Towards A National Social Protection Policy: Knowledge and Lessons from a Comparative Analysis of the Design and Implementation of Public Assistance and Harmonised Social Cash Transfer Programmes In Zimbabwe

Social protection is central to human development. To this end, all governments strive to provide their citizens with one form of social protection or the other. Zimbabwe is therefore no exception. The traditional form of social protection in Zimbabwe is the Public Assistance programme. The programme is guided by the statutory provisions of the Social Welfare Assistance Act chapter 17:06. The programme supports the elderly, persons with disabilities as well as other needy families after a thorough means testing. Due to the economic challenges that have been characteristic of Zimbabwean society for the past decade, the drive towards the delivery of social protection programmes had waned. The advent of the inclusive government in 2009 saw the introduction of the Harmonised Social Cash Transfer programme which is meant to augment the existing programmes. This paper notes that the Public Assistance programme lacks community participation, accessibility, as well as a clearcut monitoring framework. The Harmonised Social Cash Transfer programme derives its strengths from being holistic, rights rather than need driven and its ability to extend social protection provisioning beyond the Department of Social Services to include the private sector as well as nongovernmental organisations. Caution should be taken not to heavily rely on donor agencies as this has the effect of compromising the sustainability of programmes.