Moving forward in Zimbabwe - Brooks World Poverty Institute - The ...

Moving forward in Zimbabwe
Reducing poverty and promoting growth
The comprehensive approach that the government pursued
contained five major social assistance programmes. First, the
government sought to improve the wellbeing of unskilled and
semi-skilled labour through minimum wage legislation. During the
early 1980s, minimum wages for domestic workers, agricultural
workers, industrial workers and mine workers were increased by
the government in an attempt to address aspects of the welfare gap
produced by colonialism (see Table 8.2 below). The government
augmented its minimum wage policy by leveraging control of
the inherited price control system, to implement additional social
assistance programmes. Through the price control instruments, the
government kept the price of basic food commodities (maize meal,
cooking oil, bread, etc.) relatively low by subsidising producers.
Second, in the 1980s Zimbabwe made significant welfare
improvements by providing free health care to those earning less
than Z$150 per month and their families, 1 erecting and upgrading
hospitals and rural health centres, 2 expanding the immunisation
programme to cover pregnant women and the six major childhood
diseases, and initiating the Village Health Worker Programme
(VHW) 3 and the Traditional Midwives Programme (TMP) to
train local village-based health-care providers (Ministry of Health,
1984; Agere, 1986). In addition to these health care programmes,
the government also declared diarrhoea a national priority by
launching the Diarrhoeal Disease Control Programme (DDCP).
This programme also trained mothers to properly prepare the oral
hydration therapy solution (Cutts, 1984). Finally, through the newly
created National Nutrition Unit, the government adopted a host
of nutritional programmes, including the Child Supplementary
Feeding Programme (CSFP). Through this programme, over
250,000 under-nourished children in over 8,000 communal area
feeding points were provided with an energy-rich meal (Working
Group, 1982; Ministry of Health, 1984).
As numerous scholars have noted, ‘education has always
been in the forefront of politics in Zimbabwe…’ (Zvobgo,
1987: 319). During the colonial period, restricting African access
to education was one of the policies used by the settler state to
protect, defend and reproduce white privilege. After independence
the new government aggressively reformed the education system.
Significantly, the government sought to achieve universal primary
school education by abolishing fees for primary education (Zvobgo,
1987; Sanders and Davies 1988). During this period, there was an
average annual increase in school enrolments of over 20 per cent:
from 892,668 in 1979 to 2,727,162 by 1985 (CSO, 1986).
Gains were not just limited to primary education. As bottlenecks
in the education system inherited from the colonial period were
removed, there were dramatic increases in enrolments at secondary
schools and technical colleges. Comparing enrolments in 1988
with those in 1980, du Toit (1995) concludes that attendance at
secondary schools was up by 771.5 per cent, and technical college
enrolments were 623.7 per cent higher. In addition to expanding
student access to education, the government also committed itself
to addressing the quality of education provided. This began with
a 1982 decision to standardise student-teacher ratios nationally at
1:40 for primary education, 1:30 for secondary education and 1:20
for sixth-form students (Stoneman and Cliffe, 1989). To capture
adults, the government also adopted an adult literacy programme.
As noted by Sanders and Davies (1988), these changes had a double
effect on the welfare status of the population: they contributed to
the general welfare of the population through the intrinsic value of
education; and free primary education increased real incomes for
households with school-age children.
Similarly to the education system, the new government in
Zimbabwe inherited an agricultural sector characterised by a highly
skewed land ownership pattern (see Mandaza, 1987; Moyo, 1995,
1987). Estimates put white ownership of prime agricultural land at
well over 70 per cent, compared with less than 30 per cent owned
by 90 per cent of the population. Although the government’s
policies with respect to redressing unequal land ownership fell well
short of rural expectations, the new government took advantage
of the Agricultural Marketing Authority and its marketing organs,
Table 8.2: Legislated monthly minimum wage (nominal Z$), 1980-86.
Date
Domestic workers Agricultural workers Industrial
Mining workers
(a) (b) (a) (b) workers
(a) (b)
1 July 1980 30 (c) 30 (c) 70 43 70
30 December 1980 30 (c) 30 (c) 85 58 85
1 May 1981 -- -- -- -- -- (d) 85
1 January 1982 50 62(e) 105 105
1 September 1983 55 67 55 65 115 110
1 July 1984 65 77 125 120
1 July 1985 75 93 75 93 143 143
1 July 1986 85 -- 85 -- 158 158
Source: Sanders and Davies, 1988: 725.
Notes: (a) For those workers who also received payments in kind.
(b) For workers who did not receive payments in kind.
(c) Benefits were to be added to cash wage.
(d) Mineworkers not paid in kind after this date.
(e) Different grades of domestic workers recognised after this date.
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