Common Country Assessment - Swaziland, 1997

Contents | Introduction | Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Livelihoods | Advancement/Empowerment of Women | Child Rights/Child Development/Child Protection | Education | Population | Environment | Health | STD/HIV/AIDS | Food Security/Nutrition | Governance and Participation | Institution Building | Summary and Conclusion

Chapter Two - Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Livelihoods

2.1 POVERTY

Given the many successes in the twentieth century worldwide in reducing poverty when peace and good governance has prevailed, the United Nations considers the elimination of absolute poverty worldwide to be a goal achievable by the early decades of the twenty-first century. Almost all countries in the world committed themselves to this goal in the Copenhagen Summit of 1995.

Swaziland's draft National Development Strategy is centrally focused on this goal, directing its vision to improving Swaziland's Human Development Indicators so that by 2022 Swaziland is in the top 10 percent of the medium human development group of countries¹ (its current position is 114, which puts it in the lowest 25 percent of that group).²

The UN defines poverty as not just income poverty, although that is fundamental, but the denial of choices and opportunities for a tolerable life.³ ‘It is a lack of access to options and entitlements which are social, cultural, political and environmental as well as economic. Quantification of progress in elimination of poverty is to be measured in a new index, termed the Human Poverty Index (HPI) - concentrating upon longevity, knowledge and a decent living standard - the same goals as the HDI, but with more specific indices - the percentage of people expected to die before age 40 (23.9% in Swaziland 1990), adult illiteracy (about 20 percent in Swaziland), and overall economic provisioning health services, safe water, etc. The index has not yet been compiled for Swaziland, but Swaziland has recently taken steps to supply some fundamental income-related poverty indicators - two poverty lines have been calculated.

The first (lower) poverty line selects a food bundle typical for the food consumption patterns of poor households that yields 2,100 calories per person per day, and then values that at median prices. The second (higher) poverty line includes allowances for basic non food expenditures such as shelter. These are described as two of many plausible poverty lines, proposals rather than definitive, which currently have problems including the non-recording of some consumption resulting in the overestimation of the percentage poor. The closeness of the mean consumption expenditure to the poverty lines also implies that small changes could make significant differences to the percentages - positive or negative.

However another recent study, the Participative Poverty Assessment, a qualitative study using different parameters, reached similar conclusions in rural areas - remarkable given those methodological differences and the reservations expressed above. There was only a one percent different in the Highveld, four percent in the middleveld, ten percent in the lowveld and twelve percent on the Lebombo Plateau. Moreover, the consensus between the findings of the two studies is very high on other parameters. The following results, therefore, may be safely treated as broadly indicative for policy purposes, although insufficiently accurate for the more rigorous standards of statistical analysis.

Source: CSO: Poverty Profile of Swaziland 1995. p. 9

In making international comparisons, note that in 1994/95, the exchange rate to the US dollar was generally around 3.6 emalangeni to the dollar, which means that the food poverty line of E47.70 per person per month (E1.57 per day) was about $0.43 per person per day. The higher poverty line similarly translates to $0.65 pppd. Bringing them back to the World Bank’s poverty line of $1.00 (1985 ppp$) indicates a similarity of the World Bank’s line to the lower poverty line (1985-$1.08). The higher poverty line is at 1985-$1.64 pppd. However, the emalangeni fell by about thirty percent during 1996 - much more than inflation - increasing the numbers below the World Bank line.

The food poverty line includes 47.9 percent of the national population (29.7 percent of the urban population and 54.9 percent of the rural), and the total poverty line includes 65.5 percent (45.4 percent of the urban population and 70.6 percent of the rural).

Describing those unable to meet the food poverty line as ‘very poor’, those unable to meet the total poverty line as ‘poor’ and those beyond those lines as ‘non-poor’ facilitates the following socio-economic classification:

Source: Scek, A. A Poverty Analysis for Swaziland 1994-95, p. 21

Two of the most powerful indicators of poverty alleviation - clearly related through the post-independence successes in education - are the age and the education of the household head. The gender of the household head is also a significant factor, as discernable from the following:

Source: CSO: Poverty Profile of Swaziland 1995 pp.37-38

With education therefore proving a powerful indicator - but not a guarantee - of escape from poverty, the monthly average of expenditure on education in the following table of basic needs indicators is of concern:

Source: CSO: Poverty Profile of Swaziland 1995

These indicators also contain a reminder of the additional burdens the poor must bear in areas such as environmental health, with a limited ability to pay for medical services as such increased needs arise. The Participative Poverty Assessment identified water delivery as the major concern of the poor themselves. At present, Swaziland's delivery of safe water is barely able to keep up with the growth of the population. For some time, the water cover in rural areas has been around 46 percent, and 83 percent in urban areas. Sanitation cover in rural areas is about 40 percent, and in urban areas about 60 percent (sewer connections).

Six priorities for governments actions worldwide have been decided through the UN's consultative processes: these priorities substantially enfold the internationally - agreed goals set by the action plans or programmes of:

• The World Summit for Children,
• The UN Conference on Environment and Development,
• The International Conference on Population and Development,
• The World Summit for Social Development,
• The Fourth Conference on Women,
• The International Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat 11),
• The World Food Summit.

The six priorities enfolding most of the action plans emerging from those conferences and summits are:

1. Empower the poor to develop themselves:

• Government commitments to secure and protect the political, economic, social and civil rights of poor people;
• Policy reforms and actions to gain access to assets for the poor - security of tenure for housing and land, access to credit and other financial services... Education and health care for all;
• Social safety nets to prevent destitution.

2. Empower gender equality:

• Clearly focus on ending discrimination against the development of the girl-child;
• Empower women by ensuring equal access to land, credit and job opportunities;
• Concentrate upon eliminating violence against women.

3 . Concentrate upon pro-poor growth strategies in economic growth:

• Restore full employment as a high growth priority (labour-intensive implementation strategies, for example);
• Moderate the extremes of inequality (inequality usually hinders growth);
• Accelerate growth in poor countries. The strategy for this policy harks back to Priority One:
• Create an enabling environment for small-scale agriculture, micro enterprises and the informal sector
• Foster technological progress;
• Reverse environmental decline in marginal regions;
• Lower the rate of population growth;
• Ensure education and health for all.

4. Harness globalization for the benefit of the poor:

• Develop citizens able to compete in the global marketplace;
• The international community is to assist in providing an enabling environment for the poor to exploit their competitive advantages.

5. Governments to enable pro-poor policies, markets and political enfranchisement:

• The poor must become more visible on the political map;
• National broad-based initiatives for the common good;
• Broad political participation.

6. Those in the most desperate straits need special international support:

• Conflict prevention and resolution, peace-building and reconstruction;
• Debt relief for human development and poverty eradication;
• More aid, better directed;
• Open global markets further, especially to Africa's agricultural exports;
• Strengthen the United Nations' role and leadership.

Swaziland's fight against poverty can be addressed within those six priorities, remembering that "poverty in Swaziland is essentially a rural phenomenon." In this context, the word ‘rural’ should be interpreted in its legal sense - non-urban - and not in its more realistic sense of extracting a separate peri-urban category.

2.2 EMPLOYMENT/SUSTAINABLE LIVELIHOODS

Employment

There are about 106,000 jobs in Swaziland's formal and informal sectors⁷ - about one for every nine people and about 171,236 households in the country⁸ - about one for every 5.3 persons. That is, well over half as many jobs again as currently exist would have to be created just to allow one breadwinner per household. Even then, the chance of an exact match of breadwinner's skills and job opportunities would be nil, and on average those jobs would need wages enough to cater for a family of six or thereabouts. If the jobs were to be unskilled, it should be pointed out that the average urban unskilled wage is only E 565 per calendar month compared to the average urban consumption per household of E 845 pcm. The 106,000 jobs should also be compared to the total labour force, estimated in 1995 to be 342,000, about 48 percent of whom were women.

The entry level for many into the formal sector (estimated at 90,328 jobs in 1996) is the lowest basic minimum wage. This varies according to the type of occupation, and the award levels are variously calculated on an hourly, weekly, or monthly basis. A selection of 1996-97 lowest basic minimum awards, adjusted when necessary to a monthly rate, is charted below. The ratio of the awards to the 1995 total poverty line (adjusted 20 percent to allow for inflation from 1995 to 1997) is calculated to determine the number of the household that could be minimally supported at this level (note that all the wages quoted are below the minimum income tax threshold).

So even if one breadwinner per household in formal employment could be achieved, numerous households would still be living in absolute poverty.

The juxtapositions of the above figures are intended to assist in providing a different perspective than the more traditional unemployment rate estimates - 22 percent, broken up into 15 percent in urban areas and 25 percent in rural areas.⁹ The intention is to highlight the magnitude of the task of providing sustainable livelihoods for even one breadwinner per household.

Source: CSO, SHIES, 1995, p.28

Sustainable Livelihoods

The term "sustainable livelihood" is defined as one which can cope with and recover from stresses and shocks, and maintain and enhance its capabilities and assets for the next generation. Not all the occupations listed above may meet that definition.

A different perspective is required because the approach to creating sustainable livelihoods is fundamentally different from the traditional task-centred approach to both aid and employment creation. It shifts the focus from things to people and processes, and recognises the complexities that are fundamental to the creation of the diversity of choices and opportunities needed for the elimination of poverty.

The general disillusionment from the failure of many past development approaches lead to this change: the ‘top down’s’ role is not to dictate how things should be done, but to empower ‘bottom up’ development of robust and complex systems.

The focus on people is towards their adaptability to this process - human development issues such as nutrition, health and education are therefore fundamental to sustainable livelihoods. The focus on processes involves participatory management focussing on results, with a catalytic role for government to assist in the achievement of goals identified through community participation. Further, instead of only looking at the structure of a system - the nature of its individual components - the process approach also looks at its organisation - the relationship of those components, and how they work together towards the common goal.

Up to now, the task centred approach has prevailed in Swaziland. This process approach is only at the introductory stage, although recommended in the National Development Strategy. The indicators are therefore of greater relevance for the employment part of this chapter. They are the results of the atomistic, task-centred approach rather than the more complex ‘systemic’ process approach required for the objective of sustainable livelihood to be realised.

2.3 LABOUR AND OCCUPATIONAL PROFILE

The economically active portion of the population was estimated at 342,127 in 1995.¹¹ In that same year, the estimated total employment in the monetary sector was 103,168 - within the 102,000 to 107,000 range that had prevailed at least since 1989.¹² There was a reduction in employment of 0.9 percent between 1989 and 1995, and a reduction of 0.3 percent in the public sector over the same period. The difference of 239,959 are logically therefore employed in the ‘non’ monetary sector - not within the monetary classifications of private sector, public sector and ‘informal’, the latter term in this context meaning proprietors and partners, unpaid family workers, small Swazi traders, and those employed in private homesteads. That is, working casually and/or on SNL.

On these statistics, although the under-employment rate is unquantified it can be reasonably assumed to be high, with a largely literate and yet largely unemployed workforce.

The national employment profile on the basis of sector and industry is as follows:

Source: CSO; Employment & Wages 1995

The national employment profile on the basis of level of skill is as follows:

Source: CSO. 1995 Employment & Wages Survey

By far the largest employment sectors, therefore, are the related Agriculture & Forestry, manufacturing, and distribution sectors (with the exception of the service sector, over 90 percent of which is the civil service). The dominance of the private sector in employment of the unskilled is very strong - about five to seven times as many as the public sector, which has a similar dominance of the professional and technical level. Two industries dominate in employment of the unskilled - the Agricultural & Agricultural Services industry and the Manufacturing industry each employ over a quarter of the formal workforce, and together employ over 60 percent of the unskilled workforce (at E443 pcm for Agricultural workers in 1995 and E558 pcm for Manufacturing, compared to an industry average for the unskilled of E580 pcm).

In 1995, there were an estimated 611,049 Swazis aged 12 and over, 342,127 of whom (56 percent) were designated part of the labour force. Combine: 1) the indicators of the high proportion of formal employment in the agricultural sector, 2) the majority of manufacturing being dependent upon agriculture, 3) the approximately 80 percent of the population in rural areas, and 4) the difference between the estimated employment in the monetary sector of 103,168 and the 342,127 labour force; and the fundamental importance of agriculture and the land resource to employment becomes more apparent.

In 1995, an estimated 21.8 percent of the labour force were unemployed (14.7 percent in urban areas, 24.5 percent in rural, 23.3 percent female, 20.7 percent male). 9.1 percent of the 12-14 age group were part of the labour force, and 30.7 percent of them were designated unemployed. The age grouping of the unemployed is consistent with the lack of growth in employment and the continued growth of the population. 48.7 percent of the 15-19 group is unemployed, 40.8 percent of 20-24s, 24.4 percent of 25-29s, 16.2 percent of 30-34s, and 12.5 percent of 35-39s. The 40 and over group has an average unemployment rate of 7.2 percent.¹³

The percentage of the rural population with access to finance is unquantified at this stage, but can be reasonably assumed to be very small. The major institution designed to supply that facility - the Swaziland Development and Savings Bank - has fallen on hard times due to non-performing loans, and had never really penetrated its target market: other organisations such as the Swaziland Business Growth Trust have had mixed results. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Development is in the process of launching the housing cooperative concept in Swaziland.

1. GOS. 1997(2). National Development Strategy (NDS): Twenty -Five Year Vision. (Draft). MEPD. Mbabane.
2. UNDP. 1997. Human Development Report 1997. Oxford University Press. New York. p. 147.
3. Ibid., p.5.
4. Ibid., p.18
5. Ibid, pp. 6-14 (rephrased and edited).
6. MEPD, 1997, p. 5.
7. Central Bank, 1997
8. 1997 Provisional Census results.
9. Ibid.
10. GOS, 1997, p.100
11. CSO: 1995 SHIES
12. CSO: 1995 Employment and Wages Survey.
13. CSO: 1995 SHIES, pp. 29-31

Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Livelihoods Indicators

Suggestions or comments. This page was last updated on 06 May 2003