Uneven Geography

The United Nations announced recently some success worldwide in reaching key millennium development goals (MDGs) by the lifting more than one billion people out of extreme poverty. However, a report on 110 counties between 2001-11 released by the Pew Research Centre on the number of people lifted out of poverty since the millennium shows that there has been no real rise in the numbers, constituting the global middle class. What has happened is that around 700 million of the world’s population have moved from living on $2 a day or less to the low-income world of $2-$10 a day.

As part of the MDGs many countries, Zambia included, set their sights on becoming middle income countries. China has been the most successful here with 203 million, moving into a middle-income lifestyle, though 75% of it's population still remain poor or low income. While Asia generally has done best, now having half of the world’s new middle class, jumping from 399 million to 784 million; other parts of Asia were less successful. In India for example while the poverty rate fell from 35% to 20% of the population but its middle-class only grew by 3%.

Other areas that improved were South America, Eastern Europe and Russia; with almost half the South American population now at or above middle-income status, while Europe and North America’s world share of the upper-middle income population fell from 76- 63% over the same period and the US’s proportion of high income population fell from 58-56%

In Africa 92% of the population was either poor or low-income in 2011 and according to the report in Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Madagascar and Zambia poverty increased significantly.

In Bhutan, Moldova, Ecuador, Argentina and Kazakhstan the poverty rate fell by at least 15% and the middle class increased by 15%

Factors such as conflict and falling oil and commodity prices have affected the findings for a number of economies, in the past few years, the report notes.

The Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection has reported that the Kwacha’s fall in value this year is adversely affecting people’s standard of living here in Zambia and the Basic Needs Basket continues to rise in the face of a wage freeze for most of the work-force. It is obviously worse for those relying on casualisation or the informal sector with no steady income. The JCCT surveyed 5 towns in 3 Provinces earlier in the year. Its findings are in the table below.

	Mealie Meal 25kg	Basic Needs Basket	Other Living Costs
Kitwe	K71.40	K2817.00	N/A
Luanshya	K66.33	K2687.00	K1676.00
Mansa	K69.33	K2605.00	K1624.00
Ndola	K69.28	K3670.00	K2400.00
Solwezi	K76.00	K3919.00	K2662.00

 Below is the latest Basic Needs Food Basket published by the JCTR.

JCTR BASIC NEEDS BASKET: LUSAKA
JUNE 2015

(A)  COST OF BASIC FOOD ITEMS FOR A FAMILY OF FIVE IN LUSAKA

Commodity	Kwacha	Quantity	Total Kwacha
Mealie meal (breakfast)	64.57	2 x25kgs	129.14
Beans	18.00	3kgs	54.00
Kapenta (dry)	89.51	2kgs	179.02
Bream (dry)	80.71	1kg	80.71
Beef	32.64	4kgs	130.56
Dark green vegetable	4.43	4kgs	17.72
Tomatoes	6.68	4kgs	26.72
Onion, large	8.20	2kgs	16.40
Cooking oil (2.5L)	36.33	3 litres	43.60
Bread wheat, refined flour, baked	5.64	1 loaf/day	169.20
Sugar	17.90	6kgs	53.70
Mlik (fresh)	5.61	4 x 500mls	22.44
Tea, powder	31.90	1kg	31.90
Eggs	8.93	2 units	17.86
Salt	4.23	1kg	4.23
		Sub total	977.20

 

(B) COST OF ESSENTIAL NON-FOOD ITEM

Charcoal	99.43	2 x 90kgs bags	198.86
Soap (Lifebouy/Champion)	3.71	10 tablets	37.10
Wash soap (Boom)	6.08	4x400g	24.32
Jelly (eg Vaseline)	20.21	1x500mls	20.21
Electricity (medium density – fixed)	372.00		372.00
Water & Sanitation (medium cost – fixed)	325.00		325.00
Housing (medium cost – 3 bedrooms)	1,750.00		1,750.00
		Sub total	2,727.49
		Total for Basic Needs Basket	3,704.69

  

 

C) SOME OTHER ADDITIONAL COSTS
Item K                                                                                                                  Item K
Education Transport                                                                                         (bus fare round trip)
Grades 8-9 (User + PTA/year)         K400.00 – K600.00           Chilenje-Town                       K10.00
Grades 10-12 (User + PTA/year)     K650.00 – K1, 300.00       Chelstone –Town                  K10.00
School Uniform (grades 8-12)          K90.00 – K200.00              Matero-Town                        K10.00

Health (clinic)                                                                               Fuel (cost at the pump)
Registration (book)                           K3.00 - K5.00                    Petrol (per litre)                     K8.74
Self-referral (Emergency Fee)         K 5.500                               Diesel (per litre)                     K7.59
Mosquito Net (private)                      K30.00 – K120.00             Paraffin (per litre)                 K5.40

The June Basic Needs Basket is approximately US$497 based upon the exchange rate of US$7.4491

Some approximate Middle Class Salaries in Government Service: 

General Government Worker                                             K2 300

Enrolled Nurse                                                                      K2 900

Clinical Officer/RGN                                                            K3 300                                                                       

            Senior Teacher Nurse Police Officer                                   K4 000

            Medical Officer                                                                     K17 000

Let there be light!

 

According to the Zambian Economist, Zambia has at present a 560MW power deficit, while demand for electricity is increasing by 200MW each year. Zesco, the parastatal power company, has introduced a timetable of nation-wide rolling power-cuts, called load-shedding here, to try and conserve the water needed to generate electricity till this year’s rains come at the year-end, and hopefully replenish our diminishing water sources. Almost all of Zambia’s electricity is hydro and produced at power stations at the Kariba Dam, Kafue Gorge and Victoria Falls. These low water levels appear to be another consequence of climate change.

 

We received the Mwandi Load Shedding Schedule:

 

Monday           20-24h

Tuesday           15-20h

Wednesday     10-15h

Thursday         05-10h

Friday              24-05h

Saturday          20-24h

Sunday            15-20h

 

If you think that is bad, in Lusaka and other cities the power is off for 8 hours at a stretch. The power has just gone off now for our Tuesday stint! It should come on again hopefully around 20h.

 

There are 2 new power stations due to open this year the 120MW hydro power station at Itezhi-tezi  in August 2015, and the 150MW Maamba Coal Powered Station in November. The most they can do is cover this year’s increased demand. The Government has no financial resources to invest in this area and neighbouring countries face similar problems so there is no spare regional generating capacity that would allow imports to fill the gap. Zesco too is losing revenue from consumers, estimated at $170m, plus another $120m is needed to cover the importation of 100MW from our neighbours. This leaves a power deficit of 460MW and $290m to be found to cover losses and importation.  

 

The knock-on effect of these outages on the economy are quite serious. Water companies are now rationing town water supplies, mining companies are being asked to reduce electricity consumption by 20-30% which may lead to closures and the laying off of workers. Commercial poultry producers are having to use generators that require fuel, the price of which has just been increased, dairy plants need 5hrs to recover after an 8h power-cut and a price hike in mealie-meal is threatened, to recover losses in revenue as the time available for production has been halved. Again it is the ordinary consumer who suffers most as businesses hike prices to maintain profit levels on basic food and essential non-food items. Ecologically too increased deforestation will result, as more trees will be cut down to supply charcoal. It too has risen in price as more people buy it to cook with, instead of their now useless electric stoves. The hospital too is planning to use a generator if necessary, to supply power to life-saving machinery but the erratic and poor Government grant make the purchase of fuel to run it next to impossible. There are also resulting increases in the consumption of calor gas, paraffin, candles, matches, batteries and fuel for generators causing shortages of these commodities as well, as people look for and purchase substitutes.

 

Suggestions have been made that Zambia looks to solar and there is a project underway to produce 50MW but it is unrealistic for that to be increased by tenfold overnight to meet the 560MW deficit. There are new hydro schemes proposed at Lusiwashi and Kalugwishi and 2 thermal stations at Ndola and Batoka Gorge. These are all future projects with no current funding from either government or from foreign investors. They are also likely to lead to a further increase of our national debt, but funding this infrastructure in this way, is arguably a better use of money than using it on current expenditure.

 

Although we complain about it, the price of electricity in Zambia is one of the lowest in the region and seemingly only covers about 40% of the real cost, but electricity bills are unlikely to rise till after the elections next year. There are plans as well to break Zesco’s monopoly and split it, as other neo-liberal privitisation programmes of public utilities elsewhere in the world have done, into generation, transmission and distribution sections and run them as separate businesses and eventually to open up the power market to the ill winds of combination and consensus competition at the expense of the consumer, with which we are all too familiar in the more developed world.

 

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst

Last we visited 4 rural Community Schools and spoke with community leaders regarding their situation. At Sikuzu we found empty lishete, traditional wattle and thatched granaries, empty. People are selling chickens and their own stock of dried-fish to buy mealie-meal. People were eating buhobe/inshima and wild greens once a day. Some were only eating buhobe/inshima dressed with cooking oil.

Some more drought resistant cassava cuttings from Sichili had been reintroduced and planted, but would not be ready for another year. We came across a hobbled stirk belonging to Mr Sampaya, lying on a scotch-cart, about to be taken to the butchery in Mwandi, 8 kilometres away. It had broken its leg while grazing down at the river bank and could not get up. The poor beast would be sold for a pittance to butchers from Livingstone and the proceeds used to buy mealie meal, cooking oil, salt and perhaps some soap. Sikuzu people are generally reluctant to sell their cattle as they are seen as capital.

We moved on to Aibelilwe Community School where we found the PTA in session on the holiday Monday. They welcomed us warmly and asked us to join their meeting. Many of the families from here, we heard, had moved with their cattle to the fishing camps at the river as the local water sources had dried up. No production unit was possible here without a borehole or chokochoko – hand pump. Namakau, the sister to a community matriarch in Sikuzu, movingly and in frustration told that she had ploughed and sown at the usual time after the first rains but the rains had failed and the sun had scorched the maize seedlings, so they had sown again with old seed and these too had failed. Where in a good year you could expect 6 to 10 sacks from a lima, this year they hardly got a bucket! They needed help.

Mr Ndala, one of the Committee, took us to the next school Alibuzwi at Sitali’s village where Mubita’s family comes from. According to him the last time there was a drought like this was in 1993, when our Catriona/Shamiso was born.  En route, we passed a dry and rusting chokochoko, an Indira hand- pump, drilled about 12 years ago. The spare parts still have to be imported from India. This is a good example of wasted aid. The drillers were paid to drill a certain number of 30-50m boreholes regardless of the local geology. There is an underground belt of salt which runs from Sesheke to Kasaya in our area and they drilled through it, without either stopping before they reached it or protecting the water being pumped up from below, being contaminated by it. So people here in high numbers suffer from high blood pressure, strokes and kidney disease. But, hey, chillax, it’s only a statistical cluster, and some European Development Minister could get up in their Parliament and report that so many more thousands of people now had access to drinking water because of the number of boreholes they had paid for to be drilled in Western Province, Zambia! An excellent example of the difference between the quantitative and qualitative?! But reports of which will never see the light of day.

At Alibuzwi we met Manyando, the young teacher there. He is unqualified and lives modestly in a traditional daub and wattle house..The classrooms are low, mud-walled ‘flats’ with a zinc roof. The water, both drinking and for any other purpose, is scooped out by a dish from a 4m deep hand-dug well. The mothers of the children were there at school, busy smearing mud on the walls of the classroom to prepare them, hopefully for the onslaught of the rains in December. We picked up some kids on their way to school. They were grazing on manganda, fruit from local palm trees. They had eaten nothing else today. Manyando was teaching over the holidays as he had been away on an In-Service Course for two days the week before. He told us of a number of children that had dropped out of school this term, as there is limited food at home and they only really attend school when they have the energy to do so. As the only wage earner in the community, he is able to feed some from his own resources, those children he knows who are in desperate need.

We moved on to Sooka Community School. It is closer to Mwandi and as the Headteaher said, a local lodge, as part of its community responsibility programme, goes more than the extra mile to help them out. However, the school relies on water from the lodge and would appreciate having a source of its own. Being beside the river means that fish and vegetables are more readily available and can be caught and grown. So as not to ‘flood’ the Mwandi market with fish and vegetables at the same time, a community agreement has been struck with individuals, agreeing on certain days of the week to sell their wares. The children here at Sooka Community School too are mainly from subsistence farmers and the granaries are empty here too.

On our way back to Mwandi, we passed four sites where Community-owned fish ponds are being dug to help take the pressure off the wild Zambezi fish stock.

The UCZ’s intervention is not only to introduce better policies but also to train communities in the best ways to cope with the negative effects of climate change that are already taking a toll on Zambian communities, The  UCZ is very concerned with the direction in which the world is moving especially with the continued denial by many world leaders of climate change despite evidence to the contrary However, the UCZ believes in both prayer and action. Climate change is inextricably linked with environmental justice especially in the extractive mining industry and as part of our socio-economic programme, climate change is a significant component.

It is too simplistic, as some do, to portray climate change as the fulfilment of the biblical “end times” prophecy, but nevertheless with the prolonged drought the UCZ has organised prayer meetings to address climate change and its visible impact. The Church has to be a watch-dog on behalf of the people and to understand and be involved in the climate change discourse. It is a complex and moral struggle we are engaged in. This requires us also to engage politically to try an influence policy. The Church through the CCZ, has worked with Government already regarding policy highlighting to the dangers of uranium mining

A campaign called “We have faith – act for climate justice”, collected over 200,000 signatures across Africa, demanding a “just and legally binding climate treaty” at COP 17 in South Africa, in 2011.Since then, we have used our church structures to influence change. Disaster Risk Reduction Church Committees have been trained in tree planting, good forest management practices and sustainable agriculture.

Although the Zambian Government and the UCZ share the sentiments of “polluter pays” principle, demanding a fair share of resources to cope with climate shocks, we still see it is the most vulnerable communities that bear the brunt of climate change.