Justice in the Congo, Part 4

The Problem of Execution

I meet a private lawyer in his two-room office -- his cabinet, as it is called.  He has practiced in Kamina for several years and works on as many as 100 cases per year; his annual salary is about $3000.  Most of his cases are land disputes; the bulk of the rest involves fraud or deception.  Few cases from this rural region involve violence, he says.  

The lawyer describes a typical case.  A man buys property for $600.  He settles in, but members of the Congolese military pay him a visit and tell him that $600 is too cheap.  Three thousand dollars is a fair price, they tell him -- and the balance is payable to the military.  If he does not pay, he must leave or face eviction.  The man is still clinging to his property and the case is pending.  The lawyer believes he will prevail.  

But winning a lawsuit in the Congo, I discover, is only part of the battle.  

The lawyer faces many of the same resource-related problems that plague the prosecutors and judges in Kamina.  Unfettered by the suffocating Congolese bureaucracy, he has better luck furnishing his office.  His secretary already uses an ancient desktop computer, and the lawyer discusses plans to buy a laptop in the future.  

He focuses instead on a different concern:  “Here, generally, execution is still a problem.”

One of his clients had a dispute over the rights to a lake.  The lawyer took the case and won.  A celebration followed, the client took over the lake, and the lawyer returned to Kamina.  He soon received word that instead of appealing, the losing party took a different route.  It enlisted the military to reclaim the lake and got the District Commissioner to “cancel” the judgment.  Despite winning the case, the lawyer’s client has been kicked off the property with no effective recourse.  The lawyer has written the relevant authorities, but he doubts that his client will soon return to his lake.  

For the lawyer, this called to mind another water-rights dispute that began in 2001.  By 2004, the lawyer’s client had prevailed and gained control of the property.  Six months later, the losing party arrived at the property with weapons and chased the winner away.  “We tried to fix it,” the lawyer said, “but we could not get them out.”  A high-ranking administrator gave them 22 policemen to solve the problem -- to no avail.  The occupants are still there to this day.  

I ask whether he thinks the justice system is fair, and after a pause, he says that in rural areas, it generally is.  “But we have problems at the Palais de Justice,” he quickly adds.    

He says that in Kamina, someone can commit murder and be put in prison -- only to be released if he can pay enough money to the magistrate.  

Or, he says, it is possible to pay the police to arrest someone, even if that person has done nothing wrong.  

“But it is done in secret.  People are afraid because the law is tough on corruption.”  These days, he says, the government is trying hard to stop corruption.  “You see Kabila on TV.”  But, he adds, “it is difficult to stop.”

I ask whether poverty is a cause of this corruption.  “Even the rich are corrupt,” he responds.    

I ask whether anyone within the justice system is not corrupt.  Three men in the room brainstorm and come up with four names:  one prosecutor, two judges, and a military judge.  Two of those named -- including the Chief Judge and Chief Prosecutor -- were recently promoted, and will soon be leaving Kamina for the provincial capital, Lubumbashi.  

Administrators' Offices

I stop by some administrative offices in the Palais de Justice.  In the prosecutor’s administrative office, the only chair for visitors is metal, with no back.  Two hollow metal poles protrude from what has now become a stool.  A few bundles of yellowed papers are visible in an open cabinet.  Few other trappings of a modern office are visible.  

In the Clerk’s Office, the only chair for visitors is wooden, with one arm.  There is almost no paper in the room.  The few stacks of paper on the shelves have yellowed, and thick cobwebs over some of them suggest that they haven’t been touched in some time.  

I peek into a room in the Clerk’s Office reserved for civil cases.  Along the back wall sits a shelf with twenty-four cubbies.  Most are filled with tall stacks of more yellowed paper; one is filled with old rags.  This is the court’s system of civil records, in its entirety.  A desk sits in the middle of the room, and near the front is a hulking piece of machinery, covered with dust and spider webs.  I am told it is a machine for processing maize.