Desperate Lives

The equation is simple. The mathematics teacher makes just under $100 a month teaching at a Kinshasa high school and helping with the accounts at a government ministry. But he spends eight times that amount, the equivalent of $800 a month according to the official exchange rate, on rent for a modest three-bedroom house and food for his wife and four children. "It's only by the grace of God that I am here," says the teacher, who declines to reveal his name because he fears official reprisal. "The day will come when I will just give up and move back to my farm." He leans forward in his simple wooden chair and plays with the arms of his silver-framed reading glasses. "The problem comes from our leaders. They are selfish," he says. "They live better than us. Congo! Huh! We live in a contradiction."

The Democratic Republic of Congo is both rich and poor. Underneath its sprawling jungle lie many of the world's most valuable minerals — from gold and diamonds to columbite-tantalite, a vital component in the production of mobile phones and computer chips. But the natural riches have not helped its 51 million inhabitants. Years of corruption and mismanagement have left the country in ruins. Only one in every 1,250 Congolese owns a telephone, for instance. For most, technology still means a hoe or a basket. Per capita gross domestic product is now less than $100 a year, one of the lowest levels in the world.

Congo's economy was the world's worst performer last year, shrinking by 11.4%. According to the Central Bank, it has contracted every year but one for the past decade. Official coffee production is just 10% what it was a decade ago; cobalt production is down a third. The state-owned copper mining company earned the Central Bank $800 million in 1989. Last year it brought in just $40 million. "Our economy is bankrupt," says economics professor Mabi Mulumba. "Everything's in the red."

The seven countries warring in Congo and myriad rebel groups have attacked civilians, destroyed property and displaced uncounted thousands of people there. The International Rescue Committee, a New York-based relief agency, estimates that more than 1.7 million Congolese died between 1998 and 2000. The war has fueled existing ethnic tensions, further fracturing Africa's third-largest country. "Should the D.R.C. remain a single state?" asked a report last year by the International Crisis Group, a research and advocacy organization. "And given its current occupied, exploited and fragmented condition — can it?"

The war exacerbates the economic problems by sucking up hard currency and vital resources like fuel. Fighting makes it hard to farm in many areas, leaving thousands of people hungry. And insecurity along the majestic Congo River, which, in the near-complete absence of roads acts as the country's main highway, has cut off central Congo from the rest of the country. "The war has definitely made things much worse," says a senior Western diplomat. "The economy is completely dysfunctional and subject to continual extortion."

People survive as best they can. The mathematics teacher, for instance, spends many of his weekends at his farm tilling the soil himself. And much of the huge difference between his official salary and what he spends is due to the exchange rate. The black market figure is up to five times as much as the official rate; a few jobs paid in hard currency will make him as much as a year's official salary. Like many civil servants, he also expects direct payment from those he helps; students' parents pay him with crates of Coca-Cola, bags of concrete, sacks of rice — anything that will hold its worth even as inflation, which last year ran at 500%, continues to rage. For some, there's even a vague form of social security: wheelchair-bound polio victims rely on monthly — and government-encouraged — handouts from Kinshasa's shop owners. "The Congolese people's capacity to survive is extraordinary," says another diplomat.

Mayas Kuyangisa, a 31-year-old clothes hawker, makes around $30 a month. He spent the last two years in neighboring Angola but came home because of the war there and because he heard that a new President in Congo "may make things better." But though he says police harassment is less than under Laurent Kabila, "things are still tough," even compared to Angola. "They eat well, but they are in war," he says. "Here, even in peace the beer is very expensive. The food, the conditions we are living in. I hope this new man Joseph knows how bad things are."