AT post-independence, to reduce Zimbabwe’s inherited deep socio-economic disparities, the Government attempted structural adjustments (before the imposition of ESAP) to compensate for the colonial legacy by investing heavily in social programmes; mainly in health and education and through parastatal institutions to cater for rural development and the productive sectors.
Although social indicators improved, particularly in health and education, the social welfare system was beginning to show signs of strain and per capita income stagnated.
Large Government spending crowded out private investment and fueled inflation, while shortages of imported goods constrained investment and growth.
Recurring severe droughts in the 1980s also impacted adversely on growth.
The drought of 1982-1983 was followed by another in 1987 which, in conjunction with a world recession, resulted in decreasing prices in commodity export that adversely affected agriculture.
In 1991, convinced that the Western-imposed ESAP would improve the economy and reduce poverty, the Zimbabwean Government accepted liberalisation, with its focus on the formal sector as the engine of growth.
ESAP sought to transform Zimbabwe’s tightly controlled economic system to a more ‘open market-driven economy’ and promote higher growth, reduce poverty and unemployment by:
-reducing fiscal and parastatal deficits and instituting prudent monetary policy;
– liberalising trade policies and the foreign exchange system;
-carrying out domestic deregulation; and
-establishing social safety net and training programmes for vulnerable groups.
However, at the behest of ESAP, one of Africa’s best social welfare systems became shambolic.
The situation was further exacerbated by the worst drought in living memory; plunging the economy into free-fall, as Zimbabwe’s unemployment rose to approximately
60 percent and the budget deficit to above
25 percent of what it was in 1980.
The impact of ESAP, coupled with the extreme natural conditions of over a century, reduced the majority of the urban population’s real incomes.
Private companies that had adopted new state-of-the-art technologies to boost productivity further retrenched workers, adding to the high unemployment.
With the population growing faster than job creation, the disparities in income levels widened.
Urban unemployment created a rush for the rural areas while the land redistribution had not yet been successfully addressed as it faced opposition from the historically-powerful white lobbying group, the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), one of the strongest advocates for ESAP.
Studies by the United Nations Economic Commission found that countries in sub-Saharan Africa that adopted structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), cut their social programmes expenditure by 25 percent and 50 percent on education and health respectively; doubling infant mortality on the previous 10-year period.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) reported the gap between the rich and the poor doubled by 200 percent within the same decade — effects of which are still being felt today.
In Zimbabwe, ESAP led to further high unemployment due to massive labour retrenchment in the public sector.
The socio-economic disparity that resulted from the colonial legacy of unequal land distribution was directly related to employment and sustainable economic development.
At the time of ESAP’s introduction, Zimbabwe’s population stood at approximately 11,5 million; seven million (seven percent)of terrigenous Africans lived in the overcrowded, underdeveloped rural areas, many as landless squatters.
The white population of 100 000 embraced only one percent of Zimbabwe’s population.
Numerically, four percent (4 000) whites, controlled 80 percent of the private enterprise and 50 percent of the country’s arable land.
They owned the country’s best farmland consisting of 11 million hectares and generated 40 percent of the country’s commercial agricultural export revenue.
Despite this unequal land distribution in Zimbabwe, the World Bank and IMF’s recommendation for structural adjustment did not address the land issue.
The post-independence national socio-economic corrective measures such as racial reconciliation, nationalisation and indigenisation whereby the Zimbabwean Government would redistribute land equitably for peasant resettlement, promote employment and self-sufficiency, were negated or not effectively accomplished. These national policies were seen to undermine corporate rights and the fundamental economic bases of Western economic structural adjustment programmes.
The IMF and World Band, et al, would rather finance large rural projects like dams, roads and power plants to facilitate economic development projects under structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), for the benefit of multi-nationals, even though these would devastate local bio-diversity and environment and lead to social and population dislocation.
Additionally, SAPs reduced labour and environmental protection, leaving small farmers and businesses to compete with large multi-national corporations. This resulted in workers being paid unsustainable wages which could not provide for their families, forcing them to live in impoverished conditions and/or become homeless.
Without enough land, retrenched urban workers had no prospect of subsisting in the overcrowded rural areas where historically, the inhabitants viewed urban-employed relations as privileged and as their safety net in times of hardship.
Consequently, the Western-driven economic and structural adjustment programme was particularly devastating to the poor, further disenfranchising them without adequate public socio-welfare, control of their economy and land or access to basic services.
Many lives, mainly marginalised women and children were lost.
The CFU steadfastly opposed land reforms, believing changing from large-scale agribusiness to small-scale peasant agricultural farming with communal tenure would result in a devastated economy.
Such an opinion was inherited from racist colonial assumptions that indigenous African peasants are inherently inefficient and that they would degrade the new land in the same way they did to communal lands.
This is in spite of the fact that indigenous Zimbabweans have historically practiced sustainable agricultural and environmental practices; evidenced by the capacity and strength of MaDzimbahwe’s ecologically-zoned agricultural system renowned throughout the region; a system that was adopted by the colonial settlers.
ESAP benefitted the agricultural sector from the boost in exports.
However, local manufacturers of goods, such as clothing, faced fierce competition from cheap imports, especially from China, and were also affected by the decline in consumers’ real wages.
Land reforms also faced opposition from indigenous peasants; mass public protests arose when it was discovered that land was changing from the hands of the minority white commercial farmers to the privileged indigenous elite for the purpose of satisfying commercial agricultural production for export to meet ESAPs’ donor obligations.
The World Bank’s ‘hidden philosophy’ and a global economic development agenda revealed in alleged ‘secret documents’ was to force four million people from their lands in order to create room for their projects.
This signified a departure from the banking and other multi-national institutions of capitalism and free market economy’s ‘stated objectives’ and ‘implementation goals’.
Zimbabwe’s indigenisation and land repossession programmes to resettle indigenous peasants and promote sustainability, therefore, were contrary to the financial donor’s notion or secret plan.
ESAP’s erosion of the social welfare of the already marginalised indigenous peoples of Zimbabwe, especially women and children, appear to be in line with goals of the Wests’ SAPs of being driven chiefly by economic interests of the industrialised nations.
When these internationally-powerful political, socio-cultural and ideological world institutions proclaim to ‘improve women’s education and productivity in emerging economies’ (World Bank, 1999), do they reflect a double-standard?
They persistently impose SAPs that require drastic cuts in socio-economic spending, including education and healthcare; and when poverty reaches unprecedented levels, debtor governments are held responsible, face international condemnation and are pressured to relinquish their authority.
These donors then intervene and assume the role of a redeemer/protector NGOs for the poor; alongside undermining the sovereign state’s authority on its people.
For instance, when many rural women and children died during the drought of the early 1990s, the World Bank intervened by forcing the Government to drop education and health fees that they were forced to introduce in order to meet ESAP’s budget austerity measures.
These are the double standards African governments have to be continually wary of.
Dr Michelina Rudo Andreucci is a Zimbabwean-Italian researcher, industrial design consultant, lecturer and specialist hospitality interior decorator. She is a published author in her field. For views and comments, email: linamanucci@gmail.com