Zimbabwe Living Standards Drop By 150%
By IRIN

Zimbabwe's living standards have declined by 150 percent within the last decade, says a poverty assessment survey complied and published by the public service and social welfare ministry.

"The period 1996 to 2005 was marked by accelerated deterioration in the socio-economic situation," the survey said. "In contrast to the development achievements of the first ten years of independence (granted from Britain in 1980), the decade of the 1990s witnessed a turnaround of economic fortunes as economic decline set in and structural problems of high poverty and inequality persisted."

The social welfare ministry survey revealed that between 1995 and 2003, more than 63 percent of rural people could not obtain enough money to meet both basic food and non-food requirements, while the figure in urban areas was 53 percent. The survey covered 58 rural districts and 27 urban areas across the country's ten provinces.

Minimum monthly incomes of urban dwellers declined sharply during the same period because of the "deteriorating macro-economic environment, characterised by hyperinflation, negative GDP [gross domestic product] and shrinking formal job opportunities".

Gender was also recognised as having an impact on poverty levels. "Female-headed households, who are already mostly very poor, are moving towards the bottom limit," the ministry said. Since the last survey in 1995, malnutrition in children under five increased by 35 percent, people without access to clean water increased by 25 percent, and the number of people without access to healthcare went up by 48 percent.

The ZANU-PF government has experimented with six different economic policies since 1996, with dire consequences: hyperinflation has been hovering around 1,000 percent - the highest in the world; unemployment levels are above 70 percent; the industrial base has contracted by a third since 2000; foreign currency is scarce; shortages of basic commodities, such as food and energy, have become commonplace.

The poverty assessment cited the country's economic problems after the withdrawal of international donor support "following the implementation of a controversial land reform programme" as a contributing factor to the economic meltdown.

In 2000 President Robert Mugabe's government embarked on a fast-track land redistribution exercise that sought to give land to thousands of blacks from impoverished communal areas by removing more than 4,000 commercial white farmers from their farms. The European Union and the United States subsequently imposed limited sanctions on top government officials for human rights violations and Mugabe's disputed re-election in 2002.

According to independent analysts, the farming sector, once one of the main foreign exchange earners, has shrunk by about 65 percent as a result of the land reform programme.

The survey said poverty, already growing, had been worsened by recurrent droughts and floods, as well as an 18.1 percent HIV/ AIDS prevalence - one of the world's highest - which compounded non-productivity in the farming sector, as a recent ministry of agriculture study had concluded.

Farming communities were among the majority of areas that did not have access to health centres, with people having to travel more than 10km to the nearest clinic or hospital.

Rising medical costs forced about 30 percent of pregnant women to deliver at home, and skilled personnel attended to only 72 percent of those who went to health centres to have their babies, mostly due to an exodus of health workers in search of better salaries and working conditions.

Falling standards of living have made basics seem like luxuries. "I bought a wardrobe, bed and radio with my first salary but these things are now a pipedream for most people - even those with the so-called executive jobs," Sibangani Nkomo, 45, a teacher now employed as a human resources officer at a leading wholesaler in the capital, Harare, told IRIN.

Nkomo takes home Z$200,000 (US$800) a month, most of which is absorbed by rent, leaving him with no option but to borrow from friends and loan sharks. His wife went to Britain three years ago, where she works as a child minder and sends home the occasional US$200.

He has not been able to visit his elderly mother in rural Masvingo, about 250km south of Harare, for the past three years because he cannot afford the cost of transport. "When I can, I send her [my mother] a packet of sugar and a bottle of cooking oil through the driver of the bus that gets to my rural home, and I know she thinks I no longer care about her."

Before the country's economic meltdown, Nkomo said, weekends were spent with friends, when they would drink beer or attend local soccer matches. Nowadays, economic restraints keep him housebound.

According to the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe (CCZ), in October the basic monthly cost of living for a family of six was Z$141,706 (US$566); in November it cost at least Z$208,000 (US$832) - a 47.3 percent increase.

"CCZ is greatly concerned about the general price increases, especially in the month of November, which recorded significant increases compared to other months in the year," the consumer watchdog said in a statement.