Giving out social cash transfers in Kazungula, Zambia
It’s hard to describe how shocking it feels to hear anyone tell you that, at times, they’ve gone four days without eating.
Yet that’s precisely what Muyangwa Liplama Mushoko, a grandmother of more than 70 years of age, told me as we sat in her neat and well-kept homestead in Nkwaleni village in Kazungula district in the southern province of Zambia.
Until two months ago when Muyangwa became one of the first people to benefit from an innovative new CARE programme implemented by the Department of Social Welfare known as social cash transfers, she and her 18-year-old grandson Joe, whose mother disappeared when he was three, ate at most one meal a day.
When we arrived at her home last week, Muyangwa was busy in her kitchen stirring a large pot of nshima, the staple maize porridge eaten in Zambia, and Joe was out at the main roadside buying vegetables. She tells us they are now eating two meals a day and that there is always something for Joe when he comes back from school at the end of the day.
What has made this difference is remarkably simple – CARE supports the Department of Social Welfare to give Muyangwa 40,000 kwacha, or $8 a month, in a payment known as a cash transfer.
Coming from the UK, a country with an established welfare state and social security, this may not seem like a radical solution. But in Zambia where social protection has been patchy at best, providing a regular income in cash to the most destitute is an idea that is yet to take hold.
Muyangwa explains: “I used to grow a bit of maize here and there. But now with the drought and with my old age, I’m not able to any more. I see people going off to do work but I can’t go myself because I have grown old. I used to have to beg from people in the village to get food.” A semi-commercial farmer living about 10 kilometres away used to give Muyangwa food whenever she could walk that distance to beg for it.
Like many others in the surrounding area, Muyangwa is originally from western not southern province – one of the many who came to the area to work on the railway line that runs through Kazungula and decided to settle in the area once it was built. That means she has no family nearby, apart from Joe.
“These days when I go and collect the monthly payment from the nearby school I can buy mealie meal and other things I need,” she continues. “The money is helping me to buy food so that at least when Joe comes back from school he can have a meal. Before he used to just have water and an empty stomach.”
CARE’s senior programme manager and a passionate advocate of cash transfers is Robby Mwiinga. He says: “Some officials in Government in the capital city of Lusaka have expressed misgivings about giving money directly to the poor because they are afraid they will misuse the money and spend it inappropriately.
"These fears have proved to be totally unfounded in a social cash transfer pilot project supported by the non-governmental organisation GTZ which started two years ago in Kalomo district. There, people were mainly using their money for food, medicine, soap and investment in small livestock such as chickens and goats.”
CARE provides financial support and advisory services to the Government's Department of Social Welfare. This support will be provided for the next two years but its ultimate goal is for the Government to take this on as part of its social protection responsibilities with yearly budgetary support. CARE’s current work is funded by the UK Government’s Department for International Development.
“This project is targeting the ten percent most destitute in the district and reducing extreme poverty for those most vulnerable – the elderly, those caring for orphans, households where the head of the household is chronically ill or is a widow or widower, and households where there is no fit adult to engage in any work due to illness, age or any form of disability,” explains Robby. “These are households who need a safety net and whose livelihoods will deteriorate still further without some kind of financial support.
“Although $8 a month doesn’t sound like a lot it is enough to give people a level of security that they’ve not had before. And importantly for the beneficiaries, there are no conditions on how the money is used – households are free to use it for food, medical services, school costs, whatever they need most. In total CARE will be helping 1,200 households once the programme rolls out across Kazungula and by mid-October will already be giving cash transfers to 155 households.”
The decisions about who to target are made by the communities themselves through an existing body known as the Community Welfare Assistance Committee. The committee, made up of members of the local community, lists the households in the village, completes a questionnaire for each household including details such as the household structure, socio-economic profile, livelihood strategies, causes of destitution and so on, then holds a ranking meeting to identify the ten percent most destitute before presenting their recommendations to the whole community to approve.
Meeting with Muyangwa was one of the most emotional experiences of my visit to Zambia. She was wry and humorous, resilient and positive despite the almost inconceivable difficulties she has faced in her life to make ends meet and the struggle she has had to keep Joe in school to grade nine.
Having lost her husband who worked as a game guard and all six of her children, her relationship with Joe is clearly incredibly important to her. It is deeply touching when she tells us: “Joe is very helpful to me. He built the huts that we live in. We are very close friends and we love each other very much. In our tradition, a grandson is like a husband.”
As Robby Mwiinga explains: “Kazungula is a very harsh environment – it’s very remote and the roads are poor. We are optimistic about this programme because we believe it will prove effective in providing a safety net for the poorest households and stopping a bad situation from deteriorating further.”
