Quarterly Bulletin

The problem of poverty continues to inhibit people’s capacity and opportunity to live a dignified life, free of hunger and sickness. And so, questions are often asked: Why is it that poverty continues to be there despite so many initiatives that are being put in place? Are there structures in society that sustain poverty? Can we do something about our situations to change the current status quo of deprivation of basic necessities in life? These questions form some of the concerns Dominic Liche in this article tries to address in discussing particularly the fight against structural poverty.

DISUSED WELL

At the age of five, I lived in a place where we had an old, disused well. My memories of the well are still fresh because our parents told us not to go near the well for fear that we might fall in. But as all children are, we always went near the well. We even tried to peep into the well to see if there was water or if there were some snakes. We would throw stones into the well to see what could come out.

Today, more than 20 years later, the image of the well has come back to me. I suppose there were other creatures staying in the well. For them the well was home; it was the safest place to live in. For us it was the place that could even lead to our death.

Now supposing that a creature, say a tortoise, was born in the well, grew up in the well and even died in the well. The only world the tortoise would know is the well. It might even think that the sun only rises and sets within minutes (when the sun shines directly into the well). It would be normal for the tortoise to live in the well.

In this paper, I explore the structuralisation of poverty. When poverty is structuralised, it becomes part of our normal day to day life. People are used to it just the way we are used to eating lunch. If poverty becomes thus structuralised, it makes the fight against it almost impossible and even useless. Poverty is as old as humanity itself and poverty alleviation does not seem to do much. This is largely because poverty for many has become a healthy way of living. Like the tortoise, it is normal for them to live at the bottom of the well.

Is Poverty A Real Issue In Our World?

Relatively, we have less poverty in our world today than a century ago. Relatively the life expectancy has risen compared to a century ago. Certainly we have many more rich people in the world today than a century ago. We have more educated (formally educated) people today than we had a century ago. We have better health services today than a century ago. We have better means of communication than we had a century ago. You must be saying if we are doing better then why should we be talking about poverty at all. It’s all because of the relativity of poverty.

More than 50% of the world’s population lives on less than US$1 per day. About 40% of world’s productive peoples are unemployed. We have reasons to be concerned. We are dynamic and we cannot afford to be satisfied with how the world is today. In our world, despite the displayed riches, the few rich have become extremely rich, the majority poor have become extremely poor. Poverty is real enough and needs to be fought at all costs. Our only way out is to eradicate poverty.

Causes Of Poverty

We live in a world with enormous resources which if distributed intelligently all people can have basic needs. These resources range from forests, minerals, farming land, animals and most importantly human potential. One may wonder why and where this poverty comes from if we have such enormous riches.

First, poverty comes from deprivation of basic needs to majority groups such as the old, abandoned single mothers, widows, the disabled and children dependent on these. These majority groups are often weak and do not have much access to opportunities that can enable them access basic needs.

Second, poverty comes from meager incomes often caused by competition for few employment opportunities. There are many more able bodied (academically and physically) Zambians than there are jobs. Already teachers are becoming defunct with many finishing colleges yet not employed. In companies, casual working has become the order of the day with no terminal benefits nor good remunerations. Some of the casual workers get between K50,000 to K200, 000 per month (US$15 to US$60).

POOR SOCIAL SERVICES

It’s hard to sustain oneself with such incomes worse more when there are no terminal benefits. With many people on the look-out for jobs, it is difficult for many to refuse low paying jobs. In some companies, “hire and fire” is the order of the day, because each day presents better qualified workers on their doorsteps or workers willing to work for less. Competition is good but competition is hopeless when there are more people than meaningful opportunities.

Third, poverty comes from a lack of accessible educational and health facilities. People with little or no education find it difficult to access some services. A grade 9 graduate will find it difficult to get a good paying job as compared to a university graduate. The better the education the better a person is able to take care of oneself. Education is not only for jobs but for a person to make good decisions as regards one’s health and good living. Lack of health facilities due to expense and long distances also causes poverty.
Most people trying to provide for an HIV and AIDS person are likely to overspend and even sell precious household goods that they would have accumulated for a long time. Providing health services for critical conditions can “chew” up a person’s savings. Although Zambia might have a free basic health care services in rural areas, it still does not guarantee accessibility.

I was shocked a few months ago when I was involved in a road traffic accident and made to pay a card fee of K25,000. I was surprised because the media has been publishing that there are no user fees in Zambian hospitals. I thought casualty is one of the health priorities because it is an emergency. Sometimes free does not simply mean free; it has to be qualified by paying some money. A money-oriented education is a killer because capable students with no means of finding fees are left out of such a system.

OVERPOPULATION AND CORRUPTION

Fourth, poverty comes from rapid population growth and overpopulation in urban areas. Rapid population growth makes the earth’s capacity to contain us difficult. Resources are already concentrated to the already rich. At the present rate of population growth, one day we will have little arable land, little land for residential areas, less clean air, less clean water and more diseases all of which are signs of poverty. Overpopulation makes needs such as water, sewerage systems, and containment of disease very difficult. Look at crowded compounds in Lusaka such as Misisi, Kalingalinga and Garden. The sites are sad enough with very little electrification, less water and virtually few toilets.

Fifth, poverty comes from corruption. Corruption deceives people that with money one can virtually get anything they want. Corruption makes poorly paid civil servants forget their duty as servants and concentrate on making money. Getting a National Registration Card or Passport is becoming hell for most Zambians, not because it is difficult, but because of corruption.

People in need of public services are denied access because of corruption. Corruption is not only in terms of money but also can come in the form of favoritism of one’s relatives (nepotism), one’s race (racism), tribe (tribalism) or nation. Corruption cripples development because people end up only looking at what they would gain in doing certain things rather than what they are contributing to national development.

INEQUALITIES AND DISCRIMINATION

Sixth, poverty comes from inequalities and discrimination. Inequalities between the already rich and the poor; between the educated and the illiterate; men and women; those with disease and the healthy. These inequalities create a complex dynamic which leads to poverty. The rich try as much as possible to keep the poor poor by denying them the ladder to climb up whilst encouraging them to come up and even blaming them for remaining down.

The educated blame the illiterate for their laziness. The healthy look at the diseased as though they have leprosy and therefore outcasts. These dynamics though not very easy to see can be so hampering to development and keep the poor poor and even multiplies them. The dynamics of inequality and discrimination demoralise the less privileged as they try to pull themselves up from their disadvantaged situation.

Seventh, ultimately poverty comes from poverty. Poverty is infectious. If you have five street kids in Lusaka today, in a few months time, you might have a thousand street kids. Whilst the poor might seem few, but the fact that they are poor makes it difficult to support their dependants; these dependants end up having other dependents and so on.

the Problem With Poverty

Any human being, I believe, knows that poverty is bad. Even villagers who are poor and apparently see poverty as a normal way of living now and then recognise that there is a better life out there only that they do not have the chance and opportunity to access such a life. Poverty is bad and against basic justice in many ways.

Poverty is known to cause more crime. Most thieves, robbers, murderers do so to attain a better life. Most people get themselves into prisons basically because of poverty or trying to get a better life easily. Statistically, crime is higher in parts of the world where there are many poor and very few rich people.

Poverty clearly produces more prostitutes and street dwellers in our towns. The poor, having very few options in their life, think that prostitution is their last choice. After all in prostitution, one uses one’s body as capital for profits. Although many people are arguing for legalised prostitution, this does not justify prostitution. Prostitution dehumanizes a person as an object of sexual satisfaction for a few kwacha. Prostitution limits people’s lives to basic survival.

Our streets in major towns like Kitwe, Ndola, Livingstone and Lusaka are full of small children begging for money, blind people begging for money. These street people are there because most of them have no accommodation and no capability to make ends meet in their lives. The street offers promise because, after all, that is where all the people with money move around. Whether prostitution and street loitering is profitable for some, this condition cannot just be tolerated. It is bad for our people to live with no choice but to roam.

Poverty is cause to many deaths in Zambia. Although some statistics experts may think that HIV and AIDS rates high in causing death, more evidence shows that poverty rates high in causing death. Many children and even adults in Zambia die of malnutrition. Many people die because of inaccessibility of health services. You might wonder why malaria is still rampant in Africa. It is because people have no access to the health services.

POOR SOCIAL SERVICE DELIVERY

Even in situations where health services can be claimed to be available, long distances to clinics make the services impossible to access when they are really needed. People who suffer the most from HIV and AIDS are the poor; they even die faster than the rich because of lack of proper treatment and nutrition. Poverty kills mainly because poor people have a poor immune system.

Poverty causes more disease in our world. Diseases connected with nutrition are on the increase. Diseases connected with germs and hygiene like cholera, dysentery occurs with poor conditions. Diseases that need good choices, such as diabetes, HIV and AIDS and most STI’s are rampant in poverty. Disease and poverty are like petrol and fire – they dangerously go well together.

Most diseases in the developing world are not even diagnosed because of poverty. It’s hard to think of ways a poor person can easily go for diagnosis at the hospital 100 km away without proper transportation and diet. I am glad in this respect that basic health care in rural Zambia is free, at least theoretically.

ADDICTION TO DRUGS

Poverty causes more alcoholism, drug abuse and complicated mental illnesses. Paradoxically, the poor have a good access to alcohol and drugs. Most of you will know that in many districts of Zambia, Kachasu (local spirits) and chamba (local version of marijuana) are basically a drink and drug for the poor. Kachasu’s alcoholic content varies between 30% and 90%, yet it is very cheap. With a K1,000 (29 cents) a person can get drunk beyond repair in most places.

People who have hated life because of too much poverty simply go into hard alcohols and drugs. The world in a drunken person’s mind is much more tolerable than in sober conditions. In the drunken world, all things are possible, even happiness and the riches that the person in his or her poor condition will never attain.

This applies to other drugs like “chamba”. I know there are many more drugs outside of Zambia like cocaine, marijuana and many other forms, but even in the developed world, the highest drug users are the poor and the marginalised. These drugs including alcohol, incapacitate a person’s ability to make good choices (the limited choices they already have as the poor). A person’s ability to protect oneself from dangerous diseases connected with sex are very minimal. A drunken person or a person on drugs will more easily have unprotected sex than when sober.

Too much drug intake leads to addiction that leads often to death or even madness. The break-out of many mental illnesses in Zambia can be seen in terms of people who are tired of just getting the minimal, people who want more but cannot get more. They run mad not necessarily because their brain has a problem but because of too much constrained stress and depression.

More importantly, poverty produces more poverty. If we do not fight poverty, we end up in more poverty. Deforestation is largely because of poverty, people desperate for cash, burn charcoal and sell firewood. You will be surprised that a precious entity such as trees can be very cheap in Zambia. Charcoal in Lundazi ranges from K5,000 to K10,000 per 50kg bag. If you think about the amount of trees that would have been involved in 10 bags of charcoal, it’s hard to just look at careless tree cutting without much worry.

Pollution of rivers and drinking sources is caused by congestion. Poverty breeds more poverty. So, few people saved from extreme poor conditions are worth it. I have heard people say, “Why try to eradicate poverty? Poverty is as old as humanity itself and will never end”. I say that is a desperate way to look at such injustices in our world. The fact that something has always existed does not make it right.

Because of the devastating nature of poverty, we can’t live in a world with poverty without thinking it is wrong. Poverty is wrong, poverty is evil, poverty should be stopped. The biggest problem in the fight against poverty is not necessarily the lack of economic wealth but our attitude towards it. Many people, the poor included, see poverty, live in poverty and suffer and die without thinking that it is wrong to be poor. We are reluctant to change. I will use Plato’s Allegory of the cave in the next section to support my position.

IMPRISONED IN POVERTY STRUCTURES

Living at the bottom of the well, where the bottom of the well, despite its dangers and uncomfortability, becomes our home is like prisoners in Plato’s cave in the (Allegory of the Cave in Plato’s “The Republic”). The prisoners, chained and rooted in the cave facing the wall where there are reflected images, tend to think that all reality is what they see on the wall without knowing that “real” reality is outside the cave. Being told of reality that is outside the cave by those who have been outside evokes so much denial and anger that they would even kill the person who knows reality as it is.

Humanity is imprisoned in the cave by mistaking extreme poverty as a normal way of living. People working for justice are often looked at as hopeless money mongers who do not know what they are doing. The justice people, people who have seen the problem of poverty, often find it difficult to convince people that they are in poverty and therefore move towards reality -- a life where all have basic needs.

John Rawls mentions two conditions for justice to be fair: (i) all having access to basic needs, (ii) all having access to opportunities and if there is any inaccess it should be because it benefits the least advantaged people in society. I think a person cannot have access to basic needs and opportunities if they are so embedded in the cave of poverty or live at the bottom of the well.

It is difficult for the very poor to reason out why there is so much poverty because they might be busy looking for the basic needs that might not be there at all. It creates the imagery of “scramble for Africa” where many poor people are scrambling for a small cake of needs and opportunities.

Like in the scramble for Africa, only the powerful got the bigger share. Living in the cave creates an opportunity for the already rich to have better access to needs and opportunities than the poor. A rich man or woman has easy transport, better communication, good housing, often better jobs, and choices in life which the poor have very little or no access to. I find it difficult to envision a poor person in Zambia to have access to needs and opportunities when they are in the veil of poverty and are forced to believe that that way of life is the normal one.

Structural poverty is also as a result of hopelessness where people know that they don’t have the capability to access things. They give up to getting the little that they can get.

In order to get people out of poverty, we need to come out of the cave of structural poverty to the real world where we can access needs and opportunities. We need to get other people out of the cave of structural poverty so that having access to the real world, so that they can compete in this global world.

challenging Structural Poverty

One of the biggest problems with structural poverty is it makes people relax, thinking it is not worth fighting poverty at all costs. It’s very encouraging to note that more and more people are seeing that poverty is a problem and something on a bigger scale must be done.

In September 2000 at the United Nations Millennium Summit in New York, one of the  eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) reached by the World’s Heads of States was to halve the number of people living on US$1 a day by 2015.

Unfortunately most of the other MDGs will never be achieved if poverty remains rampant and continues to make people think it is okay to be poor. Another global effort at challenging structural poverty is through the World Social Forum, most recently held in Nairobi, Kenya.

Recommendations

One of the ways we can come out of poverty is using Plato’s allegory of the cave where those emancipated share with those who have not. The virtue of sharing, though it sounds very Christian, can help all of us in poverty. We often blame globalisation as contributing to more poverty. I deliberately left it out in my causes of poverty because I have started believing strongly that globalisation can be a very helpful way of lessening the poverty we experience. If we can share things on a global level, honestly, we can have lesser poverty.

Although in December 2006, Zambia reached single digit inflation rate of about 8.2%, way down from 15.9% in 2005, this outcome does not show stability. In February 2007, the inflation rates skyrocketed to 12.6%. These macroeconomic improvements in Zambia were largely from rising copper prices and new foreign investments. We are now home to many South African businesses, to former Zimbabwean farmers, and of course to the Indian and Chinise enterprises. Although they are foreign companies, they could contribute macroeconomically to Zambia.

Another way we can think of coming out of poverty is having a national economy that grows with its people. We hear that Zambia’s economy is doing very well with lessening inflation rates, but is it helping Zambians access more and more basic needs? Are our people being left out in this endeavour? In some countries, we can see how national economies can be extremely good but leave out the greatest portion of its people in abject poverty, as is the case with South Africa.
Lastly, I propose an uprising against poverty. I propose strikes to end poverty. I propose demonstrations against poverty. If Zambia can afford, at the word of its President, to offer free primary education and free health services, can’t we afford other subsidies to alleviate our people from poverty? Poverty alleviation cannot just be for political gains but for productivity and uplifting people’s lives. Speaking out against poverty helps create awareness that obviously something is wrong and needs to be addressed.

Serious uprising will send the message very strongly to the peoples of Zambia that poverty is not a normal day-to-day endeavour. The more people know that something is wrong, the better. Debates can come out of these uprisings as to where priorities should be. Silence or simply a few NGO’s advocating for poverty alleviation might not be enough for full poverty eradication. People have to be involved.

OUT OF THE WELL

Although most of us live at the bottom of the well and have created our own havens, poverty needs to be flushed out. Poverty makes attainment of many things impossible. These things include justice, peace, basic human rights and needs, opportunities, jobs and other things. Poverty is sin and we cannot live with known sins in our world and yet do nothing. The day that we delete poverty out of our world is the day we can proudly proclaim like most slaves did at their freedom: “Now, Now, We are Free!”

Dominic Liche
Roma
Lusaka