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$10 for all:
Meanwhile, another Namibian news story has emerged, and we’re pretty certain you didn’t know about this one, either. Namibia is currently undertaking a socialist experiment in income redistribution, making sure that in at least one village, the poorest of the poor get at least a few dollars every month to ease their daily lives.
A year ago, the Otjivero settlement, 75 miles outside the capital of Windhoek, was little more than an agglomeration of corrugated iron shacks*. Hardly anyone lived there before 1992. The community grew as more and more people, evicted from the nearby white-owned farms, settled in the village.
Located near the two-lane Trans-Kalahari highway, Otjivero was a dead-end street. There was no industry, no work, high crime and disastrous levels of alcoholism. The term “dirt poor” could have been invented here. In a sense, Otjivero represented everything that was wrong with Namibia.
That was until a collation of non-governmental organizations started a project to distribute small cash grants to villagers in January 2008. Everyone under 60 years of age receives US$10 a month, regardless of his or her position or income. (Those over 60 are eligible for government social security, worth about US$40 a month. But given the national life-expectancy of 42, very few poor people live that long.)
This universal $10 grant is the only one of its kind in the world – at this point, a privately funded experiment to determine its impact on village life. Reverend Claudia Haarman, project director from the Namibian Lutheran churches, explains:
“Although cash grants have become an accepted way to alleviate poverty, (in other countries) they are always either means-tested or conditional. Often, this excludes the really poor. It also means very high administrative costs to test everyone and administer the grants. We are convinced that you don’t need pre-requisites to change behavior.”
Residents had to register with the Basic Income Grant (BIG) coalition to qualify for the grant. That was all. Disbursements are made automatically through a savings account with the post office. The coalition uses fingerprint verification to eliminate fraud, and to include illiterate residents the same as everyone else.
“Of course people are happy; they think manna is falling from heaven, “ Otjivero community leader Steven Aigowab told a local reporter. “But that does not mean they will squander their money.”
An interim evaluation by the BIG coalition confirmed this: Child malnutrition is down from 42% to 17%. Employment rose from 36% to 48%, and payments of school fees have doubled. The income at the local health clinic increased five-fold as villagers could afford the transport expenses and requisite co-pay, and consequently increased their use of clinic services. Village crime reduced by 60%. There is no evidence that alcoholism reduced, but contrary to many fears (my own included) it has also not gotten any worse.
Amazing!
Data from a second evaluation will be released officially this month, but according to the coalition, the positive trends are continuing.
Skepticism remains, however -- mostly among government leaders who say that without an additional tax, a national grant is unaffordable. (And this is an election year, after all – so who wants to raise taxes?) And even if a tax were imposed, you would have the peculiar notion of that the rich would also be eligible – and why should they get benefit?, people argue. (Of course, when it comes to Social Security and other old-age pensions, the system is similar…) Finally, some fear it will create a “give-me, give-me” dependency on the state and reward people who (according to popular interpretation) just don’t want to work. Yet at US$10 a month, the opposite has been proven: people are starting small businesses or traveling into town to look for work – and thus, employment has actually increased! By contrast, adding pre-requisites also adds administrative expenses – potentially costing more than the grants themselves.
“There is a school of thinking that you shouldn’t dish out money to people. That is is better spent on a project or something,” Reverend Haarmann said. “But show me one project that improves the living standards across the board for 930 people at a cost of about US$11,000 a month.”
The genius of BIG is that there are almost no staffing costs, no complex infrastructure, no bureaucratic delays. Significantly, too, the actual amount of money is minimal – just enough to keep people a little healthier, better-fed, in school, and able to find jobs or create their own. Thus, BIG provides an incentive to build from this money to earn more -- and to some degree that is what is happening.
Here and there, however, government support is building. “Empirical evidence indicates that as long as the poor cannot meet their basic needs, we cannot empower them, “the head of the National Planning Commission, Dr. Peter Katjavivi, told an international conference in Germany. “In this respect, BIG programs could be in the front of economic development.”
It’s not the stuff of G-20 economic summits, at least not yet – but let’s hope the time will come.
Now for the sun-worshippers.
This next story comes from the fact that I love hokey holidays – Jewish or otherwise. So you can imagine how intrigued I was to learn that the sunrise on April 8th would give Jews the opportunity to bless the sun’s creation via a special ceremony that occurs only once every 28 years. This is because, according to the Talmud (Berachot 59b), once every 28 years the sun returns to the exact same place in relation to the earth that it allegedly had on the very first Wednesday morning when God created the world. And, while most modern Jews no longer practice this ancient ritual, Orthodox Jews (and a few other hokey-types) take on the aura of sun-worshippers by rising before dawn and holding special outdoor sun-ceremonies along the beachfront or in beautiful natural settings. This year, some people also turned the event into an opportunity to advocate for solar energy.
Our celebration in Namibia was probably smaller and simpler than most, but with the arrival of two Lubavitch students for the Passover holidays, we awoke well before dawn, gathered outside to face east, and first learned all the rules: For example, “If it is cloudy but the outline of the sun can still be seen through the clouds, we can go ahead with a full blessing. But if the cloud cover is so thick that the sun cannot be seen through the clouds, then we should wait up to mid-day for the clouds to disperse before proceeding. And if at that time, the thick clouds still persist, then the rabbis would grant us the permission to nevertheless say the blessing, but without mentioning God’s name.” (Was that meant to punish God for bad weather, I wonder?)Fortunately, with the passage of the rainy season, Namibia probably won’t see another serious cloud until October at the earliest. So we could go ahead with the full blessing and get on with the day’s work (and the evening’s Passover meal). We did add a final prayer at the end, however – one that I really appreciated: that we would all be around the next time that Birchat HaChamah (The Blessing for the Sun) occurs --- in 28 more years!
As for Passover itself, it went smoothly: we imported Matzoh from the USA and South Africa, and had 14 guests for the Seder-meal from 6 language groups and a wide variety of political perspectives -- including, but not limited to that of Andimba Toivo ya Toivo, Namibia’s most famous liberation-leader who was once imprisoned with Nelson Mandela in Robbin Island. As has become our custom, Andimba fittingly acted the role of Moses when we played a drama of our historic escape from slavery to freedom. The photos you see are of Andimba with Sofiana (one of the students who lives with us) and myself; also of me ransoming the afikomen (traditional dessert) with Andimba’s daughters for a decorative key-chain and chocolate.
One last holiday note that would surely make Barack Obama jealous: Today (Easter morning), Bernd and took our three dogs for an early morning walk in Swakopmund along the coast, only to be met by a small entourage heading the other way. There, in full view, was Namibia’s President Hifikepunya Pohamba, enjoying the beachfront alongside his granddaughter. Such public exposure couldn’t happen in many countries, I thought. It’s good to live in peace.
(We didn’t have the camera with us to photograph the President, but here are our three dogs.)__
*Drawn in part from IPS news, Servass van der Bosch reporting.
