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SWAZILAND: Income Rating Hobbles Aid Effort
By James Hall
MBABANE, Jan 17 (IPS) - Amanda Dube is literally ‘dirt poor’. Fierce bush fires ravaged Swaziland for
months in 2007, and repeatedly swept over the hilly area of Mliba where she
lives. Fires burned the trees and vegetation on the small sloping plot where the
widowed mother of three attempts to scratch out a maize crop.
Dube was unable to produce any food last year because of drought. The
drought wiped out 80 percent of the country’s maize production, and this
week even before new trees and maize plants could take root, powerful
rainstorms sent torrents of water down the hill and past her stick and thatch
hut, carrying away top soil.
"The soil was very poor before. This is a very rocky area and not really good
for growing food. But now there is hardly any dirt at all," the 37-year-old
Dube told IPS.
Dube says that she and other Swazis like her are not likely to see the national
economy fundamentally strengthened through developmental assistance
because in the eyes of the international agencies that decide such things, her
country is too affluent.
Two-thirds of the population of Swaziland - less than one million people -
live on less than one dollar a day. The unemployment rate is 40 percent, and
more than four out of ten Swazis depend on some form of food assistance to
stay alive.
Dube’s husband died after "growing very thin" three years ago. Like most
Swazis, she will not say he succumbed to an AIDS-related illness because of
the stigma attached to AIDS.
Dube is entitled to food aid. She can collect a meagre ration of maize, beans,
and cooking oil imported by the World Food Programme (WFP) and distributed
by the international relief organisation World Vision.
"The economy is performing poorly, especially in comparison with the other
nations of the region," said Richard Ndwandwe, an investment advisor with an
Mbabane bank, told IPS. "We have not achieved 3.0 percent economic growth
in a decade, and the central bank says an annual growth rate of 3.6 percent is
required just to keep up with population growth," Ndwandwe said, stressing
that the, "net result has been a deterioration in the standard of living for
almost all Swazis."
"It is the rich minority that is skewing the statistical picture, and making the
country appear better off than it is for most people," explained Ndwandwe.
"Social inequalities are increasingly leaving Swaziland with one of the world’s
most-skewered income distributions," noted Peter Beck Christiansen, the
European Union’s (EU) ambassador to Swaziland.
Colonial-era landholders and business people who did not have their
properties compromised when Swaziland gained its independence 40 years
ago, government leaders, and a small - but well-off - clique of Swazi
entrepreneurs have amassed wealth that has raised the nation’s gross
domestic product (GDP).
Less than twenty percent of the population controls eighty percent of the
nation’s wealth, according to the World Bank. But, the World Bank - using
GDP to classify the country’s state of economic development - has placed
Swaziland in the "low-middle income" category of nations.
"We are far from being a middle income country, but we are not considered a
low income country, and this makes a world of difference when it comes to
accessing development funding," said Ndwandwe.
"It is not a fair rating," Abdoulaye Balde, the country director for the WFP, told
IPS from his Mbabane office that coordinates the world’s response to
Swaziland’s food shortage crisis. "It does not take into consideration that way
most people are living. We are always telling this to our donors," he stressed.
The director of another humanitarian relief NGO - which receives World Bank
logistical assistance - said, "There is so much need in the world and so
many peoples competing for limited resources that it is easy for an NGO to go
by World Bank guidelines to decline assistance to a country like Swaziland. It’s
not necessarily fair."
Several times this past year, Prime Minister Themba Dlamini and Majozi
Sithole, his finance minister, reminded the country that Swaziland does not
qualify for low-interest loans or interest-free grants awarded to countries
classified as "low income" although a large majority of Swazis - like Dube -
live in absolute poverty.
Denied developmental funds, the government’s response has been to
encourage economic growth by boosting the private sector, with the hope of
increased tax revenue from businesses.
While foreign direct investment (FDI) is sought by globetrotting teams of
government officials, ordinary Swazis are encouraged to become "small
entrepreneurs."
Christiansen signed a treaty with Swazi leadership for a 100 million dollar aid
package, Wednesday.
"I think that it is a particular responsibility of the country to ensure that ever
citizen received a fair share of the national wealth," Christiansen said.
However, not even the country’s small - and by law nonexistent -
opposition groups who speak about countering the ruling monarchy’s grip on
governance, have called for wealth redistribution.
"The rich are not going away, and that’s the only way to make Swaziland
statistically a low income country," Anthony Simelane, an attorney based in
the central commercial hub Manzini, told IPS. "There is not going to be wealth
redistribution that would benefit the poor. The country is denied
development funds to help the poor, so all government can hope to do is
boost the economy and reap taxes," Simelane said.
The impediment to this plan is government corruption. Sithole has estimated
that the amount of government money lost to various forms of corruption
annually equals the country’s national debt.
Christiansen touched on corruption when he signed the EU’s developmental
agreement. "I have learned in my three years in Swaziland that no amount of
funding or donor assistance can lead to development if the right conditions
are not in place. Deficiencies in the areas of governance have and will
continue to seriously limit your development progress, with or without the
HIV/AIDS threat, " he told his Swazi hosts.
The EU’s aid package is contingent upon the implementation of what
Christensen called "an ambitious governance reform programme to enable
Swaziland to reach at least the level of other Southern African countries."
(END/2008)
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