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Zaire Theft and Bribery
The widely used Lingala phrase, yiba moke,
meaning
"steal just a little," did not originate in popular
conversation
but in the text of a speech by President Mobutu in 1977.
He was
speaking out against runaway corruption and advised his
countrymen
that they should "steal just a little" or, perhaps, "steal
wisely"
and that they should invest the proceeds inside the
country rather
than stowing it abroad. Intended as a moderating counsel,
Mobutu's
words have come to epitomize the scale of corruption under
his
rule, corruption so commonplace as to command public
presidential
acquiescence so long as its practice remained "moderate."
Some
analysts, notably David Gould, have identified this
massive
corruption as the essential grease that has served to
lubricate the
machinery of state and without which it might cease to
function.
Corruption is extremely widespread. A survey of
government
personnel in Lubumbashi in 1982 documented the variety of
means by
which state employees supplemented their irregular and
inadequate
salaries. These means included embezzlement (including
direct
payroll theft, often through the padding of payrolls with
fictitious names), payoffs, forgeries of official
signatures and
seals, sale of false documents of certification, illegal
taxation,
second jobs, and foodstuff production and sale. Other
analysts have
added to the above false bills and profit-margin cheating
on the
allowed rate of profit for business; import, export, and
excise
stamp fraud; sale of merchandise quotas; postal and
judicial fraud;
and extortion at military barricades.
Bribery, too, is commonplace. A rich vocabulary for
bribes is
one index of its ubiquity. Anthropologist Janet MacGaffey
has cited
as examples in Lingala, madesu ya bana (beans for
the
children) and tia ngai mbeli (stab me); in Swahili,
kuposa koo (refresh the throat) and kulowanish a
ndebu (moisten the beard); and in French,
comprendre,
s'arranger, and coopérer (to understand, to
come to
terms, and to cooperate), which may be used by a speaker
to
indicate that a bribe is appropriate. Sometimes a gesture
may be
used, such as stroking under the chin, to signal that a
bribe is
expected. Although analysts debate whether the term
bribery is an
appropriate characterization of these exchanges, the scale
of the
phenomenon and the bottom-to-top direction of the flow of
resources
has not been contested.
The sense that public and commercial coffers are prizes
to be
won may be found in conversational phrases and in popular
music.
Adults knowingly speak of the avantages de la
caisse (the
advantages of the cashbox) in discussing a chief's
economic
position. Children in the early and mid-1970s would
frequently
shout out to passing expatriates a phrase from a popular
song
mondele, donnez-moi la caisse (white man, give me
the
cashbox), showing not only an appreciation of the
continuing
economic power of the first estate but also the sense of
treasury
as trophy. This sense extends to the upper reaches of
society;
university students in Kisangani would at times exonerate
those
responsible for thefts of public funds with the phrase
s'il y a
l'anarchie, profitez-en, (if there's anarchy, profit
from it).
Data as of December 1993
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