21
traditional reasons - land shortage, food shortage, inability to pay school fees. There were also marked
differences in their attributions of the ways out of poverty, with the Controls giving reasons much more
consonant with greater self-efficacy than the Clients. This may be a very important difference, leading
both to poorer performance in life, as well as reflecting one of the more common effects of OVT, a
diminished belief in one’s self-efficacy.
Overall, there were a number of differences in social and economic factors between the survivors and
their neighbours:
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greater illiteracy;
higher unemployment;
spend more money on health care;
less income in the past week;
less earnings in the past year;
lower household expenditure;
more dependency upon credit[greater potential indebtedness];
poorer housing[both structurally and state of repair];
tendency to travel further for fuel wood;
grow less maize, cotton and tobacco;
less food security[months of food available];
more frequent recourse to drought relief;
less likely to have fruit trees or wood lots;
less use of natural resources;
less access to information;
more likely to use charity or social welfare.
Additionally, the survivors showed many signs of having less self-esteem and greater apathy than their
neighbours:
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more likely to see war as a reason for poverty;
less optimistic that the situation can be changed;
more dependent on outside help[believe they need money help as opposed
to empowerment help].
The first group of differences represented real and substantial differences in the social and economic
well-being of the two groups. The survivors [Clients] were markedly less well-off than their neighbours
in many areas, and it seems fair to conclude that survivors have greater social adversity than other
groups in the same community. This is probably not surprising, and would be found for other disabled
populations. However, it does mean that survivors are more vulnerable to ongoing stresses, which will
in turn exacerbate their medical and psychological problems. It is noteworthy that this is exactly the
interpretation that was given by the survivors themselves, and it was indeed their preoccupation with
the practical problems of their lives that originally alerted the Amani Trust to the significance of social
adversity. As several commentators have observed, the problem for survivors of OVT is not posttraumatic stress but ongoing stress. 22
The second group of findings speaks to the psychological consequences of OVT and the social
adversity. These survivors had low self-efficacy, and this seems due in part to the original violence
and in part to the failure to overcome the social adversity. It may be rather facetiously commented
22
See Lopez, J., & Marcelino, E. (1995), Torture Survivors and Caregivers: Proceedings of the International Workshop on Therapy
and Research Issues, PHILIPPINES: CENTER FOR INTEGRATIVE & DEVELOPMENT STUDIES; Straker, G. (1987), The
continuous traumatic stress syndrome - the single therapeutic interview, J.SOC.DEV. IN AFRICA, 8, 48-78.
AMANI TRUST: Psycho-Social assistance to Survivors of the Liberation War.
A report on Mashonaland Central Province, Zimbabwe.
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