Working Paper No. 42

THE POWER OF PROPAGANDA:

PUBLIC OPINION IN ZIMBABWE,

2004

by Annie Chikwanha, Tulani Sithole

and Michael Bratton

August 2004

CONTENTS

Executive Summary

Introduction: A Country in Crisis

An Economic Crisis

A Political Crisis

The Squeeze on the Media

The Afrobarometer

The Survey in Zimbabwe

Economic Deprivation

Political Acquiescence

Explaining a Paradox

An Economic Upturn?

Political Fear?

The Power of Propaganda?

Merging Explanations

Conclusion and Way Forward

Annie Chikwana is Project Director for the Afrobarometer at the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa). Tulani Sithole is a Senior Researcher at the Mass Public Opinion Institute (MPOI) in Zimbabwe. Michael Bratton is a co-founder and co-Director of the Afrobarometer. He is also a Professor in the Department of Political Science and the African Studies Center at Michigan State University.

The Afrobarometer Network is grateful to the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the U.S. Agency for International Development/Regional Center for Southern Africa for financial support for the collection of data, institutional capacity building, and the dissemination of results.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Based on a national sample survey conducted as part of Afrobarometer Round 2, this report probes the public mood in Zimbabwe in mid-2004. It documents changes in public opinion since 1999 and compares Zimbabwe to other African countries. Mass attitudes are measured in the context of a country that has encountered severe economic and political crises during the past five years. The Afrobarometer survey finds that:

On the economy:

· Zimbabweans feel economically deprived: more than half of all adults think that current living conditions are bad; and present generations think they are materially worse off than their parents.

· Four in ten Zimbabweans report that they went without food “many times” in the previous year. Rates of persistent hunger are higher than in any other country surveyed.

· More than other Africans, Zimbabweans are prone to hold government accountable for individual welfare. The most important popular priorities for government action are the management of the economy, unemployment, and food security.

· Zimbabweans rarely mention land reform as a priority national problem; three quarters think that land acquisition should only be done by legal means and with compensation to owners.

· Citizens give the government higher marks for combating AIDS than for creating jobs, keeping prices stable, or closing the gap between rich and poor. But the proportion is rising of those reporting they know someone who has died from AIDS.

On politics:

· Zimbabweans are losing faith in democracy. Expressed support for this form of government is down from two-thirds of citizens in 1999 to less than one half in 2004.

· If rejection of authoritarian alternatives is included, then deep commitments to democracy are down still further. Increasing numbers acquiesce to the idea of single-party rule.

· At the same time, political parties have not fully penetrated society; one half of all Zimbabweans prefers to remain unaligned with either Zanu PF or MDC. Part of the reason is that three out of four think that party competition leads to social conflict.

· By a margin of more than five to one, Zimbabweans overwhelmingly reject political violence. Whereas MDC supporters are more likely to support violence in support of a just cause, Zanu PF partisans are more likely to have actually engaged in violent political acts.

· Fewer than half say they trust Robert Mugabe and the ruling party. While hardly a strong endorsement of presidential popularity, these figures have risen since 1999. And they far exceed the small proportions who are willing to admit trusting Morgan Tsvangirai and opposition parties.

Explaining Mass Attitudes

Public opinion in Zimbabwe is therefore a paradox. While the economy has shrunk and hunger has become widespread, political support for the incumbent has apparently increased. The report ends by offering an explanation of this puzzle.

· First, some people – like party loyalists, military forces, and resettled peasant farmers – have benefited from Zanu PF patronage. They not only regard the economy as having turned up in the past year, but they credit the president with improvements in their own economic conditions.

· Second, other people – especially the younger generation and rural dwellers – are afraid to express their true political preferences. Self-censorship is evident among those who think that the survey was sponsored by a government agency. They say they approve of the president when, in fact, they may not.

· Third, the most important factor is political propaganda. Since 2000, the government has mounted a comprehensive campaign to revive the nationalist fervor of the liberation war. People who trust the ideological pronouncements of the official government media are very much more likely to give the president a positive rating.

· Finally, Zimbabweans are sick and tired of the deadlock between the country’s two main political parties. Two-thirds of all respondents in the 2004 Afrobarometer survey in Zimbabwe consider that “problems in this country can only be solved if MDC and Zanu PF sit down and talk with one another.”

THE POWER OF PROPOGANDA: PUBLIC OPINION IN ZIMBABWE, 2004

Introduction: A Country in Crisis

This report probes the public mood in Zimbabwe in mid-2004. Among many other questions, it asks: How do Zimbabweans assess economic conditions in their country? And how do they feel about the performance of political leaders? To summarize results, we find that Zimbabweans are deeply concerned about eroding standards of living but, paradoxically, are increasingly resigned to the dominance of the incumbent government. We explain this outcome mainly in terms of the government’s squeeze on the media, which in recent years has denied citizens access to most sources of information except official propaganda.

For this report, public opinion in Zimbabwe was measured by means of a nationally representative sample survey. Conducted as part of the cross-national Afrobarometer Round 2, the survey situates Zimbabwe in comparison to 15 other African nations. The survey instrument also repeats questions first asked in Zimbabwe in 1999, which allows us to see how public opinion is evolving over time.

The five-year interval between 1999 and 2004 has been a tumultuous period for Zimbabwe. Twin crises – a sharp deterioration in the economy, and a violent political confrontation between government and opposition forces – have buffeted the country. By way of background, we first sketch these macro-economic and macro-political trends in order to set the scene for reviewing mass public opinion.

An Economic Crisis

At the time of political independence in 1980, Zimbabwe inherited a diversified and productive economy, but one that was highly unequal. The country’s position as an exporter of food and cash crops was based upon a narrow sector of commercial agriculture, in which a small minority of whites – numbering no more than 70,000 in a population of nearly 12 million by the turn of the century – owned an overwhelming proportion of the most fertile land in the country. A widespread consensus emerged inside and outside of Zimbabwe in favour of redressing this disproportionate distribution of land. But over 20 years of independence, the Zimbabwe government was unable to amass the financial, legal, administrative, or technical capacity to undertake more than token land reform measures.

All this changed in 2000. In response to a series of challenges to its political dominance (see next section), the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu PF) embarked on a “fast-track” program of land seizures. The government enacted laws authorizing compulsory acquisition of land from white owners and encouraged political supporters (the “war veterans”) to take the law into their own hands by invading commercial farms. The land redistribution was violent, chaotic and corrupt and ended up benefiting politicians and supporters of the ruling party while doing little for the most needy or qualified peasant farmers. On all these grounds, the government’s approach to land reform was condemned locally and internationally in the independent media. At the same time, President Robert Mugabe could rightfully claim that he had dismantled the economic system over which the anti-colonial liberation war had been fought.

The government’s economic strategy has proven extremely costly, however, leading to a macroeconomic crisis marked by the following features:

· Since the late 1990s, the country has been plagued by severe food shortages, caused partly by drought but also partly by the controversial land redistribution programme.[1] In April 2003, food aid was being delivered to over 5.2 million people.[2] And the United Nations World Food Programme forecast that the country had produced only half of its food grain needs for 2004.[3]

· Government controls that fixed the exchange rate of the Zimbabwe dollar undermined its value and led to emergence of a black market. Despite belated attempts at monetary reform,[4] an overvalued currency has reduced exports and contributed to food, fuel and foreign exchange shortages.[5]

· Hyperinflation has caused extreme hardships for ordinary people. Since 2000, when it stood at around 60 percent, the annual inflation rate had shot up to 620 percent by November 2003.[6] However, some economists find these figures too conservative, arguing that inflation was more likely to have peaked at over 1000 percent.

· The collapse of many manufacturing and service industries has created mass unemployment and driven skilled labour from the country. Of the more than 2 million economic migrants who have left in search of greener pastures, some 14 percent have settled in Botswana and another 17 percent in South Africa.[7]

· Adding to these problems is the spectre of AIDS. The HIV prevalence rate is over 30 percent, making Zimbabwe one of Africa’s hardest hit countries. In urban areas, the infection rate is estimated to be around 40 percent and in the army, over 80 percent. With funeral attendance a cultural tradition, an estimated 2000 deaths per week further drag down economic productivity.[8]

· Only a decade ago, Zimbabwe’s health care system was among the best in Africa. Today, severe shortages of basic drugs and medical equipment are pushing hospitals and clinics close to ruin. Between 1999 and 2002, while infant mortality rates held steady in South Africa and declined in Malawi, they jumped by 15 percent in Zimbabwe.[9]

In sum, a once productive economy has been severely impaired. Indeed, the International Monetary Fund reports that Zimbabwe has the fastest shrinking economy in the world; its citizens have become “one third poorer in the last five years.”[10]

A Political Crisis

Zanu PF has always justified its right to rule in terms of a nationalist ideology. In recent years, the speeches of President Robert Mugabe have increasingly laid blame for Zimbabwe’s woes on a perceived coalition of external and internal enemies including the British government, white settlers, and a newly emerged opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). While Mugabe continues to claim leadership based on his credentials as an anti-imperialist freedom fighter, challenger Morgan Tsvangirai, president of the MDC, has sought to launch a new and alternative discourse. He argues that the leadership of the country should go to the political party with the most rational economic policies and the one that can win a free and fair election.

Over the past five years, these differences between government and opposition have widened into violence and deadlock. This political crisis developed as follows:

· The government was caught off guard in February 2000 when voters rejected a draft constitution that would have strengthened the powers of the presidency.[11] This outburst of popular initiative inspired the labour movement and civil society to form a new political party. In the parliamentary elections of 2000, the MDC scooped almost half of the contested seats in the legislature.

· In reaction to the erosion of its control over society, the government promulgated the Public Order and Security Act (POSA). Henceforth, any meeting of more than five people required the approval of the police and debate on political issues was effectively prohibited. Ironically, POSA restored many of the provisions of the colonial Law and Order Maintenance Act.

· Fearing that young people were being attracted away by the opposition, the government drafted students bound for tertiary education into a National Youth Service. These “green bombers” were deployed to enforce public discipline, for example by punishing citizens for lacking party cards. Along with land invasions, these developments further established violence as a feature of Zimbabwean politics.

· The presidential elections of 2002, which returned President Mugabe to office for a further six-year term, deepened the confrontation between government and opposition.[12] Zanu PF cadres disrupted opposition meetings and prevented campaigning in rural “no go” zones. Amid allegations of irregular voter rolls and a shortage of polling places in urban areas, election observers declared the elections “unfree and unfair.”[13]

· As the MDC mounted a court challenge to the election results and mobilized rolling mass work stoppages, Zanu PF’s crackdown only intensified. The government charged Tsvangirai with treason over an alleged plot to kill Mugabe, harassed MDC MPs who tried to do their jobs as legislators, and arrested demonstrators who demanded a new constitution and changes in the country’s legal system.

· In October 2003, against the backdrop of a bad harvest, international human rights monitors charged that the nation’s rulers were using food as a weapon by denying relief supplies to their critics.[14]

· Several attempts have been made to mediate the dispute between Zanu PF and MDC, notably by the presidents of South Africa and Nigeria. But neither protagonist has budged from his entrenched position:

President Mugabe insists on being recognized as the duly elected leader of the country; and Tsvangirai continues to call for unconditional negotiations and new elections.[15]

As the state has cracked down on society, citizens have lost civil liberties and political rights. Between 1998 and 2003, the country dropped down on the respected Freedom House Status of Freedom Index to a classification of squarely “not free.”[16] According to this measure, the political environment in Zimbabwe today resembles that of contemporary Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of Congo

The Squeeze on the Media

The closure of political space in Zimbabwe is starkly illustrated by the government’s effort to monopolize the flow of political information. The government has always owned a significant share of the news outlets in the mass media sector, with the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) enjoying sole access to the television airwaves. The current period has seen a significant strengthening of government control over radio broadcasts and the print press as well.

· From 1998 onwards, the government sought to impose a news blackout on its military expedition in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which provoked direct confrontations with private newspapers, for example over casualties in the armed forces and profiteering by politicians.

· To retaliate, the government charged the private press with distorting facts about the country and being on a mission to sabotage state security.[17] Consistent with its nationalist ideology, the party paints private media houses as instruments of Western re-colonisation.

· Before the February 2000 parliamentary elections, the state-controlled media launched a campaign to re-build national identity and appeal to young people to abide by the moral principles of the liberation struggle.[18] The ZBC was restructured via a purge of journalists who refused to toe the new official line, and foreign program content was reduced to 25 percent. By December 2000, the state media added a communication strategy on land reform aimed at motivating people to apply for resettlement and to become productive farmers.

· Following the 2002 presidential elections, control of the media was moved into the Office of the President, from where Minister of Information and Publicity oversaw the introduction of the toughest media laws in the country’s history. An Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) was promulgated, which requires the compulsory registration of journalists. Its enforcement has led to the prosecution of local journalists on flimsy grounds like “causing an article to be published” and to a blanket prohibition on the work of foreign correspondents.

· In August 2002, the Harare offices of the “Voice of the People” radio station were firebombed. In September 2003, the government used AIPPA to force the closure of the Daily News, the most popular independent newspaper, which had an estimated daily readership of up to one million.

· In rural areas, where newspapers and television rarely reach, citizens were forced to attend rallies and overnight political orientation meetings (pungwes). Party youth lead the way in forcing villagers to chant pro-Zanu PF and anti-MDC slogans.

· To evade government restrictions, the opposition turned to the Internet to reach its urban supporters. Under a telecommunications act passed in 2002, Internet service providers have been closed down for failing to open their server records to government security departments. In June 2004, the government announced that it intended to censor “objectionable” e-mail messages.

The net effect of the squeeze on the media is that most Zimbabweans – with the exception of the tiny fractions who read the remaining independent weeklies or own a short-wave radio or satellite TV – get only one side of the story. Because critics and opponents are prevented from getting their messages out, the majority of citizens hear only what the government wants them to hear. Thus, by 2003, the international Committee to Protect Journalists listed Zimbabwe among the 10 worst offenders of press freedom in the world.[19]

The Afrobarometer

The Afrobarometer is an independent, non-partisan research instrument that measures the social, political and economic atmosphere in Africa. By means of public opinion surveys administered to nationally representative samples of adult citizens, it reports what Africans think about conditions in their countries and the pressing policy issues of the day.

The project has three main objectives: to produce scientifically reliable data and analysis on public attitudes; to build institutional capacity for survey research in Africa; and to broadly disseminate and apply results, especially among policy actors.

The Afrobarometer operates as an international collaborative enterprise of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa), the Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), and Michigan State University (MSU). In addition, the Afrobarometer Network includes national partners – independent research institutes in the university, NGO and private sectors – that execute surveys in each African country. In Zimbabwe, the Mass Public Opinion Institute (MPOI) administers Afrobarometer surveys.

Round 1 of the Afrobarometer was completed between 1999 and mid-2001, with results from 12 countries, including Zimbabwe. The first survey in Zimbabwe was conducted from September to October 1999, that is, prior to the constitutional referendum and the land invasions. Round 2 involved 16 countries, with Zimbabwe being covered in 2004. The instrument asks a standard set of questions, which makes it possible to systematically compare countries and track trends over time. The survey collects data about attitudes and behaviour on the following topics: democracy, governance, livelihoods, economic policy, social capital, conflict and crime, political participation and national identity. Further information is available at www.afrobarometer.org.

The Survey in Zimbabwe

With technical assistance from Idasa, MPOI conducted fieldwork for the Round 2 Afrobarometer survey in Zimbabwe between 26 April and 17 May, 2004. The target sample size was 1200 respondents, yielding a margin of sampling error of no more than plus or minus three percentage points. The sample was selected in four stages: the primary sampling unit, starting points, households, and individuals. Because each stage was conducted randomly, the sample represents a cross-section of the adult population of Zimbabwe aged 18 years or older.

The frame for the sample was Zimbabwe’s official 2002 national population census.[20] For primary sampling units, a total of 150 census enumeration areas were randomly selected with probability proportionate to population size. These enumeration areas were stratified by province and by residential location (urban or rural). To ensure an equal representation of respondents by gender, interviews were alternated between male and female respondents. The achieved gender distribution was therefore 50:50.

A summary of the intended sample is outlined in Table 1.

Fieldwork occurred in all provinces of Zimbabwe and the full sample was achieved in nine of the ten provinces. In the final days of the survey, however, the Central Intelligence Organisation disrupted fieldwork in Mashonaland Central Province. Only eight interviews were completed in one PSU and the survey had to be abandoned in the remaining 12 of the province’s 13 selected PSUs. Because Mashonaland Central Province is a stronghold of the ruling Zanu PF party, the completion of the survey in this province would probably have yielded a higher proportion of pro-government responses than the results we report below. As a result of this incident, the final sample size was 1104. To avoid introducing further bias, however, we report results based on this slightly truncated sample rather than weighting the data to reflect the handful of responses already collected in Mashonaland Central.

Table 1: Summary of Sample

	Manic-aland	Mash. Cent.	Mash. East	Mash. West	Mat. North	Mat. South	Mid-lands	Mas-vingo	Harare	Bula-wayo	Total
NATIONAL
% of National	13.6	8.6	9.7	10.5	6	5.6	12.6	11.3	16.4	5.8	100
PSUs	20	13	15	16	9	8	19	17	25	9	150
Interviews	163	103	116	126	72	67	151	136	197	70	1200
URBAN
% Urban	17.0	10.8	10.8	28.6	12.9	11.8	26.7	9.3	100.0	100.0
PSUs	4	1	2	5	1	1	5	2	25	9	53
Interviews	28	11	13	36	9	8	40	13	197	70	424
RURAL
% Rural	83.0	89.2	89.2	71.4	87.1	88.2	73.3	90.7	0	0
PSUs	16	12	13	11	8	7	14	15	0	0	97
Interviews	135	92	103	90	63	59	111	123	0	0	776

Eight interviews were conducted in each of the remaining 138 primary sampling units. Respondents chose the language – Shona, Ndebele, or English – in which they wished to be interviewed. Field workers were selected according to their fluency in the languages spoken in the areas in which they were deployed. We deliberately appointed nine women among the 16 interviewers because a group of females attracts less suspicion when moving about a locality. Even so, interviewers’ written comments included following: “The respondent was a war veteran and just because of that I felt threatened” (Lupane District); “The respondent expressed great fear to really divulge his position on political questions” (Harare); “The respondent was highly interested in trying to figure out whether I was just an ordinary person or a member of the opposition” (Mashonaland East).

Despite these valid concerns – which require the exercise of caution in the interpretation of survey results – three quarters of the interviewers reported receiving a “friendly” and “cooperative” reception (75 percent on both counts). Moreover, in more than six out of ten interviews, interviewers judged respondents to be “at ease” (66 percent) and “honest” (62 percent). The fact that only 9 percent of respondents were deemed “suspicious” of the survey and that only 6 percent were thought to offer “misleading” answers, suggests that most people were able to overcome their hesitations about answering survey questions. In the analysis that follows, however, we explicitly test for any effects of political fear on public opinion.

Economic Deprivation

In the opinion of ordinary Zimbabweans, daily life is a hard economic grind. More than half of all adults (54 percent) consider that their own living conditions in 2004 are “bad.” Only 27 percent consider them “good.” Indeed, only three out of every one hundred Zimbabweans can find it within themselves to pronounce their everyday standards of living as “very good” (Table 2). This downbeat mood is echoed in assessments of the condition of Zimbabwe’s national economy as a whole: in 2004, 48 percent say that the economy’s current plight is “bad,” as opposed to 31 percent “good.” Indeed, as with personal living conditions, less than one in twenty citizens regard national economic conditions as “very good.” Remaining respondents are either neutral on these questions or they admit that they “don’t know” enough about personal or national economic conditions to hazard an opinion.

Table 2: Current Economic Conditions

	Very Bad	Bad	Neither	Good	Very good	Don’t know
Your own present living conditions	26	28	19	24	3	<1
The country’s economic condition	25	23	19	27	4	2

In general, how would you describe:

a. your own present living conditions?

b. the present economic condition of this country?

Public attitudes about economic life fail to improve much when survey respondents are asked to compare themselves to others (Table 3). Many more individuals report that they are “worse off” than their fellow Zimbabweans (46 percent) than those who consider themselves “better off” (29 percent). And when they widen their view to look at the country from a regional perspective, more than half of all adults think that prevailing economic conditions in Zimbabwe are “worse” than those in neighboring states (51 percent); again, just 29 percent think that conditions are “better” than those elsewhere in the region. It is likely that some respondents lack first-hand knowledge of conditions throughout in the subcontinent (8 percent “don’t know”). And we cannot be sure whether they are comparing Zimbabwe to poorer countries like Malawi or Mozambique, or wealthier ones like South Africa and Botswana. But, either way, the cross-country comparisons are not flattering for Zimbabwe.

Table 3: Economic Conditions Compared

	Much Worse	Worse	Neither	Better	Much Better	Don’t know
Your conditions compared to others	15	31	23	25	4	2
The country compared to others	18	33	12	25	4	8

In general, how do you rate:

a. your living conditions compared with other Zimbabweans?

b. the economic conditions of this country compared to those in neighboring countries?

As an alternate method of gauging relative economic status, the Afrobarometer asks people where they stand on a ladder of economic achievement. The ladder has eleven rungs running from 0 to 10, where 0 represents poor people and 10 represents rich people. The mean subjective poverty ratings of the survey respondents in Zimbabwe – as well as their ratings for their parents 10 years ago and for their children in the future – are presented in Table 4. These self-assessments are compared with the ratings provided by survey respondents in 15 other African countries, which were covered by Afrobarometer Round 2 (2002-3).

Table 4: Subjective Poverty Ratings (mean on a scale of 0 – 10

	Yourself Today	Your Parents 10 years ago	Yourself Compared to Your Parents	Your Children, In the Future	Your Children, Compared to Your Parents
Nigeria	4.8	5.2	-0.4	9.1	+3.9
South Africa	4.6	6.0	-1.4	7.6	+1.6
Namibia	4.0	4.2	-0.2	7.0	+2.8
Mali	4.0	4.7	-0.7	7.5	+2.8
Senegal	4.0	5.3	-1.3	6.8	+1.5
Kenya	3.8	4.1	-0.3	7.6	+3.5
Tanzania	3.7	3.5	+0.2	5.6	+2.1
Cape Verde	3.6	3.6	0.0	7.4	+3.8
Botswana	3.5	3.3	+0.2	7.2	+3.9
Ghana	3.5	4.0	-0.5	7.2	+3.2
Zambia	3.4	4.9	-1.5	6.7	+1.8
Uganda	3.3	3.9	-0.6	5.5	+1.6
Lesotho	2.7	3.7	-1.0	4.0	+0.3
Mozambique	2.6	3.2	-0.6	5.2	+2.0
Zimbabwe	2.5	4.7	-2.2	5.9	+1.2
Malawi	1.9	2.5	-0.6	4.1	+1.6

On a scale between 0 and 10, where 0 are “poor” people and 10 are “rich” people, which number would you

a. give yourself today?

b. give your parents 10 years ago?

c. expect your children to attain in the future?

From this angle, Zimbabweans evidently feel they are among the most impoverished populations on the continent. To be sure, Africans everywhere tend to see themselves as poor since the average country score always falls below the midpoint of the scale (5.0). But Zimbabweans apparently see themselves as especially deprived. They give themselves a mean score of only 2.5 on the poverty scale. Moreover, 37 percent give themselves the lowest possible score (zero) while just 14 percent of other Africans do so. In other words, Zimbabweans are much more likely to think they are poor than the residents of relatively prosperous countries like South Africa and Namibia, and in this regard they even lag behind the populations of very poor countries like Tanzania, Zambia and Mozambique. We find that only Malawians think that they are worse off than Zimbabweans. This is not to say that Zimbabweans are always objectively more deprived than other Africans, but they have surely experienced a greater deterioration in the quality of life as the national economy has shrunk in recent years. We therefore suspect that they consider themselves poor mainly in relation to higher standards of living that they enjoyed in the past.

This interpretation is supported by comparisons between one’s personal circumstances today and those of one’s parents 10 years ago. Like other Africans, adult Zimbabweans tend to think that their parents’ generation enjoyed a higher standard of living (Table 4, column 4). Strikingly, however, Zimbabweans are more inclined to make an invidious comparison with the past than any other group of Afrobarometer respondents, including now even Malawians. Adults in Zimbabwe today think they stand more than two rungs below their parents on the economic achievement ladder. The perceived drop in economic status across generations in Zimbabwe (-2.2) is much larger than in Malawi (-0.6), and larger even than in Nigeria (-0.4) or Zambia (-1.5), countries that fell from middle- to low-income status in the course of a generation. These gloomy self-assessments of growing impoverishment in Zimbabwe stand in particularly sharp contrast to at least two countries where adult Africans today think they have surpassed their parents’ living standards (Botswana and Tanzania).

Moreover, the experience of falling living standards undermines the hopes that ordinary people hold for their children’s future. Like Africans elsewhere, Zimbabweans expect that their children will be richer than themselves and will even move above the midpoint on the poverty scale (to 5.9 in Zimbabwe). But Zimbabweans remain cautious about the economic future since they expect a smaller increment in the living standards of the next generation than almost any other Africans. Only Basotho, whose labor-export economy regularly loses its best young people via emigration to neighboring South Africa, feel more pessimistic about the economic future than do the denizens of Zimbabwe. In a continental setting where Nigerians and Batswana are especially optimistic about the economic future (+3.9), Zimbabweans are barely upbeat at all (+1.2).

Why, then, are Zimbabweans so pessimistic about economic conditions and prospects? The answer lies in part in the difficulty faced by ordinary people in gaining access to basic human needs. Take food, for example. At one time, Zimbabwe was self-sufficient in grain and occasionally exported surpluses to the region. But the country now finds itself in the company of other food-deficit economies in the Southern Africa region such as Zambia, Lesotho and Malawi. As food production has slumped, so hunger has grown. As Table 5 shows, only one out of four adult Zimbabweans (18 percent) report that they and their families “never” went hungry during the previous year. Instead, some 41 percent experienced a shortage of food at least “once or twice” or “several times,” with a further 41 percent going without food “many times” or “always.”

Indeed the proportion of the population that reports being permanently hungry (those who say they go without food “always”) is higher in Zimbabwe (8 percent) than in any other Afrobarometer country, including Mozambique and Malawi (both 5 percent). The harsh experience of hunger has a powerful effect on the popular economic mood, with shortages of food leading people to report that they are poor.[21] For example, two-thirds of the people who report that they are “always” hungry also give themselves the lowest possible rating (zero) on the subjective poverty scale.

The Afrobarometer tracks several aspects of human welfare in addition to the availability of food. Comparisons between the 1999 and 2004 results are presented in Table 6. These data show that Zimbabweans report a measure of improvement over the past five years in access to certain basic needs, including fuel for domestic uses and clean drinking water. Nonetheless, one half of all individuals say their households encountered a shortage of these resources on at least one occasion in the last year.

Table 5: Reported Food Shortages

	Never	Once or Twice / Several Times	Many Times / Always
Cape Verde	69	21	10
South Africa	64	28	9
Ghana	60	32	8
Senegal	59	28	12
Namibia	57	32	11
Nigeria	55	38	7
Tanzania	55	31	13
Botswana	49	32	19
Uganda	48	43	9
Mali	47	30	23
Mozambique	44	28	28
Kenya	44	42	14
Zambia	22	58	20
Lesotho	20	36	44
Zimbabwe	18	41	41
Malawi	17	42	41

Over the past year, how often, if ever, have you or your family gone without enough food to eat?

Zimbabweans also consider that the crime rate has stabilized, though seven out of ten people still report feeling unsafe in their own homes. Of greater concern, however, is an apparent decline in the availability of medical treatment, with reported shortages rising by 9 percentage points between 1999 and 2004. And, consistent with earlier findings, Table 6 shows that the proportion of individuals reporting a household food shortage leapt upward by 17 percentage points, from 65 percent in 1999 to 82 percent in 2004. This very rapid deterioration coincided with the period of land seizures, drought, and the manipulation of food relief supplies as an instrument of political control.

Beyond experiencing food deficits, Zimbabweans also lack income. In 2004, over nine out of ten individuals (91 percent) said they and their families went short of cash at some point during the previous year. And the proportion reporting such scarcities rose 7 points over the last five years. It seems reasonable to suppose that shortfalls in household cash flow are a product of unemployment and, indeed, we find that these conditions are connected.[22] For example, people with jobs are twice as likely as unemployed people to say that they have never encountered cash shortages. It is important to note, however, that the group with enough money is only a small minority (9 percent) and that even employed people regularly go without enough income.

Table 6: Changes in Human Welfare, 1999-2004

Have sometimes gone without:	1999	2004	2004 compared to 1999
Fuel for home use*	57	50	-7
Enough clean water to drink	56	50	-6
Safety from crime in your home	71	71	0
Necessary medical treatment	71	80	+9
Enough food to eat	65	82	+17
A cash income	84	91	+7

Percentage reporting at least one instance of shortage in 2003-4.

* In 1999 the question asked about “fuel for heating your home,” in 2004 about “fuel for cooking your food.”

The recent downturn in Zimbabwe’s national economy is reflected in testimony from individual survey respondents about growing unemployment (Table 7). On one hand, the segment of the population reporting to the Afrobarometer that they do not have an income-generating job stayed steady between 1999 and 2004 (at just over 60 percent). On the other hand, a significant portion of people moved from being outside the labor market (not looking for a job) to actively seeking work (looking for a job). Moreover, as inflation took its toll on the purchasing power of household budgets, the proportion also increased of employed people who began to look for additional work, or for better jobs that pay more income.

Table 7: Changes in Employment, 1999-2004

	1999	2004	2004 compared to 1999
Unemployed (not looking)	42	37	-5
Unemployed (looking)	19	25	+6
Employed, part time (not looking)	6	4	-2
Employed, part time (looking)	7	6	-1
Employed, full time (not looking)	18	15	-3
Employed, full time (looking)	7	13	+6
Don’t know	2	0	-2

Do you have a job that pays cash income? Is it full-time or part-time? And are you presently looking for a job (even if you are presently working)?

Table 8: Responsibility for Well Being

	Oneself	Government	Neither	Don’t Know
Lesotho	63	34	2	1
Cape Verde	56	40	3	2
Senegal	52	41	7	0
Tanzania	51	45	3	1
Mali	51	47	1	1
South Africa	50	42	6	2
Botswana	48	50	2	0
Malawi	48	50	2	1
Zambia	48	51	1	0
Ghana	47	47	5	1
Mozambique	45	48	2	5
Namibia	43	55	2	0
Nigeria	43	56	1	0
Kenya	41	57	2	1
Uganda	34	65	1	0
Zimbabwe	31	68	1	0

Which of the following statements is closest to your view?

a. People should look after themselves and be responsible for their own success in life.

b. The government should bear the main responsibility for the well being of people.

Having determined that Zimbabweans consider their living standards to be low and declining, we asked them to assign accountability for this state of affairs. Who is responsible for the well being of ordinary people? Should people look after themselves? Or should government bear the main burden? As Table 8 shows, Zimbabweans express much more dependence than other Africans, with two-thirds (68 percent) regarding individual welfare as a government responsibility. Although Zimbabweans resemble Ugandans, their opinions stand out in sharp relief against the ethic of self-reliance expressed in places like Lesotho.

If the government is supposedly responsible for people’s welfare, to which problems should it give priority attention? In response to an open-ended question to which respondents could offer up to three responses, Zimbabweans opt for the development agenda outlined in Table 9. In their view, the most important problem is the management of the economy, which was mentioned in 14 percent of all responses, and by 40 percent of all respondents. This opinion is widespread throughout society, with the poor and non-poor being equally likely to demand improvements in macroeconomic management. Job creation comes in second, being mentioned by 11 percent of the time, and by 31 percent of all respondents, with demands for more and better employment again being shared among jobholders and jobseekers alike. Food security ranks a close third, being mentioned one-tenth of the time and by a quarter of all respondents. In this case, however, those who have recently experienced hunger are most likely to draw attention to the problem of food scarcity.[23]

Table 9: Most Important Problems, 2004

	Percentage of Responses (n = 3083)	Percentage of Respondents (n = 1096)
Management of the Economy	14	40
Employment	11	31
Food Security	10	27
Health	9	25
Education	8	22
Poverty reduction	7	19
Transport	5	13
Incomes	4	11
Water supply	4	10
Other (20 items, each under 4% of responses)	28	83

In your opinion, what are the most important problems facing this country that the government should address?

Note: Up to three responses were recorded.

The people’s development agenda in Zimbabwe is interesting for what it fails to identify. The problem of AIDS – mentioned only 2 percent of the time and by just 7 percent of the populace – is not ranked as a top ten problem. By contrast, however, 78 percent of Zimbabweans say they know someone who has died of the disease, up from 68 percent in 1999. And the mean respondent knows 8 people who have died of AIDS. Moreover, the proportions of the population who say they spend more than five hours per day taking care of orphans (41 percent), sick family members (50 percent), or their own illnesses (61 percent) are very high. Although other interpretations are possible, the social stigma of the pandemic may be deepening, because the proportion that avoided answering this direct question about AIDS deaths almost doubled from 7 percent in 1999 to 13 percent in 2004.

As in 1999, very few Zimbabweans mentioned land reform as priority issue for government attention: only 1 percent of responses and 4 percent of respondents. To be sure, there is a strong, if romantic, attachment to land rights and rural lifestyles among Zimbabweans: for example, two-thirds (66 percent) favor an economic strategy in which “people go back to the land and provide mainly for their own needs as a community.” By the same token, however, an even higher proportion (76 percent) insists that, “the government must abide by the law in acquiring any property, including paying the owner.”[24] Our interpretation is that people in Zimbabwe want land reform, but they prefer that it be accomplished by legal, peaceful, and economically rational means.

How well do people think the Zanu PF government is performing at various policy tasks? Their opinions for 2004 are summarized in Table 10. The government gets relatively high marks for combating AIDS (65 percent say “it is being handled “fairly” or “very well”) perhaps because of the introduction of a tax earmarked for this purpose. Note, however, that praise for the government’s AIDS policy is quite faint (50 percent say only “fairly well”) and that approval of the delivery of this and other social services is much higher among rural populations, who may be less informed and more easily satisfied than their urban counterparts. The provision of educational and water services is also praised (57 and 56 percent respectively). Once “don’t know” responses are taken into account, however, barely half of all Zimbabwean adults think the government is doing well at fighting official corruption.

Table 10: Government’s Policy Performance

	Very Badly	Fairly Badly	Fairly Well	Very Well	Don’t Know
Combating AIDS	15	14	50	15	6
Addressing educational needs	20	21	46	11	3
Delivering household water	20	20	42	14	4
Fighting corruption in government	19	19	37	13	13
Reducing crime	22	25	40	8	5
Improving basic health care	25	28	38	7	3
Managing the economy	20	28