Congo’s president has not kept his word

LOUIS BAHATI, a teacher at a primary school in Goma, a city in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has not been paid for more than two years. Struggling to feed his family and on strike for a second time, he took up a job painting a neighbour’s house. When a passing pupil spotted him, he was humiliated. “My class mocked me,” he says. “The student told them that he had seen their teacher, covered in dirt, doing this painting work.”Although Mr Bahati has been a teacher at a state school for six years, he has not yet been added to the government payroll. This meant that when President Félix Tshisekedi (pictured) announced that primary education would be free from September 2019—which was one of his main election promises—Mr Bahati stopped receiving any pay. Like thousands of other teachers who were not on the books, he relied on fees from parents. After the president’s announcement, they stopped paying.