Sustainable Development Of South Africa’sRural Areas

Abstract

The context for the sustainable development of South Africa’s deep rural areas (previously referred to as homelands), primarily inhabited by traditional communities (with approximately 12–15 million people), is complex, often contradictory, and uncoordinated. At the constitutional level, regional and rural development rests within the functional policy, statutory and implementation competencies of the national and provincial spheres of government. Since 5 December 2000 the primary obligation for effecting economic and other forms of development is vested in local authorities. Policy documentation and implementation strategies at national and provincial level often lack adequate interdepartmental and intergovernmental coordination. The existing regulatory frameworks are to a large extent a mixture of pre-1994 territorially based (and diverse) statutory measures and post-1994 democratic legislation; this results in divergent frameworks being applied to different areas within a particular province. Development and planning policies such as the Local Economic Development (LEDs) initiatives, Spatial Development Initiatives (SDIs), and more recently, Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) lack synchronization and are poorly linked to other rural development policies and planning strategies. In addition to providing an overview of the existing policy framework on sustainable rural development in South Africa, this paper concludes by proposing a way forward on how to address the current system’s shortcomings. A cohesive, coordinated, and integrated rural development framework (linking policy, planning, regulatory and implementation contexts) is envisaged as a more effective alternative.