Theme issue: Sustainable rural development in South Africa: Rethinking theory, policy and practice

South Africa is a middle-income country with world-class infrastructure in a handful of big cities but it also ranks high on the list of countries with disturbing socioeconomic and spatial inequalities. The higher levels of deprivation in rural areas in particular have led some to argue that the country contains a developed ‘first economy’ and a backward ‘second economy’. Decades of underinvestment in the former homelands created a landscape with very diverse population settlement patterns and densities, a reduced amount of arable land, and uneven access to services. Efforts to improve working and living conditions for rural residents have been on post-apartheid South Africa's development agenda for nearly two decades now. This issue of Development Southern Africa brings together articles that look critically at how far we have come along this road.

Two forward-looking policy documents, the New Growth Path1 and the 2030 National Development Plan,2 outline agendas to overcome the income and asset poverty, chronic unemployment and food insecurity that afflict rural people. Both state clearly that multiple interventions are needed to shift rural areas to more sustainable development paths over the next two decades. They advise that farm and non-farm rural employment should expand and that more smallholders should participate in agro-food value chains – partly to be facilitated through new land and agricultural reforms. They urge the creation of a broad suite of green economy initiatives in rural areas, ranging from biofuels to sustainable farming and water use. They plan better delivery of rural services to reinforce the achievements of the Comprehensive Rural Development Programme launched in 2009. The broad aim of these two documents is to coordinate state-funded projects in the most deprived rural areas. Local state agencies' capacity and cooperation will thus critically determine what such targeted interventions actually achieve.

In the three years after 2008, a period marked by an unprecedented global economic slowdown and food price crisis, influential global agencies have flagged strategies for overcoming rural deprivation (World Bank, 2007; IFAD, 2010; UNDP, 2011). In its 2011 Rural Poverty Report, IFAD projects that over the next two to three decades rural deprivation will persist even though rural populations will decrease dramatically. Climate change poses further livelihood risks for the rural poor: the UNDP's 2011 Human Development Report predicts that by 2050 global warming could lower the Human Development Index of most developing countries by 12 to 18 percentage points. The two reports urge multiple interventions for sustainable and equitable rural development. They strongly emphasise support for smallholder agriculture, since small farmers form the majority in many developing countries, but further suggestions for raising living standards in rural areas, such as non-farm rural employment and urbanisation, should not be ignored.

The articles in this issue offer new evidence to stimulate critical reflection on rural development concepts and policy. Rocha et al. provide a backdrop of comparable global evidence against which to examine South African rural realities. In sharp contrast to post-apartheid South African experiences, Brazil has substantially reduced income inequality and is on track to reach all its 2015 Millennium Development Goals. Alongside the contribution of stable macroeconomic growth to this achievement, redistributive social policies have enabled more rural households to enjoy good food produced mainly by family farmers rather than large export-oriented agribusinesses. Also defending the poor against the big companies is van Niekerk and Wynberg's study of the exploitation of a South African medicinal plant. In a similar vein, Andrew's review of a new book on more than five decades of agrarian reform in Tanzania underscores why rural transformation ought to be driven by the rural poor.

Some articles look at how agricultural and non-farm activities contribute to rural livelihoods and why many rural households are trapped in abject poverty. Smallholder farmers now receive greater attention in South Africa's agricultural policy statements but public investment to support them remains inadequate. Aliber and Hall combine survey data and figures from national and provincial budgets to make a case for a more accurate count of smallholder farmers. This information is critical in order to target state-funded support effectively and make public investment in agricultural development more efficient. When it comes to land reform, land may be allocated for agricultural use, but small farmers may struggle to survive without state-funded support. In an interesting case study, Hart shows that land reform can bring unused farmland back into productive use, depending on state capacity and how well land reform beneficiaries organise themselves, and that some beneficiaries can make good use of this land, though not necessarily the use the state intended.

Ecotourism is a growing source of non-farm rural jobs and can generate broad-based local economic development. Saayman et al. show that rural residents with well-paying permanent jobs in large-scale ecotourism ventures stand a chance of improving their living standards. However, the influx of tourists into small rural economies can raise the cost of living and impoverish local residents. Without community participation in ecotourism, spillovers such as better social services for the local people may not materialise. Jacobs and Makaudze show how rural households increasingly rely on a mix of livelihood resources and activities. Farm workers, mainly women with low levels of schooling, face big hurdles to bring about lasting improvements in their livelihoods.

The authors hope that this theme issue will encourage further rethinking of what sustainable rural transformation means today.

Notes

¹ www.economic.gov.za/communications/publications/151-the-new-growth-path-framework

² www.thepresidency.gov.za/pebble.asp?relid=5229