A Social Safety Net for the Chronically Poor? Zimbabwe's Public Assistance Programme in the 1990s

Abstract

The Government of Zimbabwe operated several social safety nets in the 1990s, most of them targeted at households temporarily impoverished through external shocks such as severe drought or economic restructuring. One social safety net was, however, designed specifically to help those who, by reason of age, infirmity, chronic illness or disability and lack of family connections, were chronically poor. This social safety net was called Public Assistance. This paper reviews the performance of Public Assistance and finds it was not effective in supporting those living in chronic poverty. Its disappointing performance record includes low levels of coverage of its target group and inadequate benefits for its clients. The paper examines the reasons for the disappointing performance of Public Assistance, including both programme design problems and the political marginalisation of its clients, and draws out their policy implications.

Le gouvernement du Zimbabwe a mis en place un certain nombre de filets de protection dans les années 90, la plupart visaient les ménages temporairement appauvris du fait de chocs externes tels qu'une sécheresse sévère ou une restructuration économique. Un filet social a été conçu spécialement pour aider ceux qui sont chroniquement pauvres du fait de leur âge, d'une infirmité, d'une maladie chronique ou d'un manque de soutien familial. Ce filet social fut baptisé ⟨⟨Assistance publique⟩⟩. Cet article examine les performances de l' ⟨⟨Assistance publique⟩⟩ et met en évidence ses résultats insuffisants en matière de soutien aux victimes de la pauvreté chronique. Ces performances décevantes incluent un niveau faible de couverture du groupe ciblé et des services inadéquats pour les clients. L'article s'intéresse aux raisons de ces résultats décevants, en particulier aux problémes de conception du programme et à la marginalisation politique de ses clients, et en tirent des conclusions en matière de politique.

Notes

Lauchlan T. Munro is Director of Policy and Planning at the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa, Canada. The author would like to thank David Hulme, Angela Dale, Frances Stewart, Joan O'Donoghue and the participants at the CPRC Conference on Chronic Poverty, held in Manchester, 7–9 April 2003, for comments on earlier versions of this paper. Any remaining faults are those of the author. This research was funded in part by the Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals of UK Universities and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The full co-operation of the Department of Social Welfare of the Government of Zimbabwe in this research is gratefully acknowledged. The Director and staff of the Department, especially Nellie Dhlembeu, are to be thanked for their time and effort in facilitating this research project. Mildred Bosha, Zephania Moyo, and Imelda Mudekunye provided excellent research assistance in the field. Edwin Kaseke and Perpetua Gumbo advised on and facilitated the fieldwork. The views expressed here are the author's alone, and are not the official policy of any institution with which the author is or has been affiliated.

 1. In the Social Welfare Assistance Act (1988), Public Assistance is known as ‘Social Welfare Assistance’; in the Government of Zimbabwe's annual budgets, it is the ‘Relief of distress’ line in the ‘Public Assistance’ vote of the Department of Social Welfare; in the job titles used by the Department, it is called Public Assistance.

 2. The Public Assistance Programme and its associated legislation do not speak of ‘chronic poverty’. The term used in the Social Welfare Assistance Act (1988) is ‘destitution’. The characteristics of the programme's target group as defined in that Act are such that the destitute are, in fact, chronically poor. It should be noted, however, that many people who do not meet the Act's criteria are also chronically poor. The 1988 Act, which draws on colonial era legislation dating back to the 1930s, assumes that any Zimbabwean who is chronically ill, disabled, and/or aged, but who has living relatives will be able to live a decent life, supported by her/his relatives. The poverty of many Zimbabwean families and households means that this assumption is not always warranted.

 3. This statement, like the other descriptions that follow, applies to Zimbabwe in the 1990s. It is important to bear this in mind, since there has been an enormous deterioration in the social, political and economic situation since 2000.

 4. The Social Development Fund took on other responsibilities, notably the Poverty Alleviation Action Plan.

 5. Occasionally, traditional leaders or ward councillors have referred potential clients to DSW district offices and sometimes have applied for PA on their behalf. But this is the exception, not the rule.

 6. The residents of the more luxurious retirement homes in Zimbabwe in the 1990s tended to be white Zimbabweans.

 7. The coverage figures in Table 2 above do, however, require some interpretation, especially for 1995. When I asked DSW staff why the number of PA recipients had fallen so dramatically in 1995, a year of drought and economic recession, I was told that DSW had shifted many maintenance allowance clients to the Drought Relief Programme. At the same time, DSW shifted many PA school and exam fees clients to the SDF, which also paid school and exam fees, albeit for a broader clientele of households earning less than Z$400/month. Shifting clients from one programme to another like this was a logical thing to do that year, since large amounts of food were available to DSW through the Drought Relief Programme in 1995, and the budgetary allocation for SDF school fees was far more elastic than the school and exam fees budget line for PA. In fact, DSW officials told me that many of the PA beneficiaries preferred getting Drought Relief to getting PA maintenance allowance, since the value of the Drought Relief food rations was greater than the value of the PA maintenance allowance. As the 1995–96 Drought Relief Programme was wound up, some of these clients may have found their way back into the regular PA rolls, though the decline in the number of PA clients seen in Table 2 suggests this is unlikely. Unfortunately, DSW officials were not able to quantify these shifts back and forth between PA on the one hand and Drought Relief and SDF on the other, as the decisions on such transfers were taken by district level officials on a case-by-case basis, and no formal or centralised system of records was kept. However, the fact remains that, in non-drought years (1994, 1996, 1997), the number of PA clients remained very small, and there is every reason to believe that F-mistakes were large.

 8. The overall effect is that the distribution of PA benefits was probably biased to the urban poor. In other words, F-mistakes were likely higher in rural areas.

 9. Previously, the GOZ fiscal year had been from 1 July to 30 June. In the late 1990s, GOZ decided to align the fiscal year with the calendar year, since most other economic statistics were collected on a calendar year basis. The 1997–98 fiscal year was therefore lengthened to 18 months, from 1 July 1997 to 31 December 1998. From 1 January 1999, the GOZ fiscal year and the calendar year coincided.

10. As noted above, the difficulties involved in applying and being screened for PA and the meagre benefits one received once successful meant that con men and tricksters would have little incentive to try to defraud the programme. It would be far easier and more profitable to fraudulently obtain other forms of social assistance, for example Drought Relief or SDF assistance [Munro, 2001: chs. 6 and 9]. The most likely form of PA fraud would appear to be double-dipping, i.e. applying for and receiving PA from two different DSW offices. DSW officials told me, for example, that there was little to prevent anyone from applying for PA from both DSW offices in Bulawayo, as there was no cross-check mechanism between the two offices.

11. Since takeovers of the LSCFs began in 2000, the ruling party's long-standing indifference to the fate of the LSCF workers [e.g. Amanor-Wilks, 1995; Mugwetsi and Balleis, 1994; Daily News, 1999] has turned to outright hostility in many cases.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lauchlan T. Munro

Lauchlan T. Munro is Director of Policy and Planning at the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa, Canada. The author would like to thank David Hulme, Angela Dale, Frances Stewart, Joan O'Donoghue and the participants at the CPRC Conference on Chronic Poverty, held in Manchester, 7–9 April 2003, for comments on earlier versions of this paper. Any remaining faults are those of the author. This research was funded in part by the Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals of UK Universities and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The full co-operation of the Department of Social Welfare of the Government of Zimbabwe in this research is gratefully acknowledged. The Director and staff of the Department, especially Nellie Dhlembeu, are to be thanked for their time and effort in facilitating this research project. Mildred Bosha, Zephania Moyo, and Imelda Mudekunye provided excellent research assistance in the field. Edwin Kaseke and Perpetua Gumbo advised on and facilitated the fieldwork. The views expressed here are the author's alone, and are not the official policy of any institution with which the author is or has been affiliated.