The Congolese administration is often depicted as a basket case of administrative corruption and malpractice. Surprisingly, however, not much has been written from an empirical perspective on the underlying practices of bureaucratic governance at the central level. Building on research conducted in 2010-2011 and in 2016-2017 in the central government dynamics surrounding payroll management, wage payment and ongoing HR reforms, this paper aims to help fill this gap. In particular, the paper challenges accounts of the Congolese ‘state’ which all too frequently reduce its modus operandi to predation and neopatrimonialism, leaving underlying dynamics vastly under-specified. The focus of this contribution will be two ministries active in the administrative segment of the expenditure chain with regards to remuneration: the ministry of civil service and the ministry of budget, and especially the payroll department in the latter. As such, the paper delves into the institutional tensions, political struggles, and bureaucratic conflicts which characterise human resource and payroll management in the DRC. It provides an in-depth account of how the expenditure chain functions with regards to wage payment, while being attentive to the political and financial stakes revolving around the wage bill, particularly political patronage through recruitment and the existence of ghost workers, leakages and embezzlement in the public sector payroll.