Journal of Social Development in Africa (1986), 1, 7-26 
Catching Fish Or Liberating Man: 
Social Development In Zimbabwe* 
MARTIN DE GRAAF+ 
Introduction 
There was a time in the sixties when talks and articles about development 
always started with quoting the Chinese saying about the man and the fish. I 
believe the -source is Mao Tze Tung, so what could be wrong with it? I think 
enough to make it instructive to look at the logic of the story and to analyse it as 
a clear sample of what I would call top-down planning for development So I 
propose to use this Chinese saying as a starting point, to disprove it and to 
replace it with a conceptual framework that might help us to understand better 
how to support social development that really strengthens people's ability to 
help themselves. The expression, as it was told in those years, runs like this: 
" Give a man a fish, and he will be hungry the next day. But teach a man how to 
fish and he will be able to feed himself his whole life." In the late sixties I heard 
a slight variation suggesting you should give the man a fishing rod and omit the 
teaching. This could have been indicative of a more materialistic (and possibly 
realistic) approach in development strategies. What is wrong with this 
expression? Everything. Leaving the sexist bias aside, I find the approach to 
the supposed problems of the so-called beneficiary extremely dubious and, in 
the end, non-productive. The approach is typical as we find it in top-down 
development planning. First of all, an outsider comes in, looks at the situation 
of other people and defines what their problem is. He then determines what the 
specific, technical solution to that particular problem should be. Finally he 
hands out the means to solve that problem, possibly instructing the needy 
person how to use those means and leaves again. What is left is a person, still a 
bit dazed about those foreigners handing out fishing rods and teaching him, and 
no more capable of solving his (other) problems than before. The capability of 
the person concerned to use his or her own resources, intelligence and 
influence to control his or her own life has not been increased, and possibly has 
even decreased. Any other problem the man might have had (and some might 
have been more important to him than his lack of fish) is not closer to being 
solved by himself. His needs for shelter, health, security and recognition have 
*A paper presented at a seminar on 'Social Work and Social Development', School of Social 
Work, Harare, October, 1984. 
+ Zimbabwe Director, International Voluntary Services (IVS), 120 Union Avenue, Harare, 
Zimbabwe.
Martin de Graaf 
not even been acknowledged. But even his need for food is not really solved, for 
as soon as his fishing rod or nets are damaged, he is in trouble again. His 
capability to deal with his problems in a more general sense has not been 
increased at all. He did not get more control over his environment and his 
political power has not expanded Only the presumptious 'developer' who has 
passed by with his quick definition of the situation and his standard solutions to 
what he perceived to be the problem is better off, not the man who remains 
hungry... 
I would like to contrast the approach summarised in the Chinese saying with 
another one that stresses capacity building as the crucial element in all 
development We can compare the two approaches schematically (fig. 1). 
The flow of the diagram 'About People and Development' allows us to 
distinguish the following steps (although there is not really any starting point in 
this continuous process and the various stages are mutually determined): 
Social needs comprising the variety of needs people have in the usually harsh 
and increasingly unstable environment in underdeveloped countries - 
economic, political, social, cultural, psychological and biological needs. 
Participation as the essential first, last and intermediate step in all approaches 
towards real development; the involvement of the people concerned in the 
more precise definition of their needs, the resources as they perceive and 
control them, their choice regarding their own 'development' and the change of 
their environment 
The root cause of underdevelopment needs identification, as opposed to a 
compartmentalized technical view that ignores the fact that technical solutions 
always exist within and depend upon a political and social environment, and 
vice versa. The root cause as seen here is the limited capability of people to 
control and use the resources in their environment 
A strategy that would tackle that cause by attempting to build capacity, 
starting at (and emphasising) the lowest possible level of family, community, 
village and groups of people in comparable circumstances. 'Such capacity 
building is seen as an effort to increase the self-sustaining ability of people to 
recognise, analyse and solve their own problems by more effectively controlling 
and using their own and external resources. 
A methodology needed to training that abstract strategy into something 
practical and tangible: steps that can be taken by institutions and people who 
want to contribute to the process of capacity building. 
Social action as the action of the people concerned- they themselves, not as 
the so-called beneficiaries of some development agency or some government, 
but as the subjects and masters of their own efforts controlling and utilizing the 
support that others might offer. 
This perspective is centred around two main points: the crucial role of 
participation because without real, decisive and continued involvement of the 
people concerned no development programme will ever succeed, and the stress
ABOUT FISH 
HUNGER 
OUTSIDER GIVES 
RESOURCES TO SOLVE 
ONE PROBLEM 
OUTSIDER DEFINES A 
TECHNICAL AD HOC 
SOLUTION 
But: 
— Whit about the next problem? 
— Who owns the water? 
— Who gets the fish? 
FIG. 1 
OUTSIDER DEFINES 
THE SPECIFIC 
PROBLEM 
ABOUT PEOPLE AND DEVELOPMENT 
SOCIAL NEEDS SOCIAL ACTION 
PARTICIPATION 
METHODOLOGY TO 
USE LOCAL AND 
EXTERNAL RESOURCES 
ANALYSIS OF 
ROOT CAUSE 
CAPACITY BUILDING 
STRATEGY 
I
!
s
?
: 
a' 
3' 
Development is about the development of people
10 Martin de Graaf 
on capacity building. Although technical solutions for specific problems (like 
infra-structure, health, agriculture, communication and so on) are needed, 
such solutions are not development as such although in the best cases these are 
supportive of development In the worst case, however, these technical 
solutions make development of people impossible because of the side-effects 
they have. Real development, in my perspective, is the development of people 
by the lasting increase of their capabilities to solve their problems. 
I propose to start my paper with a discussion of the context in which social 
needs in the communal areas of Zimbabwe exist; then an elaboration of 
participation; then a discussion of the root cause and the concept of capacity 
building development strategies; such strategies are followed by a contrast 
with dependency-creating development approaches; a discussion of some 
implications of the choice for capacity building as the ultimate goal in 
development; then an examination of the kinds of institutions that are the most 
suitable for supporting capacity building; finally a brief consideration of the 
ways the process of capacity and building can be controlled. 
Social Needs In Their Context 
It would be presumptuous and pointless to present a description of the needs 
of people living in the communal areas of Zimbabwe. Only they themselves 
can express these needs. Furthermore a summary of how they perceive and 
express their needs would require more space than is available here. But to 
avoid presenting an analysis in a void, I would like to mention a number of 
characteristics of the environment in which people in the rural areas find 
themselves. This might serve as a sketch of the context in which needs exist 
and evolve. Inevitably this can only be an extremely simplified summary of 
some of the main features, not taking into account the many different 
manifestations of rural life as it really exists. Accepting this simplification we 
can distinguish as increasingly important the following aspects of life in 
Zimbabwe's rural areas: 
Physical: a very fragile environment with rapid degradation of the soil, 
steadily increasing erosion, silting-up of rivers, destruction of ecological 
balances, disappearance of wild-life and impoverishment of the biological and 
genetical life in general. The physical environment in many of the communal 
areas is less and less capable of sustaining the rapidly growing population 
living there. 
Economic: the rural areas of Zimbabwe have been by and large self-sufficient 
(at least in terms of basic needs) and in fact they have even created surpluses 
that were diverted into the urban areas or into the exploitative white-dominated 
economy. This is changing now- many individuals, families and communities 
in the communal areas are increasingly dependent on constant material and
Catching Fish or Liberating Man: Social Development in Zimbabwe 11 
financial support from the urban areas and from the commercial farming sector. 
The resource base of communal areas is becoming narrower and narrower, 
without any major successful attempt to create new productive systems. Men 
in particular are being pushed out of the rural areas, moving to towns and 
remitting part of their salaries. But also at a higher level we can note how 
government and Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) have to assume 
more and more responsibilities to maintain rural society. 
Social: hitherto relatively autonomous social systems, usually centred upon 
family and clan-relations, are breaking down as the economic and cultural 
factors do not support such systems any more. Orientation towards other 
sources of support, other ideas, other dependencies undermine the traditional 
social ties and values without replacing these by an adequate, 'affordable' and 
consistent set of values, relationships and customs. Communities in rural 
areas, although isolated in many aspects, are becoming more and more 
dependent on larger entities, like the State, centralised education, health, 
delivery systems run from a far-away centre, political decision-making 
elsewhere, etc. Not only communities suffer from the disintegrating results 
from such change, but also the clan, families and individuals who form the 
constituent parts. The effect or rather symptoms are an increasingly visible 
separation between the generations, contradictions between urban and rural 
lifestyles, confusion and conflict about roles and rights of the two sexes, 
erosion of traditional social support systems which leads to baby-dumping, 
isolation of the aged, marital breakdown, increased violence, insecurity and 
competition. 
Political: Zimbabwe has known an active, centralised and strong government 
for many years imposed by the colonial powers and the white settlers. 
Independence, however, has only reinforced the tendency towards a strong and 
centralised government system, without truly creating participatory structures. 
While the new government has taken it upon itself to induce changes in many 
different aspects of life under the assumption of having a popular mandate, 
there are no adequate provisions for real control by people and their 
organisations at lower levels. Thus we see the strangely contradictory situation 
whereby bureaucracy and political control (sometimes jointly, sometimes 
separately) expand and increasingly set the parameters for the life of 
Zimbabweans, without these Zimbabweans having real control over the 
decision-making process. The vastly expanded state system has as yet failed to 
create, sustain or even just allow mobilisation on a large scale. A complex and 
top-heavy political structure imposes procedures, systems and rules for the 
sake of 'transformation of society', but by doing this it makes a truly 
participatory process difficult. 
In addition to the above it should also be noted how traditional systems of 
chieftainship and other leadership were undermined or compromised by the 
white regime and how the rapid social, political and economic changes in the
12 Martin de Graaf 
last few years have also contributed to the de facto disappearance of such 
systems. One important but rarely acknowledged aspect of this on-going 
process is the emergence of new social divisions based upon differential access 
to economic resources and to political power that are not openly reflected in 
the officially sanctioned political structures. Although class divisions are 
rapidly evolving in an as yet unclear process, the government and the official 
manifestations of Public Opinion only talk about "the Povo" as if it were an 
homogeneous mass with consistent interests. 
Summarising, we can see the growing contradiction, if not tension, between 
a subsistence economy for which the physical, social and economic base is 
rapidly disappearing, leaving people extremely vulnerable and exposed to 
economic and political realities in which they have little or no control. 
'Traditional' Africa is vanishing, if it has not already disappeared, and the only 
substitute that seems to be emerging is a situation where atomized individuals, 
without traditional control over the means of power and the means of production, 
live and work with false or unrealistically high expectations regarding rewards 
for their individual efforts. 
The Central Importance Of Participation 
Before we turn to a discussion of any strategy to assist people in their 
development, I want briefly to mention some of the reasons why any strategy 
has to start and end with meaningful involvement of the people concerned. 
Participation seems to be the crucial ingredient that explains the difference 
between the many failed progammes and the few successful ones. This 
observation is particularly true if we look at development as an ongoing 
process, not just the immediate result of some programme as long as it 
happens, but the lasting improvement of people's capability to improve their 
own lives. The many multi-million dollar schemes that were so popular in the 
'50s and '60s and early '70s have often been disasters or - in the long run — 
proportionally ineffective. Analysing those failures, we will see again and again 
the importance of people's involvement, not as the patient object of some 
programme, nor as the (captive?) audience at some politician's speech, nor 
even mainly as the beneficiaries of some project, but rather as real participants 
which can only take place if the people affected by some strategy have direct 
access to decision-making at the inception, the selection of priorities, the 
choice of means, the implementation of the programme, monitoring and 
evaluation. But why is it that participation seems so crucial? Let me mention 
some reasons: 
1. People will only commit their own resources (like labour, land, energy, 
information, social relationships) if they have the impression that the activity 
to which they are contributing a considerable extent is theirs, i.e., controlled by
Catching Fish or Liberating Man: Social Development in Zimbabwe 13 
them. Non-participatory programmes can take place as long as external 
resources are available, but will not tap the wealth or resources local people 
have. So the total of available means will increase with participation. 
2. Development programmes that are centrally planned, or planned without 
real participation of the people concerned will, inevitably, be based upon very 
fragmented information, guesses and assumptions. Only local people know the 
unique details of the physical environment, the intricacies of their own social 
relationships, the results of previous attempts towards change, the political 
balance in a community. All that essential information will only become 
available through involving people. 
3. Participation increases the control level over a programme. This seemingly 
contradictory statement can be explained by pointing out that involving people 
does not necessarily reduce the level of control of central planning authorities: 
taking people seriously, taking their opinions and expressed needs seriously 
and accepting their choices only adds to the influence and control the decisionmakers 
will have. The other option is centrally planning a programme and 
then, again and again, being confronted by inexplicable sabotage, lack of 
collaboration and the unexpected impact of measures. 
4. Participation counters the existing pattern of paternalism and helps to fight 
the new patterns of patronage that we can see in so many developing countries. 
The choices concerning resource distribution that have to be present in a 
development programme of any size obviously creates very tempting 
opportunities for the abuse of power and the rise of new dependencies. 
Participation as a process of public control over such resources will make such 
paternalism hard to sustain. Dependencies are inherently counter-productive 
to change, and likewise participation will create a more conducive climate for 
change. 
5. Participation in decision-making about resource allocation will help to 
redistribute benefits horizontally and socially. In this way it helps to fight the 
usually highly skewed patterns of change and resource distribution that we see 
in developing societies. Bureaucracies and politics being what they are, these 
appear to have an almost universal tendency to concentrate resources and 
power at some centres, and only pervading participation at all levels can help 
to prevent or fight this. 
6. Participation allows the expression of a number of social, political and 
humanitarian values that will give development the credibility and lasting 
attraction that is needed to overcome many painful experiences. In other 
words, participation can help solve the conflicts that will naturally exist in a 
situation where resources are so much scarcer than the needs. Any government 
or development agency operating in this inevitably stressful, often disappointing 
and conflict-ridden process needs to acquire and maintain a legitimacy to 
sustain public support. Only when people have the idea that they have 
considerable control over that process and the action taken by institutions (be
14 Martin de Graaf 
they governmental or private) will they remain committed to it and will they 
accept delays, problems and failures. 
7. Meaningful participation in programme implementation forces any 
programme to be flexible, relatively small-scale and tailored to the locally 
existing capacity to deal with it. If an agency really allows local participants to 
plan and decide about the various stages of the programme, that programme 
has to be open to adjustment, responsive to what people learn while they go on 
and, most important, of a size and complexity that can be handled and 
controlled by those people themselves. By being so the programme will avoid 
those costly failures thafwe can discern in so many centrally conceived 
schemes that were not appropriate when it came to implementation, but by 
then had an in-built momentum such that they were impossible to cancel or 
alter. Only that which can be integrated into an already existing social and 
economic situation will last beyond the life of the programme. Participatory 
schemes have a built-in check on this requirement 
8. When people participate they will acquire, practice and improve a number 
of social and organisational skills that have a kind of 'spill-over' effect into 
other areas beneficial to the participants. Planning, deciding and organising 
activities teaches people skills and attitudes and creates social networks which 
are extremely useful in any kind of change or problem situation in life, and not 
merely the specific project situations where these skills initially were 
developed. Most of all this applies to the organisational structures that 
participants develop among themselves and in relation to the outside world. 
These structures are social tools that will make participants' lives and world 
more 'manageable' in a very real sense, far outweighing the particular 
advantages such structures may have had for the specific projects. 
9. And this brings us to the most central aspect of development (and the aspect 
that is most often absent), that of self-sustaining development As long as a 
development programme only creates changes during the duration of the 
programme, nothing is gained except a temporary relief from some hardship 
(often at the high cost of increased dependency). The ultimate test for success 
is what happens next. Participation, if really grown and effective in all stages of 
a programme, makes that programme a local event, rooted in what people 
locally want, choose, learn and do. The more the programme reflects their 
choices, action and involvement the less it depends on outside support And so, 
the better the chances that there will be a lasting change, a self-perpetuating 
process of changes for which people need less interference from government, 
NGOs or development agencies. They might need continued material support 
in a situation of scarcity and poverty, but it will be their demand and decision 
that will channel such support, not the design, resources and choices from 
outside. 
10. Finally participation offers an easy test to policy makers on the relevance 
of the programme they want to implement Bryant and White present an amusing
Catching Fish or Liberating Man: Social Development in Zimbabwe 75 
formula that helps to'clarify the relationship between Participation (P) and the 
way people involved perceive the Benefits (B) following out of some 
development programme in relation to the Costs (C) that they will incur if they 
join that programme. But those benefits will not automatically become 
available, so there is the Probability (Pr) that these actually will be achieved. 
In formula: 
P = (B x Pr) - C. 
This relation will alert us to the people's perception of taking that seriously; 
people will actually participate in a programme if they expect the benefits will 
outweigh the costs. So a programme that does not somehow lead to real 
participation fails in a certain area: either the benefits are not convincing to the 
people, or they are doubtful about ever getting those benefits, or thexosts they 
have to pay (in whatever sense) are too high for them. 
Capacity Building 
As stated above, in my conception, development is in the end and in the final 
test, the development of people. However, this should not be understood in a 
narrow, individualistic sense: I am not talking about individual improvement, 
enrichment, education or influence. In fact such individualised changes are 
very often obstacles to sustained development as it leads to increased 
inequality, waste of social resources, conflict and competition. No, realising 
that society is the way people express themselves in a particular physical 
environment at some point in time and that the way society is structured will 
determine the success or failure of any attempt towards change. We have to 
look at social development and the means to achieve this. In my view this 
points towards the capability of people to control, utilise and increase their 
resources. Resources can be manifold: from land to labour, from human 
intelligence to capital, from information to organisation, from infra-structure 
to energy. 
Only if people have access to and control over existing resources will they 
be able to shape their lives according to their needs. This is quite obvious when 
we think of land, money, and labour. A farmer who does not control the use of 
his land will not be able to improve his livelihood. A community which does 
not control its infrastructural arrangements can be the victim of external 
factors. A village that does not control the services of government personnel 
that are supposed to serve them will be dependant and cannot adjust its own 
situation to its needs. 
Without wanting to get into any philosophical argument it seems obvious to 
me that man, in the end, lives in a socially constructed reality; he will not 
ultimately be able to control nature, the conditions of his own life or access to 
any external resources by individual interaction with others. Only through
Martin de Graaf 
sustained social organisation can we ever acquire the means to improve our 
lives, whether we think of using natural resources, expanding our individual 
talents or influencing the external social and political environment So the 
ability to develop oneself and to improve one's life is directly related to the 
lasting capacity to plan, work and learn with others. 
We should not only think in the limited terms of formal organisation; in fact 
most of what we do and think is related to the informal patterns of our 
interactions with others. We should not only think of strictly economic 
collaboration or organisation — for much of our life does not have a directly 
economic value while still being very important to us. The values, beliefs and 
views we have are part of the social structure in which we live. Consequently 
they contribute to or detract from our capability to improve our lives, which is 
why some authors prefer to speak about local institutional development, 
emphasising the social and cultural aspects of that capacity to develop. 
It is understandable that people, especially people in Third World countries, 
are subject to many extremely strong and often destructive forces that originate 
outside their lives, that can be nature (as we experienced in this third year of 
drought in Zimbabwe), international economic structures of exploitation, 
political aggression (as we can see in South Africa's efforts to destabilise the 
region) and so on. But I want to stress that the essential element in attempts to 
support people in their coping with these and other threats or problems should 
be one of assisting in building their capacity to deal with such factors and in 
increasing their strengths and skills to solve their problems with the resources 
they have or gain access to. No building of roads, clinics or schools and no 
training, mobilisation or instruction of people will result in lasting changes if it 
is not based upon and carried by people's organised and self-determined 
capability to introduce, control and change such resources. Development is 
not identical to these .resources for if it was we would only have a situation 
where assets are transferred (like in a relief operation), which will never lead to 
self-perpetuating change. Only when the people involved themselves (not the 
engineers, teachers or extensionists) will be able more effectively to make their 
choices, balance their priorities, mobilise their own resources and control 
outside resources, plan their own action and judge the impact of that action 
against their own needs, only then we will observe real changes. 
Such increase in the effectiveness of people's action stresses the importance 
of their willingness and collective skills, their control over resources and their 
ability to learn and to adjust their action to changing situations. Later I will 
examine the ways this might be supported and the consequences of such 
approach for development planning by government agencies. At this stage I 
just want to emphasise the crucial importance of what has been defined as 
'capacity building' and to stress that this should start from the lowest possible 
level, not the highest level. This concept thus directs our attention to the level 
of communities (groups of people with common social and economic interests),
Catching Fish or Liberating Man: Social Development in Zimbabwe 
DEPENDENCY CREATING VERSUS 
EMPOWERING DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMMES 
INITIATED 
BEGIN WITH 
PROGRAMME DESIGN 
PROCESS 
PRIMARY RESOURCE 
BASE 
SUPPORTING 
ORGANISATION 
SOCIAL ANALYSIS 
ORGANISED BY 
LEADERSHIP 
STAFF DEVELOPMENT 
ERROR 
GROWTH 
MANAGEMENT 
FOCUS 
EVALUATION 
and associations of people (like co-operatives). It does not deny the 
importance of central government action, but perceives this mainly in its 
contribution towards lower level demands and capabilities. This concept alerts 
us to the very serious risks of centralised development planning, which may in 
fact result in deterioration of the situation and in loss of lasting capacity for 
people to improve their lives. 
FIG. 2 
DEPENDENCY CREATING 
In capital city 
A formal plan 
Static — expert 
dominated 
Central funds and 
technicians 
Existing or built 
top-down 
To justify plan and 
meet eval. requirements 
Technical speciality 
Limited, changing 
positional 
Preservice, formal, 
classroom, didactic 
Ignored or buried 
Rapid, mechanistic 
On-time completion 
of projects 
External, intermittent, 
activities orientated 
17 
EMPOWERING 
In village 
Problem solving action 
evolving - collaborative 
Local people and 
resources 
Built from bottom-up 
For problem definition and 
programme improvement 
Interdisciplinary teams 
Strong, sustained 
individual 
continuous, process 
orientated, action learning 
Embraced 
Gradual, organic 
Sustained performance of 
institutions. 
Self, continuous, process 
orientated
18 Martin de Graaf 
Different Strategies 
In this context it is not possible to spell out in detail how one could support 
the process of capacity building in rural areas; I would need much more space 
and would need to be more specific in time, place and social categories than I 
can be here. Still, it might be useful to mention a number of basic 
characteristics for any development strategy that aims at empowering people 
to deal with their own problems. It might help to contrast such strategy with the 
more traditional and unfortunately much more common strategies that in fact 
increase the dependency of people. The last twenty years have seen many 
applications of this approach, usually announced with lots of rhetoric about 
change and development and often resulting in the strengthening of central 
organisations (be it government or international development agencies) to the 
detriment of the so-called beneficiaries. They might have received some 
specific benefit (frequently not of their choice and not matching their needs), 
but at high costs: they become increasingly dependent on systems of decisionmaking 
and resource control which in fact made them less able to deal with 
(new) problems and more subject to external control and manipulation. This 
end result has often been created by large-scale, centrally planned, costly 
programmes such as infra-structural works, massive health and education 
programmes, standardized agricultural programmes, the introduction of cooperatives 
by government, and similar'solutions' exported from the capital (or 
even international centres) into rural areas. 
Using distinctions made by Korten at a workshop in New York, we can 
contrast the so-called 'dependency creating' versus 'empowering' development 
strategies as in fig. 2. 
In my view the most essential differences between the two approaches lie in the 
following three ways: 
(a) the way plans are made: do they start with a technical definition of a narrowly 
defined problem and do they focus on the use of external resources? Or do 
plans follow a usually much vaguer and more diversified analysis of the 
situation as experienced by people themselves and build upon what people are 
already doing, know and have? 
(b) the role of errors: in the classic approach errors and failures to meet 
targets in development programmes are often ignored or denied: the involved 
officials would suffer in their careers if they became known. This is especially 
true of government services where it is not possible to acknowledge mistakes. 
Politically such mistakes are often seen as unacceptable and the illusion that 
action can be planned and executed in a top-down fashion usually does not 
encourage people to acknowledge errors. If a programme does not meet its 
objectives it would imply that either the civil servant involved fails, and so 
loses his job, or his superiors made mistakes, and if he said so he would still lose 
his job. In the other approach errors are taken as instructive experiences that
Catching Fish or Liberating Man: Social Development in Zimbabwe 19 
call for fresh analysis, experiment and adjustment to changing circumstances. 
The failure of a programme can be seen as a challenge to understand better and 
an incentive to reorganise action, so that one is more effective next time. 
(c) the place of the organisation: many development programmes are 
carried out either by existing government bodies or by specialised agencies. So 
it is either a Ministry that was never created to carry out development work and 
that indeed is not capable of dealing with the very special demands that 
capacity building, participation and reduced planning will impose, or there is a 
specially created 'development agency' which will never be rooted in the 
social, economic and political reality that should sustain and feed the 
organisational and institutional structures. In other words, a technical capacity 
is created that does not derive its strength and chances of survival from the 
people involved, but from outside resources and stimuli, while in an 
empowering approach organisations start with and build upon existing 
patterns of local collaboration and group-formulation, and slowly and 
sometimes erratically evolve with and through the efforts of the people 
involved. In a formalised sense organisation is an end-result, as it can help to 
consolidate the acquired capacity of a community or group to carry out 
complex tasks. In an informal sense organisation can be seen as the changing 
expression of ongoing interaction and the learning process of people while they 
are trying to cope with their environment This brings us to the next step. 
Organisation and Development 
Trying to make these ideas about capacity building a bit more practical it 
seems appropriate to look at the kind of organisational set-up one needs to 
support that process. If we have an idea about the general objectives, the 
leading concepts and the broad strategy, the next step, at least for people and 
institutions who want to do something about development, seems to be to 
create an organisational structure or at least judging the organisation one has at 
hand from the point of view of capacity building. The most common situation 
in development planning and implementation can be sketched as in fig. 3. 
FIO.3 
THE BLUEPRINT APPROACH TO DEVELOPMENT PLANNING 
PILOT PROJECT RESEARCHERS tested ^ — " " 
models -"" 
PLANNER 
project 
blueprints 
^*""-*^^ actual clwfe versus 
\ y Uijetod chinje 
ADMINISTRATORS 
EVALUATION RESEARCHERS actions 
— bdbre-«iter 
sunreys 
TARGET 
POPULATION
20 Martin de Graaf 
Some authority decides a development programme should be designed and 
carried out and consequently instructs researchers to come up with ideas, a 
design and model. They, after having done feasibility studies and possibly a 
'pilot project', present a model to the next set of functionaries ie,planners. It is 
the planners' job to indicate what steps, funds, expertise, material support and 
so on should be arranged to carry out the project successfully. So their 
involvement results in a set of detailed instructions, a budget, an organisational 
chart, procedures and criteria. This set is in turn handed over to administrators 
who will carry out the action: extension, training, education, giving credit, or 
some specialised task These activities in turn somehow affect the target 
population in one or more aspects—hopefully in the desired direction. Evaluators, 
another set of researchers, come in and compare the situation before and after 
the intervention by the development programme and present their information 
to the planners to enable them to correct some measures, revise the 
intervention and re-allocate funds, to produce end results that are closer to the 
desired ones. It will be clear that in such a situation the organisational set-up in 
which planners, researchers, administrators and even the target population 
operate is nqt in any deliberate and explicit way affected by what is taking 
place. The structure of a department, the organisation of the co-operative, the 
relationship between the evaluation section and financial people, all these are 
taken as given variables. Changes within the development project can possibly 
take place, but not to the extent that these would alter any of the institutional 
structures around it In fact it could well be those structures that are the biggest 
obstacle to effective change and development It may be the way a Ministry is 
set up that hinders any flow of information to the planning level or that the 
extension people are being constrained by the policies of their department in 
regard to vehicle use, reporting or proposal submission, or that in fact different 
agencies interfere with each other's programmes and make it impossible for the 
'target population' to control the programme. This observation might lead to 
emphasising the need to consider organisational structures as part of the whole 
development exercise and to try to make such structures responsive to the 
changing needs of the people involved and the equally changing demands 
that implementation of any project might impose. Korten has introduced a 
concise model which neatly describes the relationship between an organisation, 
its programme and beneficiaries (fig. 4).
Catching Fish or Liberating Man: Social Development in Zimbabwe 21 
The diagram directs our attention to the relationship between an organisation 
and the beneficiaries. To be effective, there needs to be what Korten calls a 'fit' 
between the way the organisation makes decisions on the one hand and the way 
beneficiaries express themselves. Only when that decision-making really takes 
into account what the people concerned feel, want and say will there be an 
effective response, instead of organisations that are totally isolated from how 
their target group thinks and speaks. Many of the government institutions under 
the Smith regime in Zimbabwe were striking examples of not having that kind 
of 'fit', but having a black government is in no way a guarantee for having a 
bureaucracy at national or lower levels that is aware of and responsive to what 
non-bureaucrats think and express. 
The organisation and the programme 
For an organisation to be effective it should be competent'to carry out the 
programme it has adopted. This might seem rather obvious, but we can see too 
many examples of organisations perhaps being good in one thing, but not at all 
in the many other things that they are being charged with. This lack of'fit' can 
happen especially when there is a lot of political or social pressure to meet: 
expectations of people, without taking the time to build the institutional 
competence to do so. Ministries and departments are suddenly faced with 
tasks for which they have never been prepared and for which they are not 
suitable. An organisation is not neutral and cannot be used for all the tasks that 
are necessary: just as an army is geared towards organised violence and not 
towards political pacification, so an agricultural extension agency can train 
people but not necessarily mobilise and organise them, and an educational 
institution can offer teaching but not automatically organise production. 
The programme and beneficiaries 
In the end this relation and the 'fit' we can observe here is the final test does 
the programme as carried out offer those services, incentives, goods and 
support that relate to the specific needs of the beneficiaries? Are the health 
needs of beneficiaries met by the curative services of the rural hospital? Are the 
needs for credit and better marketing arrangements met by the extension work 
of agricultural experts? Are the problems of leadership and motivation of 
emerging co-operatives adequately met by the output of procedures, 
sophisticated systems, legislation, etc., as produced by a co-operative 
department? 
The point about organisation that is important in this context is that the 
nature and level of organisation in a development programme should be treated 
as something flexible depending on the fluctuating needs of the programme 
which in turn will reflect the changing needs and capacities of the people
22 Martin de Graaf 
involved. No given organisational structure will be adequate for all kinds of 
development programmes or even for all stages within any given kind. When 
we discussed the 'empowering strategy', we emphasised the process-like 
nature of development; at one stage specific goals and operational requirements 
will be quite different from those at another stage. An emerging cooperative 
has different problems to one that was established long ago and that 
has reached a certain level of technical sophistication. A women's 
organisation that is still small and largely based upon direct, personal contact 
between the members (and the leaders) has problems and strengths different 
to those of a large scale organisation with standardised procedures, 
professional staff and intricate links to government These differences are not 
the problem but not acknowledging them or not allowing them to be 
acknowledged is the problem. This expresses itself above all in the creation of 
fixed organisational structures that do not change with the process of 
development but only change because of some external factor. 
In my view any effective development organisation is an organisation that 
maintains flexibility and that has the openness and competence to respond to 
the changing demands and skills of the people it is working with. It must also be 
able to respond to the ever changing constraints and opportunities of the 
material and social environment If lasting development really is the development 
of people, then that process is most of all expressed in the growing 
competence of the organisational means that people have. This applies both to 
the organisations as run and used by those people themselves and the agencies 
that try to serve those organisations, be they government or NGO. 
Methodology and Development 
The scope of this presentation does not allow me to go into detail on the next 
set of issues: how to design and carry out development pr6grammes that 
contribute to capacity building? This is a question of methodology and it can 
only be answered by practice and the learning that will result Still, it is 
somewhat frustrating.to avoid any reference to practical steps and I would like 
to present a number of general guidelines or comments that could provide at 
least a minimal idea of the kind of practical approaches that I have in mind. Of 
course this is not anything like a clear-cut, fool-proof or tested methodology; it 
is only some suggestions that might provide useful ideas. In any real-life 
attempt to implement a development programme such suggestions need to be 
elaborated, tested, expanded and tailored to the task at hand. But here I can 
only give this general list 
Follow a process-approach (as opposed to a blueprint). 
Define action as incremental. 
Keep organisational structures flexible and simple.
Catching Fish or Liberating Man: Social Development in Zimbabwe 23 
Beneficiaries should make a resource commitment 
Priority should be given to work with existing, indigenous organisations. 
Programmes should start with simple activities that give quick results. 
Conflicts in the environment should be acknowledged and dealt with. 
Results should be demonstrated. 
There should be a two-way information system between implementors and 
beneficiaries established. 
Organisational incentives should directly relate to programme goals. 
An inspiring' learning climate' should be established by learning from success 
and error. 
Building organisational capacity should be emphasised. 
There should be work at different levels. 
Use evaluation for learning while proceeding, not afterwards. 
Relate monitoring to programme impact, not merely to activities. 
Trust good leaders. 
Appreciate and utilise people's existing skills. 
Distinguish between different stages in organisational development 
Organisations should not be formalised unless necessary. 
Accept temporary organisational arrangements. 
Who will do it? 
Although it has been stated strongly that people can only help themselves, 
this does not solve the problem that people need to be assisted in getting better 
at helping themselves. The capacity collectively to control and utilise 
resources does not exist automatically nor will it improve automatically. This 
will be true particularly in the kind of situation that was described earlier under 
social needs, that of an increasingly unstable', harsh environment where 
external factors continue to disturb the fragile social and material balance that 
people in communal areas had established. To overcome these adverse factors 
people need assistance in improving existing capacity and to develop new 
kinds of capacity in a changing environment I am fully aware of the inevitable 
contradiction of outside help that claims to strengthen people but might create 
new dependencies. But I am also aware of the destructive impact of 
modernisation, the intrusion of international capitalism and the breakdown of 
local resources. So suggesting that people should solve their problems entirely 
on their own sounds good but ignores the fact that people are not' on their own.'; 
they are under attack and need all the help that can be generated as long as it 
will improve their capability to respond to that attack. 
Who should arrange for such support and who should, in the end, plan and 
implement development programmes of the kind that have been sketched here? 
This is a sensitive issue in Zimbabwe, where we not only have a highly
24 Martin de Graaf 
developed private sector controlling a large part of the economy (and more 
than that), but also a strong government and an ambitious ruling party. 
Without going into the debate about who should be doing what, I only want to 
present an argument for more involvement and more latitude for another 
sector the non-Government Organisations (NGOs). By NGOs I refer here to 
the non-commercial, locally-based participatory organisations that somehow 
serve as a medium for groups of people publicly to present their interests and 
organise the efforts of their members to improve and shape their lives. I am 
thinking of organisations such as the Zimbabwe Women's Bureau, ORAP, 
OCCZIM, Zimbabwe Project, but also of many church-affiliated organisations 
and groups in the rural areas: co-operatives, women's clubs, youth groups, 
farmers' clubs, work-parties, even family and clan structures aimed at mutual 
support Although it is hardly possible to offer any generalisations, I would like 
to mention a few advantages that such NGOs can have when it comes to 
development I think that the seven features of NGOs listed below can 
combine to prove their effectiveness in participatory development strategies, 
especially so in the African context Some of those features directly relate to 
what has been said before about capacity building. 
(1) NGOs are often very close to the so-called grass-roots level and maintain 
the best contact with so-called beneficiaries. This makes them responsive to 
the needs and views of beneficiaries, usually much more so than any complex 
government system. 
2) Personnel and leadership in NGOs often have a high level of dedication and 
commitment They have to have that as their position does not offer many 
other incentives or remunerations (unlike the financial incentives in the private 
sector, the career perspectives in government and the political status and 
power in the ruling party). As decision making and control within NGOs often 
is a rather public process, members can indeed screen their leaders on their 
dedication and remove dishonest or incompetent leaders somewhat more 
easily. 
3) NGOs have a consistent record, especially in Africa, of operating at a much 
lower cost-level and being much more alert to respond to new or changing 
needs and circumstances. It is quite clear for example that in the many disaster 
situations and refugee situations in Africa NGOs have responded quickly and 
more adequately. 
4) NGOs have an excellent track-record of being able to generate very high 
contributions from their members. Li other words, NGOs somehow seem to 
invite or convince members to commit their resources to the joint activity, 
much more so than government action which usually depends on central and 
expensive resources or on forcing people to contribute. Without force NGOs 
make people contribute their land, labour, money, time and emotions. 
5) NGOs are, almost by definition, smaller and much more flexible. They do 
not have the burden of large-scale bureaucracy, political strife, needs for
Catching Fish or Liberating Man: Social Development in Zimbabwe 25 
standardisation as government structures have. This makes NGOs a more 
appropriate medium for the process-like approach to development that was 
advocated here and for the learning process that need to take place. Their small 
size, proximity to the people, dedicated staff and flexibility often release much 
more creativity within NGOs than is the case within government structures. 
The bottom-up flow of information and decision making that characterizes 
NGOs much more than most government structures, makes them more 
appropriate for experiments, trying out new ideas, adjusting to the specifics of 
smaller groups of people, coping with unique environments and building on 
what a particular set of people can and want to do. 
6) NGOs seem to possess that special quality that appears to be essential for 
creating and carrying out self-sustaining development programmes, downward 
accountability. This means that the way plans are prepared, decided and 
carried out are really and directly affected by what members or beneficiaries 
feel and want Personnel in NGOs have to take into account the needs and 
satisfaction of members to maintain and carry out their jobs. However, in 
governmental bodies personnel are usually primarily or even only accountable 
to their superiors. In such a situation nobody can blame public servants who 
respond to the criteria their superiors present instead of organising their 
activities around beneficiaries' wishes. The result of such upward accountability 
can result in officials being more concerned with timely reporting, 
following procedures, applying rules and administrative procedures than with 
effectively serving the target group. It is not the target group that will pay their 
salary if their superiors dismiss them. In NGOs this situation might be reserved, 
especially in truly decentralised organisations. 
7) NGOs have less of a tendency to expand and maintain themselves at all 
costs, while governments have an in-built mechanism indefinitely to 
perpetuate themselves and to grow, even if there is no external reason to do so. 
The reasons are of a political as well as an organisational nature but do not 
apply to the smaller NGOs that usually have more circumscribed functions, 
more of a tenuous financial base and, an almost in-built tendency to disappear 
(which might be a problem at another level). But the point here is that a 
development approach that aims at handing over responsibility to 
beneficiaries, without creating long-term dependencies on outside institutions, 
might have a better chance with NGOs. 
Conclusions 
In this brief presentation I introduced more problems and questions than 
answers or solutions. And although it is unsatisfactory this might underline my 
suggestion that only in real life situations can the people concerned find their 
answers — instead of merely applying any blueprint for development But more
26 Martin de Graaf 
research and exchange is still needed in Zimbabwe on practical approaches to 
participatory development Now that people in this country have finally gained 
the opportunity to enter into open debate about the way society at the various 
levels should be structured, time has come to experiment, learn, evaluate and 
try again. The role of government in this process is crucial. The government of 
Zimbabwe is in a position to set the tone for the development debate in the 
country, to create the conditions for open experimentation and to offer the 
minimum support to people trying to build their capacity to deal with 
problems. It remains to be seen how able and willing the government bodies at 
the various levels are in supporting that process. There might be a temptation 
to restrict government action to introduction of technical solutions or to 
perceive the demands and behaviour of NGOs and members of communities 
as threatening to the political and administrative prerogatives of government 
This perception has come up in too many African countries. Let us hope 
government has the maturity and self-control to understand and accept that 
development never happens from the top, or from the centre. 
If development is indeed the development of people the focus of government 
action must be on building capacity at lower levels. And this might imply that 
people are not only being asked what their problems are, but also what 
solutions they have in mind. A hungry man might still choose to give higher 
priority to other problems. And the fact that he is hungry does not mean he is 
not capable of thinking and deciding about his life and possible ways to 
improve that So he might choose not to receive nets or rods for fishing, he 
might prefer to be assisted in running his own affairs more adequately through 
acquiring general skills, improving his collaboration with his equals or through 
getting access and control over external resources. The government of 
Zimbabwe has to find an answer to the apparently contradictory situation that 
the truly effective government is the one that enables people at lower levels to 
be successful in controlling their lives and their development