ZAIRE-EDUCATION: Forced to Choose Between School and Dinner

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Alain Shungu Ngongo

KINSHASA, Jun 17 1996 (IPS) - The falling value of wages here has been forcing Zairean parents to keep some of their school-age children at home so as to make sure that the family eats.

And, as in other African nations, when the time comes to choose who will get an education, it’s usually the ‘boys first’ principle that is followed.

Public servant Gustave Yuma has had to make such a choice. He has been working for the government for 30 years now but successive devaluations and high inflation (6,030 percent in 1994) have reduced his salary to a pittance.

He earns 40,000 new Zaires (NZ) per month. Ten months ago, that was equivalent to just under six U.S. dollars at the then rate of 7,000 NZ to the U.S. dollar. Now the NZ exchanges at 1:28,300, so his salary translates into 1.41 dollars.

“It’s so little that I have been forced to send only two of my six children to school — the two boys, of course, the four girls stay at home,” he says. “It’s a difficult choice but I have to do this so that the family can at least eat.”

Even so, they cannot afford to eat every day, he adds.

Figures compiled by the U.N. Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) show that more and more Zairean children, especially girls, are not going to school.

UNESCO’s 1995 World Education Report indicates that the percentage of Zairean children of primary-school age actually enrolled in primary schools went down from 71 percent in 1980 to 52 percent in 1992.

During that period, the percentage dropped from 82 to 58 among boys, and from 60 to 47 percent for girls.

Even fewer Zaireans have been going on to post-primary education. In 1992, 21 out of every 100 boys of high-school age were enrolled in secondary schools and only 12 out of every 100 girls, according to the report. With the hardships faced by families increasing by the year, today’s figures could be even worse.

Some children manage to stay in school by helping out their parents. Alexandre Mavungu (16) says he and his 14-year-old brother hawk peanuts, eggs and cigarettes to add to what their mother earns from selling bread on the streets of Kinshasa.

When they have time, they go to the city centre and wash or guard cars there. “We do all that after school,” explains Alexandre. “But sometimes we also take sweets and biscuits to school and sell them during break time.”

“Our father is dead,” he says. “We live with our mother and we can’t afford to leave school. Even though our mother is poor, she wouldn’t be able to stand it. She says school is our only hope.”

“The money we earn pays for our schooling, and also for medicine for us, when we are sick, and for our mother, who suffers from rheumatism,” he adds.

Going to school in Zaire is not just a matter of paying fees and buying books. Teachers routinely go for months without salaries and many depend on their pupils to survive.

Says Patrick Sukisa, a Justice Ministry official: “It’s impossible for people with salaries like mine to send their children to school today. For more than five years now, it’s parents who, in addition to paying school fees, pay teachers’ salaries.

“They pay either in coin or in kind,” he explains. “Look, last year I contributed regularly to the salaries of the teachers of my three children. Sometimes I gave a used pair of trousers or a second-hand shirt and sometimes some rice or cassava flour.”

Education is not high on the priority list of Zaire’s government. According to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), only six percent of the central government’s expenditure went to education in 1986-1992 as against 14 percent for defence.

Since independence from Belgium in 1960, only four schools have been built by the state. “Throughout Zaire, all that we have are schools left by the Belgians or those built by religious denominations,” says secondary school inspector Prospere Ekanga.

As a result, many of the institutions are old. In fact, in most cases school is a building with dilapidated walls and a leaking roof in which children sit on bricks or planks supported by stones.

Learning under such conditions is not easy, especially when teachers are demotivated and classes large — in 1992, the average in primary schools was 45 pupils per teacher, according to the UNESCO report. As a result, many children repeat classes: 21 percent of primary school pupils were repeaters in 1992 (up from 19 percent in 1980), the report showed.

Despite the hardships, some make it to secondary school and later to university, where they are sometimes confronted by an ill that pervades Zairean society: corruption.

Isidore Lwanga, a retired public servant, says his son has been unable to get past his third year in economics at university because he can’t grease his lecturers’ palms. “My son is no dunce,” he told IPS, “but he has not been able to finish his studies because right now I don’t have any money to give him so that he can get good marks from his instructors.”

It’s even more difficult for girls since some teachers, both in secondary schools and at university, demand sexual favours.

Fifth-year student Clarisse Mboyo (18) says she was impregnated by a teacher at her secondary school. “It’s one of my philosophy teachers who is responsible for the child I am now bearing,” she told IPS. “As soon as he found out I was pregnant, he ditched me and he tried hard to get me expelled.”

At university, “many girls give in so as to get good marks,” says 27-year-old medical student Gisele Mpaka. “But in the end they realise they allowed themselves to be abused for nothing. I would never accept that type of game. I would prefer to give up my studies than allow myself to be tricked by shameless lecturers.”