This month, South Africa celebrates its first ten years of democracy by returning to the polls. On election day the Rand stood at R6.50 to the US dollar. Twenty-eight months ago the Rand was valued at over R13 to the US dollar. South Africans have not become twice as wealthy, but those with property, land, natural resources and wealth have enhanced their value. Across the border however, the Zimbabwean dollar has fallen from Z$13 to the US dollar before the land crisis in 1997 to below Z$6000 (parallel market rates). Chronic poverty exists in both countries but there is a qualitative and quantitative difference between the economic outlooks in each: whilst South Africa's is positive, with people looking forward to a better life ahead, Zimbabwe's is primarily negative. The dramatic difference, argues id21 Guest Editor Richard Hasler, lies in governance.

The research highlighted in my selection this week (see below) puts forward a number of interesting hypotheses about chronic poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa. Remoteness, lack of accessibility to roads and infrastructure, the presence or absence of land and inputs are some of the issues discussed. The articles challenge orthodoxies and open up new debates. They provide striking statistics, and provoke critical thought on comparative poverty contexts. Clearly chronic poverty is an extremely complex riddle and there is no panacea, no single or even multi stranded solution. Yet the policy recommendations forwarded by some of the research suggest otherwise - they imply that a focus on one or two circumstances, previously missing ingredients, as it were, can fix chronic poverty, especially in remote rural households.

For example, technical solutions proposed in the articles tend to favour the idea of levelling the playing field, providing equity, redistributing wealth, providing infrastructure, providing land. If such interventions are carried out at the expense of the nation, its economy, people's aspirations and investment climate, some of the poor may well benefit, but a great deal more will suffer.

Perhaps a fundamental precondition of poverty alleviation, not sufficiently discussed in the articles, is the proactive engagement of government to alleviate poverty for its citizens by playing an economic game. Governments are not elected to frustrate economic growth, but to provide opportunities for wealth creation, employment and investment. There is therefore a need to make governments accountable for chronic poverty. In countries where the government creates elitism, political and economic uncertainty and hinders economic processes, technical solutions and fixes may not work.

Chronic poverty in southern Africa, steeped in the colonial experience, has been caused by poor governance and poor management. Research which over emphasises the technical symptoms of that poverty such as "remoteness"' or land depravation may be missing the key point about management for the future. It risks misleading African development by suggesting that there is some circumstance, some missing ingredient which donors might usefully provide, some historical injustice of the colonial era which once addressed, will solve Africa's chronic poverty. Apologists aside, would it not be more useful to our African governments to have frank appraisal of what they are doing right and wrong in creating the economic conditions which will undo poverty? Demanding accountability from these governments is an obvious though fragile precondition for addressing poverty alleviation.

An anecdote from a village in Botswana may help to clarify some of the contradictions. Botswana is a wealthy diamond-based economy with a chronic poverty problem amongst remote rural households who have difficulty generating income in the harsh environment. In 1998-2001, large quantities of money from Community Based Wildlife Management programmes in the Okavango Delta were accumulating in village trust accounts: chronic poverty was not made worse by a lack of money but rather a lack of the ability to make joint decisions to spend it wisely and to accountably distribute it at a local or household level. The decision-making process and the capacity to spend the money did not exist in the newly emergent village trusts. They needed time to develop joint decision-making, to prioritise, and to resist pressure from their own local elites and leaders, and from officialdom.

Ironically, the presence of money, the financial solution, by itself cannot solve chronic poverty but without it poverty continues to grow. However, lack of money, lack of an investment climate and lack of a coherent government-sponsored economic game is a recipe for national poverty and misery, no matter what the technical circumstances of poverty may be. The governance of poverty through wise economic policies is a precondition to poverty alleviation at household, village, district and national levels. The rest is technical. South Africa appears to have internalised this logic. Zimbabwe has not.

Source(s):
Richard Hasler is id21’s first Guest Editor. Click here to view his editorial together with his critical selection of id21 Research Highlights on chronic poverty Full document.

id21 Research Highlight: 19 April 2004

Further Information:
Richard Hasler
Research Associate

Project for Land and Agrarian Studies
University of the Western Cape
Private Bag X17
Bellville 7535
South Africa

Project for Land and Agrarian Studies, University of Western Cape, South Africa

Environmental Evaluation Unit
University of Cape Town
Rondebosch 7701
South Africa

Tel: +27 21 650 2866
Fax: +27 21 650 3791
Contact the contributor: hasler@mweb.co.za

Environmental Evaluation Unit, University of Cape Town, South Africa

Other related links:
Hasler R 2004, 'The Institutional Paradox of Community Based Wildlife Management'

'The curse of remoteness: why some African households fail to benefit from economic growth'

'Land reform in Zimbabwe – good for poor black farmers?'

'The crisis of land distribution in Southern Africa'

'Lost in space:locating the chronically poor'

'Place matters: the challenges of survival in remote rural areas'