell us not to fret so much. It’s been like this for years, they say, just chill.

Turning over a new leaf

It’s been a mantra, since our project started almost three years ago, that the government doesn’t want to decentralise, even though the Constitution says that it has to. It was clear that the big fish in Kinshasa want to hang on to power and are no more likely to share it, or the money that goes with it, than they are to take a cut in salary in solidarity with the starving poor. Since one of the objectives of the project is to assist decentralisation it was getting pretty frustrating.

Kabila’s not got a very good reputation for decisive action, but one thing he has done right is to appoint a cabinet of younger people who want to make a difference. One such is the Minister of the Interior . . . and Decentralisation.

So, taking the bull by the horns we decided to hold a big conference about how to get the process moving. The Prime Minister agreed to open and close the proceedings, and the Minister of the Interior would give the opening keynote speech.

We had over three hundred delegates including the top brass from many provinces.

But what was amazing was that the Minister himself spent time in the working groups thrashing out details of a new strategy. One of them was chaired by another minister – Education.

On the last day three other Ministers came to give their ideas about what needed doing, and subjected themselves to some very critical questions from the floor. What was funny was that when the Ministers started speaking people from the floor would shout “Who are you?” and he would have to introduce himself, giving a CV just like a candidate in an interview. This was such a contrast with the pompous “I’m above all that” behaviour of the previous cabinet.

But refreshing as it was to see Ministers engaging with the real issues, it was even more refreshing to hear them talk about their problems. The Minister of the Civil Service talked very frankly about the problem with pensions. In a word they simply don’t have the money to pay the pensions due, so allow staff beyond pensionable age have to continue working. Not that the pensions are huge: $1000 is as much as some people might get as their full and final pay out. They may have been paying into pension funds, but all that was wiped out by successive bouts of massive inflation. The situation, he said, “is ridiculous”.

The Minister of Agriculture complained bitterly about the situation he had inherited. There is a staff of 16,000 in his Ministry in Kinshasa, and only 8,000 in the rest of the country – which is, of course, where they are needed. Even that is too many because all the Ministry’s budget is absorbed by salaries, so they don’t have money to do anything else. But the fact that he’s talking frankly about the problem was like a breath of fresh air, and he received enthusiastic applause.

They were actually enjoying themselves . . .

So we’re optimistic. But confident? That’s another story.

It makes a change

Kinshasa is not the most exciting place, and most people spend their leisure time, and much of their work time too, planning their next trip away. The conventional wisdom is that you need to get away every three months. Not everyone has it that tough: the British officers in the UN peace keeping force have six weeks in the DRC followed by two weeks of home leave. It’s a hard life.

So when something does happen, it is truly an EVENT. There aren’t very many of them. Of course last year was different: we had all the excitement of the election, and numerous days off work “for security reasons.” For a lot of the people, of course, it was an excuse to get out anyway. But that year was definitely full of events. This year, by contrast, has been virtually event free. Until last Friday.

Partly because there isn’t much else happening, news seems to play a disproportionately big part in our lives. Our diet is mainly BBC, CNN and Sky News, (but with regular trips to Al Jazeera which covers some things much better). So for the past month we’ve been getting a diet of wall-to-wall London and that little event that it is hosting.

When the British Embassy invited all citizens and all diplomats to a big-screen showing of the opening ceremony, everyone came. The street outside the Embassy was blocked with parked cars as far as the eye could see. In the Embassy, the garden was full of tables, and large screens had been put up in the bar and the tennis court.

But what was such fun was the atmosphere. In fact less than half the people were watching the event: it seemed that just to be there was fun, no matter whether you watched the show or not. Even the people watching couldn’t follow it properly because there was such a noise of happy chattering, broken only occasionally by cheers when, for example, Daniel Craig appeared with the Queen, and Rowan Atkinson did his Mr Bean trick on the piano.

There was a raffle of Olympic memorabilia, but there was so much noise that I don’t think most of the winners heard their lucky ticket being announced.

In spite of this huge turnout, the normal Friday night barbecue went without a hitch in spite of the massive demand, and the booze didn’t run out.

But one couldn’t help thinking of the contrast between this carefree scene and the war in the East. The British Consul had sent a message at 6.30 that evening warning all British citizens in Goma to evacuate, as the rebels were only 20km away, and had announced that they would invade the town. The fact that they didn’t do so makes little difference: there seems to be a very real escalation of the conflict which is making many people nervous.

The origins of the rebellion are a bit fuzzy, but it seems that the rebels are Tutsi (as in the ruling tribe of Rwanda) who mutinied because a peace accord under which they had been integrated into the Congolese army had not been honoured. Their name, the M23, derives from the date of the accord, 23^rd March, three years ago. As their success grows, so do their demands. Now they are demanding the resignation of President Kabila. Their discipline and generally sensible demands contrast vividly with the behaviour of the Congolese Army itself. There is, in some people’s view, the possibility that it can grow into something much bigger, especially as they are being supported by Rwanda itself.

The next day we met a left wing Spanish couple who had come to the show, but had left before the event started. They pride themselves on being on the side of “the people” and I think they decided that the atmosphere was maybe a little too patriotic, even though only a tiny proportion of the people there were British. So they had gone to a restaurant which also happened to be showing it.

Their comments: it was just a Disneyworld denigration of the struggles of the working classes. Denying the importance of events by writing them off as history.

Well, it takes all sorts, doesn’t it?

A Study in Contrasts

We are in the flat of an elderly Greek couple. He is 82 and she about ten years younger, but to look at them you would place them at little more than 65 or 70. This evening is, for them, something of a social coup. Among seven guests five different nationalities are represented and there are three ambassadors – Greece, Italy and Egypt. The tone is delightfully formal and respectful, but without any attempt to ingratiate.

They have been in the Congo since 1946, have made lots of money; and three times lost lots of money. The first was when Mobutu announced his indigenisation programme under which all foreign owned businesses were seized and given to Zaire nationals. In their case they have several businesses and substantial assets including 17 lorries. The owner, Basil, went to the president, whom he knew quite well (whom he refers to as M. Le Maréchal), and begged him to change his mind. He won a promise to consider his case, but the junior enforcers of the policy harassed him from morning until night, so he knew that, in the end there was no hope and he fled the country with wife and five children.

Within less than a year the policy was totally discredited. Most of the new owners of the businesses had simply spent all the income, and looted the assets, as a result of which they were little more than shells. Basil decided to take the bull by the horns and flew back to Kinshasa. He went to see M. Le Maréchal again and used the argument of his children’s future, asking Mobutu, who had many children, how he would feel if his children had no future. This argument worked, so five of his businesses were restored to him, one for each child.

Then came the two pillages in the early 1990s during which the masses took the law into their own hands and simply looted all the businesses. The second one was worse than the first. They systematically removed everything, even to plumbing pipes, electrical conduit and suchlike, leaving Kinshasa and most other towns in a state of total dereliction.

But Basil and his wife stayed through it all, and are still here. He has a grocery shop in the heart of what used to be the known as the African town, but has seen his turnover decline steadily, partly due to increased prices and decreased incomes, and partly due to increasingly fierce competition from the big supermarkets.

His story is not unique, and the once powerful Greek community has been reduced to practically nothing. In the good old days they built a beautiful orthodox church, a school and two blocks of flats and offices, and a club – all in a compound in the centre of town. The buildings are still there, but the church is now 100% black, and the school has only nine pupils (with a staff of five!). They can only survive thanks to the rents which they can charge. A bank and UNICEF are their main tenants. The club is still operating as a restaurant, and serves very good Greek food. The Greek community has published a beautiful, fully illustrated book entitled “The unknown pioneers” which traces the history of Greek entrepreneurs in the Congo from the early 1800s, but from 5,000 or more it has now declined to less than 100.

As we listen to these stories one cannot help but contrast their lives with our own. They have stuck with it, through thick and thin, while we flit from flower to flower, pretending to engage with the country, but knowing that we can leave at any time. We have no real need to deal with the fundamental flaws which, to this day, pull this country down. By contrast he feels the situation deeply and can fully share the distress of others trying to make ends meet. He talked of what had happened that morning: the police had mounted a raid to “clean up” the city in the area where he has his shop. It is an area near the main market, packed with little stalls. These were the target of the raid. He watched while the police broke down the shacks, and took all the goods. Owners who were not quick enough to run away were beaten up by the police, and their mobile phones and money stolen.

We shake our heads sympathetically and make noises of disapproval (in French, the lingua franca of the evening) and disgust. But what do we really know?

Driving Licences

It was a pleasant surprise when we first arrived to find that getting a driving licence was no more difficult than giving someone from the office $70, and the next day, there it was: a nice laminated item, complete with a photo. But that, clearly, was too simple, so the government decided to tighten up.

The new system was introduced about two months ago, and with it a warning that the old driving licences would expire by the end of June. The new procedure was considerably different from the old one. It would involve a health check by a doctor (mainly blood pressure), an eye test, and three competence tests: a written test on the rules of the road, a second test on road signs and a driving test. If you got through all that you had to deposit money in the authority’s bank account, and show proof that you had done so. Finally your finger prints would be taken, together with your photo, and a couple of days later your licence would be issued. The cost $120.

As far as we know there is only one centre issuing licences in Kinshasa, with at least 100,000 drivers. As the deadline approached there would surely be massive queues, so a group of us at the office decided to go together before it became totally hectic.

The scene at the testing centre was very different from what we had imagined. We were ushered into an air-conditioned waiting room, and each was given a number. There was one person in front of us. Things were clearly not so bad. Then bureaucracy hit: we didn’t have the right identity papers. It was not enough to have a passport and the certificate of address issued by the commune. We had to have a Residence Card. So after waiting over an hour while they debated whether they could stretch the rules and accept us without a residence card we were sent away empty-handed. We later found that we would each have to pay $300 for the said card.

But we found out one important fact: the expiry date for the old licences is no longer the end of June. That will now be announced at a later date.

With the streets awash with fake driving licences, it makes sense to have one which is harder to forge, but this is clearly going to be an impossible system to implement in the short term at the scale required. But there can be no doubt that there will soon be an official announcement regarding the latest date for the validity of the old licences, and the police will start to crack down – to great financial benefit for themselves (the policemen) as they extract ever increasing bribes from the motorists. 

But there’s something else interesting about the set-up. The testing centres, that have been set up throughout the country, are operated by none other than the brother of the President, contracted by the Government. No wonder the fee is $120.

Artists' Studios

Since there are no art galleries in Kinshasa, the only way to buy is to visit the artists in person. It was a hot afternoon and we were in a hunt for the studios of the two “names” in the art world. To reach the first requires local knowledge that it will take a long time to acquire.

We have a street name and number but that’s not always helpful as most streets have no name boards and many houses have no numbers. Instead people navigate by landmarks, and to find the place required several phone calls to the artist, followed by much asking of directions at street corners.

As we follow one tiny street after another in an ever more confusing maze we wonder how the driver will even know how to get back. Eventually we’re there. A large metal gate is opened and we see a very humble house looking onto a dirt yard, and with paintings already on display on a verandah. The artist is elderly, short and quite stout, and produces huge canvases, populated in many cases by famous people – the Obamas, Bin Ladens, Sarkozys etc of this world. Other paintings have a social and allegorical theme. He has real ability with faces and some of his people have extraordinary vitality. One picture which catches my eye is about himself – it is a surrealist painting of him in a variety of situations and in a variety of different scales so that, for example the shoulder of his jacket in one scale is a cliff up which he is climbing in another scale. His two little daughters sit prominently in the foreground on his arm – drawn with astonishing vitality and completely lifelike.

We are with someone who is thinking of buying one as a present: she photographs her favourite, which is an almost life-size spiv – Sapeur is the word used for such people in Kinshasa – wearing the bling of his kind, and gazing out of the canvas with a satisfied, but curiously ironic smile which says “I’ve made it”. The price: 4000 euros.

There is another, even better known, artist living in the same general area and with the same last name. We ask about him. Our artist is reluctant to steer us to a competitor, but eventually relents, and we are on our way. It is only about one kilometre away, but this time there’s no need to ask whether we’ve arrived at the right place. Certainly not! his name is written in 3D letters on the wall, which is painted a bright yellow, edged in purple; topped by razor wire and secured by video cameras. This is someone in a different league. We are told that one of his paintings recently went for several million dollars in Sothebys.

A notice on the wall rudely tells us that he’s not in the country and there’s no point insisting on seeing him because he’s not there. Which suggests that he is there, probably dodging the tax man. But ring the bell as we might, there’s no response. People in the street disagree with our interpretation of the facts and think that he’s in Belgium or Paris or somewhere similarly cosmopolitan.

We return frustrated at the lack of awareness of both artists of the value of good relationships with clients as well as the pervasive need for secrecy. But at the same time we’re quite excited to have found them and to know that we can come back.

A few months later we go to another studio. This is in a commercial area, and the artist shares the yard outside a half-built shop with a couple of other entrepreneurs. On the upper floor of the shop is a makeshift church. Someone’s family lives downstairs, and we make our way in through sheets hanging on laundry lines.

Like many Congolese artists, having found a formula that sells he sticks to it. In this case it is a bunch of fuzzy figures. You can have black figures on a white ground, or vice versa. If you like you can have red figures on a black ground, or white figures on a red ground, etc. And of course, there are big ones, medium ones and small ones. Something for everyone’s pocket. Some of them a quite attractive, and our friend, who is leaving shortly and is determined to buy one, spends hours deciding which one.

There’s another way of seeing art. That is to go to the annual art show organised by the grand dame of the arts at her enormous establishment. This exhibition is set in a glorious tropical garden. Beer and soft drinks are provided free of charge by the breweries, and everyone who is anyone is there – probably more than 1000 people.

The works are hung around two sides of a square. On the third side of the square is a stage on which there will be demonstrations of ballet dancing by children who attend the grand dame’s daughter’s ballet school. A clever trick to get the hundreds of adoring parents to attend.

Each artist has been given about three metres of wall space on which to hand his work.

It is so much the same as last year’s that it is hard to get excited. The formulaic styles begin to grate.

There’s a woman standing alone whom I vaguely recognise.

“Are you enjoying it?” I ask.

“Oh yes,” she replies, putting on a somewhat supercilious look. This is not going to be easy.

“I think it’s a bit similar to last year’s”, I say, not wanting to be too forthright about my feeling which was that

a.     The artists clearly have never done life drawing, as the figures are embarrassingly bad;

b.     There is no observation of the world in which they live. I long for a household scene, a landscape, even a still life.

c.      There is not a single portrait.

Then noting the way she waved to one of the artists standing next to his work, I ask, “Do you know him?”

“Of course,” she said, “I know almost all of them. You see my husband is the head of the Academie des Beaux Arts and has been for 20 years”.

I held my tongue.