The government's vision is that by 2020, South Africa's rural people will have:

• dignity, security, freedom from poverty
• full and productive employment
• a more diverse agriculture
• greater integration between towns and the rural areas, especially on market days
• a more logical spatial network of towns, services, roads and transport systems
• close availability to water and sanitation and to fuel
• accessible and democratic local government structures
• fewer, healthier, safe, well nourished children, with access to well resourced schools
• a healthy and productive environment

• building rural local government
• improving services to farmers and entrepreneurs
• promoting economic development
• building social and environmental sustainability
• building rural infrastructure
• education, training and capacity building of rural people
• promoting good planning at all levels of government, based on good information about the rural areas
• fair and equitable access to social welfare

The rural sector is characterised by.

• high levels of poverty, especially among those in women headed households
• agricultural dualism, both in land use and support services
• spatial chaos and stark contrasts between the former home lands and the areas around, in terms of settlement patterns, land ownership and use, transport and other infrastructure
• historical restrictions on entrepreneurial development, and poor support
• new local government structures set up in 1995, with no history or experience of planning, democracy or service

Implementing the Rural Strategy

In the first place, the functions of the two tiers of rural local government are described. The District Councils will obtain funding in several ways, including local taxes and service charges, and also 'revenue sharing' funds from the provinces. The poorest districts will receive the highest revenue sharing funds. As far as possible, the funds will be devolved from the District Councils to the local level where services will be provided and the decision making around infrastructure development will be initiated. But it may be some time before local councils have the ability to carry out these functions in rural areas, so that the District Councils will have to provide many services itself until the Local Councils are ready. However, the process of planning itself can be used as a mechanism to initiate primary local government.

In order to ensure that the concerns of all groups are brought into the decision making process, councils should employ Community Development Facilitators who are trained in mediation, facilitation, participatory methods, project management, bookkeeping and gender issues. There are many such people working for government in different provincial departments, and they should be transferred to local government. Their particular objective must be to assist the poorest groups to get their needs considered during local negotiations around service delivery and infrastructure development.

The primary Local Council will need to come together with organisations of civil society to plan local development. The organisations include community based organisations, local business people, farmers and others, all working on a coordinating committee with local government's elected officials, and also with local government technicians. It will be the job of the committee to assess the local situation, carry out needs analysis in the community, and examine the constraints and opportunities that exist in the local area for infrastructure development and local economic development. They will then be able to lobby the District Councils and sectoral departments at provincial and national level for funding, technical assistance, and capacity building to initiate projects that meet the needs of the community.

Local economic development (LED)

In pursuing LED that will increase the employment opportunities and economic growth in the area, coordinating committees must carefully evaluate all their options. Some of the important options are market development, small and medium scale enterprise development, small-scale agriculture - especially after land reform - tourism, and labour based infrastructure development.

The promotion of markets is an important key to encouraging on-farm and off-farm production, because 'markets call forth production'. They encourage many people to consider producing food and other products, for they will have a place to sell them. We recommend that rings of periodic markets be set up, managed by local people with government blessing. Every Monday there will be a market in this place, every Tuesday in another place, and so on. Traders can follow the ring of markets, and be assured of a gathering of people each day of the week. Equally, government services can be arranged to coincide with the markets. For instance, pensions can be distributed on those days, and mobile post offices and health clinics will be at the market on the market days. Thus, government takes the town to the countryside in an efficient and economic way, and also reinforces market development, and therefore enterprise development as well. The rings of markets will also begin to reorganise the spatial imbalances produced by previous apartheid planning in the countryside. They will naturally change over time as urban-industrial development nodes and corridors are developed within the regions and as there are changes in urban-rural links and die needs of traders from those areas.

Provincial and rural local governments can increase employment by passing laws and by-laws that require tendering processes to favour labour intensive methods of construction and local manufacture of items such as furniture for schools. They can also set up projects under the Community Based Public Works Programme, especially in areas of greatest poverty, and in times of hardship such as during drought But these short term projects must always be carefully established to promote long term development goals at the same time, for instance through construction of community centres or planning of woodlots.

Ensuring environmental and social sustainability

Coordinating committees will need to monitor the use of resources within an area and also consider how they will be affected by new developments. The committees will need to consider a whole range of issues that ensure that households, entrepreneurs, and local government activities are sustainable, if development is to be long lasting, which means that it must benefit both the land and the people.

Sustainable development is development that delivers basic environmental, social and economic services without the viability of, built and social systems upon which these services depend. Decision-making by rural local government and in the coordinating committees between local government, local communities and local business will be central to securing.

• Sustainability of the environment through appropriate resource management,
• Economic sustainability through infrastructure and service development that keeps affordability firmly to the front, but argues that rural people have a greater right than others to financial assistance from government;
• Social sustainability, through ensuring that the poor benefit, and that women's incomes and concerns, legal rights for all, and children's rights are appreciated and supported.
• Administrative sustainability through ensuring that there is administrative capacity for programme implementation, and that this will be maintained or increased over time.

All of the issues around sustainability will be important when considering rural infrastructure investment. The Government of National Unity is committed to a major infrastructure investment programme, but the negotiations and assessment of sustainability will have to be carried out or initiated by rural people themselves if they are to show that there is effective, demand-driven initiative for development. This will be a requirement for state funding under the new procedures that have been set up under the Reconstruction and Development Programme.

There is also a requirement on rural people to show that the developments they want are affordable - to the nation, the local government service structures and the households. Because of the lower tax base and the higher costs of infrastructure development in rural areas, where households am more spread out, it is unlikely that the same level of services or infrastructure can be developed in most rural areas as in urban areas. Nevertheless, the government is committed to basic levels of infrastructure development, for instance in water availability, sanitation, access to schools and clinics road development and energy provision. All of these will reduce the burden of poverty in rural areas, and allow rural people to am their time more productively and so contribute to national growth.

Capacity building

Elected representatives in local government structures and people in community based organisations will need to take advantage of training and capacity building opportunities if they are to maximise their communities' opportunities for development. Effective capacity building requires the interaction of experience-by doing, access to resources, facilitation, mediation, and training. There are various training programmes available through different government departments, but access is limited compared to the large demand. Community and local government structures will need to obtain the services of non-governmental organisations and the private sector for capacity building, and should obtain funding for this from donor funds, including the National Development Agency which is being set up specifically for this purpose.

Non-governmental organisations have a continuing role to play in promoting people-centred rural development. The service NGOs in rural areas have a generally fine history of support to CBOs. Many have proven ability to provide networking, capacity building and information, and to create leverage to ensure the application of democratic principles in development activities. Particularly while the coverage of services is so poor in rural areas, every effort should be made to employ the services of service NGOs, but in ways that leave CBOs and elected councillors with the ability to set the agenda.

Good Planning and information

Officials working for Rural District Councils and Rural Local Councils will be obliged to learn the RDP business planning processes to ensure that rural dwellers benefit from the use of government funding. They will have to learn the importance of collecting good information to support their applications for funds, and to monitor and evaluate the use of the funding. Good information is the basis of good planning. It is also a basic requirement for monitoring and responding to poverty and hardship in the rural population, and for monitoring and alleviating environmental damage. Appropriate information is therefore a powerful tool and argument which rural people can use to ensure they can compete well with the urban areas for state funding.

Conclusion

The strategy emphasises two RDP processes:

• The need for rural people to set the agenda, through taking active steps to involve themselves in local decision making through, or with, local government,
• The accountability of those who draw up proposals for government spending, in service delivery and in infrastructure development, to ensure that funding is well spent through consideration of sustainability, through capacity building of local government and CBOs, and through drawing up and monitoring business plans, based on good information.

While the state is committed to infrastructure development, improvement in services and a facilitative environment for entrepreneurial and local economic development, it is up to rural people to make it work for them.