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Congo's 'Change of Mentality'
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Apr 14, 2008 08:04am |
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| Category | News |
| Media | Newspaper - Washington Post |
| News Date | Monday, April 14, 2008 02:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Provincial Officials Seek to End Graft, Mismanagement
By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, April 14, 2008; Page A10
LUBUMBASHI, Congo -- One recent afternoon in this booming mining town, in a provincial office crammed with files, something unusual was happening for a country once ruled by the famously kleptocratic dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.
A mid-level government administrator named Vincent-Francois Yangala was going over a local budget, line by line. He was checking receipts. He was noting discrepancies.
"The report must be in order," said Yangala, 62, a meticulous man in a khaki suit who explained how different things were when he worked for Mobutu's government. "In the old system, I would just take the public money and go drinking with women. When I moved to a different job, I would take the typing machine, the lamps, even the curtains -- I would put them in my house. Now there is no way. Now there is shame."
Yangala's new sense of propriety reflects a monumental challenge facing this central African country the size of Western Europe, which has only 3,000 miles of paved roads, no mail system, no public school system and where some villagers report that they have not even seen a government official in 15 years. |
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