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

Moving forward in Zimbabwe
Reducing poverty and promoting growth
and health (Lennock, 1994; Renfew, 1992) had tremendous effects
on the social assistance system that had been built in the 1980s,
prompting many to raise questions about the social cost of
adjustment in Zimbabwe (see Silveira House, 1993; ZTWU and
ZCTU, 1993).
Although the government appeared to have a guiding
economic blueprint, on the whole policy-making during the
1990s ‘was almost completely haphazard, characterized by policy
reversals and re-reversals’ (Jenkins, 2002: 49). The jerkiness of the
government’s overall policy stance was transmitted to its social
assistance programmes. Some were cut altogether, others remained,
though in an altered form, and new ones were adopted in hindsight
as the social costs of adjustment were grudgingly recognised. This
is most evident in programmes such as the Social Dimensions of
Adjustment, the Poverty Alleviation Action Plan (Nkum, 1998),
and the Public Assistance Programme (Munro, 2005) among
others, which were adopted to cushion segments of the population
from the costs of adjustment. As Munro’s (2005) assessment of
the Poverty Assistance Programme reveals, however, these were
ineffective in supporting those living in extreme poverty.
Predictably, the increase and strict enforcement of user fees
in the health sector in the 1990s produced negative welfare effects.
For instance, data from the Sentinel Site Surveillance Surveys 8
suggest that the introduction of user fees kept a significant number
of women from seeking prenatal care (MPSLSW, 1993). The data
also reveal that the number of rural women having their babies
delivered in hospitals or clinics dropped from 81.1 per cent to
69.5 per cent after the introduction of user fees (MPSLSW, 1994:
12). Other studies also report an increase in the rate of maternal
mortality (Minot, 1994). To make matters worse, ‘total real health
spending, real per capita health spending, and real wages of
health personnel all declined by a third or more during 1990-94
…’ (Marquette, 1997: 1144). This meant that health care became
more expensive at a time when the quality of service provided was
declining.
Specific to the agricultural sector, reforms brought cuts in
government support for research and development in new crop
varieties, producer prices and extension services (Rukuni, 2006:
11). These programmes had contributed to the agricultural growth
of the first decade (Rukuni and Eicher, 1994). Also axed during the
early reform years was government input support (ploughing, seeds
and fertiliser) for communal/peasant farmers. More significantly,
the prices offered for crops in the 1990s fell compared to those
offered in the 1980s, at a time when communal farmers were
exposed to the full cost of inputs.
To add to the crises produced by reform programmes, in
1992 Zimbabwe suffered its most severe drought in a century
(Benson, 1998; GoZ, 1993b; Thompson, 1993). According to the
government of Zimbabwe, poor rains in 1991-92, measuring over
300mm below the country average of 662mm per year, resulted
in communal farmers harvesting an abysmal ten per cent of their
normal grain output. The total cereal crop of 44.6 Mt per 1,000
capita was over 410 Mt per 1,000 capita below the 1981 harvest.
Thus, by the mid-1990s, the misplaced exuberance over Zimbabwe’s
agricultural revolution gave way to a grim reality of, at best, stagnant
food production through much of the early 1990s and, ominously,
declining food production towards the end of the decade.
In spite of the scaling back of government spending in other
sectors in the 1990s, the government initially proved willing to
continue with its drought relief programmes. In its third drought
relief programme in 1992-93, the government continued with a
labour-based policy.
Table 8.5: Average maize, wheat and sorghum prices
by decade.
Period
Average price
of maize
US$/Mt
Average price
of wheat
US$/Mt
Average price
of sorghum
US$/Mt
1980-89 116.043 197.347 116.197
1990-99 95.698 168.628 70.786
Per cent fall
in price
Source: Munemo, 2008b.
17.532 14.552 39.081
The 1992-93 version of the FFW programme had three key
components: ensuring an adequate supply of grain to the domestic
market; a supplementary feeding programme for children under
five and primary school children; 9 a food-for-work programme
for adults; and an agricultural recovery programme (Munemo,
2008a, 2008b; Munro, 2001, 2003; GoZ, 1993b). However, in
1995 President Mugabe announced that all previous drought relief
programmes (FFW and FFD) were to be replaced by a Grain Loan
Programme. 10 This new form of relief was implemented in 1995-
96 and again in 1997-98, following another nation-wide drought
in 1994-95 and a severe regional drought in 1996-97. In this way,
concern with some element of cost-recovery had also penetrated
the government’s method of protecting citizens from droughtinduced
threats of famine.
8.5 Social assistance during the crisis period,
2000-present
What is clear from the foregoing discussion is that there are
two distinct pre-crisis social welfare regimes in Zimbabwe: first,
a decade of high commitment to the social assistance needs of
the poor; and second, a period beginning in the early 1990s that
progressively rolled back government assistance programmes in
favour of the market. Scholars disagree about the impetus for the
switch from a development strategy that stressed equity and the
welfare needs of the poor in the 1980s, to one in which, by the early
1990s, government social assistance was minimal.
One view places the blame for the shift on international
pressures from the IMF and World Bank (Rukuni, 2006). According
to Rukuni (2006), the austerity measures of the reform programme
undermined all the advances the government had made in the
agricultural sector in the first decade. Cuts to agricultural research
and development were made (Mashingaidze, 2006; Mariga, 2006),
extension services had been streamlined (Pazvakavambwa and
Hakutangwi, 2006), input support to communal farmers was
lowered (Rusike and Sukume, 2006) and, above all, agricultural
marketing was less aggressive (Muir-Leresche and Muchopa, 2006)
during the reform years.
Another view suggests that international pressures alone are
an insufficient explanation of the shift in Zimbabwe’s development
strategy (see Dashwood, 2000; Skalnes, 1995). According to one
variant of this position, it was not the presence of international
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