National Diploma passes with distinction
Daniel Nelson
If you want to see what youngsters are up against in Africa, how corruption and poverty block their way, how hard they work to overcome difficulties, see National Diploma.
Ok, it’s not ‘Africa’, because there is no such country: it’s Congo – Kisangani, to be precise. But all over the continent this fly-on-the-wall documentary will evoke bitter-sweet memories of recognition.
Director Dieudo Hamadi follows a group of students heading for their final school-leaving exam at the Athenee Royal (“Royal slum, more like it,” says one resignedly as he sweeps the rainwater out of a classroom), and serves up n incredible, indelible slice of life.
To most of the students, the exam is a make-or-break moment. Pass, and you are on a path that will take you away from the poverty that makes paying the school fees a constant problem. Fail, and you may be consigned to continuing in the hard, prospectless, market-portering job that is helping pay the fees your parents cannot afford.
It really matters. So when a batch of students is thrown out of the school for non-payment of fees they meet to discuss what to do next. Remonstrating with the principal gets them nowhere. All their pleas and complaints (including the absence of many teachers for much of the previous year and a failure to cover whole sections of the syllabus) fall on deaf ears: “For now, just go home. If you can’t pay by Saturday, don’t come back.”
They decide to have a whip round, rent rooms where they can study in an unfinished house (“Don’t touch the wires”), throw down their sleeping mats and set up home there, complete with a nailed-to-the-wall blackboard so advanced students in a particular subject can give lessons to the others.
Many deal with the rising tension of the approaching exam by seeking blessings and potions from church or traditional healers. There seems little to choose between the two. The churchgoers (“We are here to study but we are nothing without Jesus”) shout their pleas to god with tearful intensity, insert their names in their biros and pass them to the pastor (“With these pens you will be able to produce what God has put into your mind”). Another boy heads for a healer and is doused, while standing on a chair, with a green gunk concocted from “plants that fight bad luck” and others that boost intelligence. “This [treatment] is just the beginning,” he is told. He has to shell out yet more money to ensure his safety when he moves into the house – “A lot of things can happen when you move into a house with strangers.”
The students’ mutual support and politeness is remarkable. When the headmaster pays a conciliatory visit and admits some of his teachers are mercenaries who care only for money and that it has been a difficult year, a student tells him softly, “We’ve been sacrificed this year, but do something for future classes, please.”
A turning point in their studies comes with the visit – organised by the quiet-spoken student leader – of two successful former students who tell them: “No-one can pass the National Exam without cheating.”
The education authorities know that’s the situation, they claim: “That’s why they allow the questions to leak out.” The following year it will be your turn to pass on the information, he tells the assembled students: “It’s a legacy.”
Immediately before the exam, text messages allegedly containing correct answers to the forthcoming exam questions are whizzing around town.
This is counterbalanced with a wonderful scene of provincial officialdom ceremonially receiving the delivered question papers, unlocking the metal boxes, cutting the protective plastic coverings with a razor blade and holding up the papers to the cheers of the students lined up in front of them.
No spoiler alert is needed: I am not going to reveal the results, but the final minutes of the documentary chronicles wild exuberance and utter, life-crushing dejection as students individually text an education ministry number and receive an automatic response which gives their pass or fail mark. The stunned, thunderous face of one of the boys whose efforts we have followed is all the more tragic because he is alone with his torment in the midst of jumping, screaming jubilation.
“Take heart, my friend. That’s life,” a colleague advises as he sits, head-in-hands, in the shop where he works.
The film leaves the viewer with a number of unanswered questions about the actions on screen and we don’t get to know who these students are – what sort of families they come from, how poor they are, what relationships they form, what are their ambitions. But it gives a vivid impression of a few vital weeks in a handful of lives in a Congolese city.
Definitely worth seeing.
· National Diploma is showing at the Brixton Ritzy as part of the London African Film Festival on 2 November, at 4pm
National Diploma
Image by National Diploma
