before resigning
Anger and resentment are palpable these days among mid- and high-level
administrative managers at Université de Kinshasa and other colleges
in the Congolese capital city as well as countrywide.
These administrators allege that Léonard Mashako Mamba, the minister
of higher education, hired 800 new university and college personnel
hours before resigning from office last week.
Various administration sources at Université de Kinshasa told me that
this hiring could spell the doom of the cash-strapped institutions of
higher education that are already under the crushing burden of a
bloated personnel as well as of unsustainable overheads.
"He basically woke up one morning and decided to hire people in
droves," one administrator told me. "People from his village or
province maybe--who knows?"
The major problem and injustice is that previous new hires who were
awaiting the recognition of their formal administrative status called
here "mécanisation" (civil service computerized matriculation) will
soon be fired in order to accommodate this injection of unnecessary
personnel.
A professor at Université de Kinshasa told me that former minister
Mashako Mamba--and all his predecessors, by the way--had the habit of
using the national university and college systems' students fees as
their personal cash cow.
Out of the $220 annual fee each Université de Kinshasa student pays,
for example, 5% goes to the minister as "discretionary funds," of
which the minister is accountable to no one.
Now, add to that drop in the ocean of dollars 5% of students' fees of
all the universities and colleges countrywide, and you find that the
minister's slush fund is quite staggering.
Meanwhile, still taking Université de Kinshasa as an example, for
decades not a single red penny has gone to the university library and
bookstore. Which means that you have a situation where students, who
learn by rote from notes taken in classes or from the professor's
printouts, have never ever read one single book throughout their
academic studies!
"You'd think it's a vast conspiracy to kill the country's future," the
professor concluded.
2) Kabila appoints MP Charles Mwando Simba as oncoming government's "formateur"
At 15:15 HRS Kinshasa Time (GMT + 1) this Thursday, March 8, the
state-owned TV channel RTNC abruptly interrupted its live feed of the
International Women's Day parade on Boulevard Triomphal attended by
acting Prime Minister Louis Koyagialo Ngbase te Gerengbo to broadcast
what it billed as "an important communiqué from the Presidency of the
Republic."
The communiqué announced that Prez Joseph Kabila has appointed the
74-year-old former Defense Minister and MP-elect MP Charles Mwando
Simba as "formateur" of the oncoming government. The communiqué
further informed the public that Mwando Simba is tasked to negotiate
with various factions of the parliamentary majority in order to come
up with a new prime minister.
Mwando Simba is a native of Moba, in northern Katanga, and is the
chairman of the party "Union Nationale des Démocrates Fédéralistes"
(UNADEF).
I think Mwando Simba was chosen, not for being a Katangan like the
Prez, but for the male-centered gerontocratic bent of the Congolese
cultural and political systems (he is the oldest politico among the
newly elected MPs within the Presidential Majority). A bad symbol, if
there could one, telegraphed on the day that the world celebrates
women.
*
Incidentally, Acting Premier Louis Koyagialo is from Mobutu's Ngbandi
ethnic group of Equateur Province. And this afternoon, as he was
walking towards the lectern to deliver his address, a sycophant
yelled: "They claim Kabila doesn't like people from Equateur. Here's
one specimen--and a tall one at that!"
Koyagialo is well over 6-foot tall.
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