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Elderly People and Social Welfare in Zimbabwe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2008

Joe Hampson
Joe Hampson
Affiliation:
Director of Fieldwork, School of Social Work, University of Zimbabwe, P.B. 66022 Kopje, Harare, Zimbabwe.
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Abstract

The ageing of Third World populations and its implications for planning in social welfare has received little attention in the literature until now. This article explores the need radically to alter Western models of care for elderly people in an African context, arguing that in situations of mass poverty and gross economic differentiation a concentration on social welfare for urban formal sector employees is inappropriate. Zimbabwe is used as a case study. The situation of the aged in Zimbabwe is analysed from existing but scanty data, and sets of policy proposals that have relevance to the national economy and to the rural, urban and commercial farming sectors are discussed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , March 1985 , pp. 39 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

NOTES

1 Most of the figures in this paragraph come from the introduction to the Vienna International Plan of Action on Aging, United Nations, 1983.

2 Based on the 1969 census the Central Statistics Office published crude estimates of age distribution of the population of Zimbabwe until August, 1982, when the exercise was discontinued. The 1982 census details are expected to be published sometime in 1984/1985.

3 Speaking of data from ten typical Third World countries, Chenery concluded that ‘even if we define the target beneficiaries as the lowest 80% of the rural population, this group receives only about 50% of the rural income; the rest is appropriated by the upper 20%, who do not form part of the target population’. Chenery, H. et al. , Redistribution with Growth. OUP, London, 1974, p. 21.Google Scholar

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6 Ibid., paragraphs 229–230.

7 Ibid., paragraphs 252–253.

8 Present-day Zimbabwe consists of peoples who derive from a number of tribal groupings, the most prominent of which are the Shona and the Ndebele. I speak of the Shona grouping because it is the one with which I am most familiar, because it forms 77% of the population, and because it is the group about which most research and literature is available.

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