Social Dimensions Fund, Inc. - circa 1970's Specimen Stock Certificate - Involving Zimbabwe

Specimen Stock printed by American Bank Note Company. To cushion the poor from the effects of SAPS, the Zimbabwean government introduced the Social Dimensions Fund. As a result of policy misfeasance, SAPS increased Africa’s dependency on international aid, which had certain conditions e.g. social and economic policy direction. Chabal and Daloz (1999: 119) galvanise this discourse by arguing that it cannot be shown “convincingly� that SAPs “lessened Africa’s dependence.� Through SAPS, Zimbabwe diverted to neo liberalism from its socialist social policy ideology adopted in 1980. Again, Chabal and Daloz (1999: 119-120) equally place the most blame for SAP-ineffectiveness on the “foundations of power� within African states—patrimonialism, clientelism and corruption—which caused SAPs to fail to reach their “political aims�.

The GoZ agreed the conditionalities attached to this facility and IMF advised Social Dimensions Fund (SDF) implementation for cushioning ESAP casualties. Various poverty and vulnerability studies carried out in different African countries have documented powerlessness, deprivation and insecurity feelings that accompanied the neo-liberal approach. This policy created a social cost of adjustment for example unemployment, retrenchment and SDF was to assist the so called “new poor� not the old poor. There was the food, school fees and health programme and additionally government introduced social services user fees (a contribution towards the cost). The roles of Bretton Woods institutions is to influence policy making for individual countries/recipients conformity to global standards or global village demands. Thus, globalisation has been described as an indirect way of colonisation and Hay and Watson (1999) described it as a tyrannical rule of peoples by totalitarian global economic regime. Read more at https://jpanafrican.org/docs/vol12no1/12.1-30-Mathende%20(1).pdf