Den første formelle undersøgelse af hvordan indbyggerne i Swaziland opfatter deres levestandard er dårligt nyt for regeringen. Mange går sultne i seng og der er en udbredt opfattelse af at regeringen ikke gør noget for de arbejdsløse og de fattige.
MBABANE, 3 January 2014 (IRIN): A large majority of people in Swaziland go to bed hungry and blame their government for failing to address their food needs, according to findings from the first formal survey to determine how Swazis view their standard of living.
The results from Afrobarometer, an independent research project that measures public attitudes on social, economic and political issues in 35 African countries, reveal a chasm between the daily struggles faced by most Swazis and the ability of government to address persistently high unemployment, chronic food insecurity and poor service delivery.
The government, which received mostly poor or failing grades for service delivery and corruption, has responded frostily to the survey findings released in December 2013.
Respondents gave poor marks all around to the government’s economic performance, with 58 percent rating management of the economy as “very bad”. Two-thirds said government efforts to improve the lives of the poor and create jobs were “very poor”, and 77 percent felt that the authorities had done nothing to narrow the gap between rich and poor.
Participants also expressed disapproval of the job performances of their elected officials, the police and the anti-corruption board, as well as of their Prime Minister, who was appointed by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.
Government spokesman Percy Simelane, who is employed by the prime minister’s office, declined to comment on the survey findings, saying, “We don’t know the methodology.”
However, the research methodology was published along with the survey findings, explaining that 1,200 adult Swazis had participated and that respondents were equally divided between men and women, with those residing in rural areas outnumbering those living in urban or peri-urban areas by three to one, in keeping with the country’s largely rural demographics. The country’s four regions were about equally represented.
One of the key questions was: “In the past year, how often have you or your family gone without enough food to eat?” Nineteen percent of respondents answered “always” and 46 percent answered “several times”.
Local NGO workers who deal with food security issues commented that the survey findings confirmed their own assessments based on anecdotal evidence. “The polling doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know from conditions on the ground, but it does provide a statistical foundation for our observations,” said a food distribution manager who works for an international aid organization and asked not to be named.
“We get government officials who say the poverty and hunger situation is exaggerated by NGOs. They deny a problem so they don’t have to spend money on it and accuse NGOs of saying things are bad to get more donor funding,” the manager said.
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