This chapter discusses two key interrelated themes underpinning South Africa's renewed attempt to develop and implement a Comprehensive Rural Development Programme (CRDP). First, a brief outline of the CRDP programme is presented, inclusive of its three subprogrammes agrarian reform, land reform and rural development, as well as a discussion of its institutional framework. Second, an evaluation of the CDRP is offered against the backdrop of international experiences with rural development (notably the changing paradigms of rural development from the 1950s to the present and the lessons thereof) and South Africa's own experiences with rural development. Finally the customary challenges facing South Africa's land question as one of the key pillars of the CRDP programme are examined. These three levels of discussion are used to question some of the underlying assumptions the CRDP makes about rural development.

The cardinal argument made here is that notwithstanding the institutional, legislative and fiscal limitations that will encumber the CRDP, one of the primary challenges is to rehabilitate failed land reform projects and to institute reforms that will generate viable sustainable livelihood outcomes to augment the broad developmental mandate of the programme. It is proposed that the CRDP potentially heralds a beacon of growth for rural South Africa despite the fragility of the socio-economic and institutional milieu in which it is embedded.

THE COMPREHENSIVE RURAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME

The CRDP framework document sees rural development as a process ‘…enabling rural people to take control of their destiny, thereby dealing effectively with rural poverty through the optimal use and management of natural resources’ (DRDLR 2009: 4).

The envisaged outcome of the process is the creation of ‘vibrant, equitable and sustainable rural communities’ (DRDLR 2009: 3). Four key outcomes are proposed: sustainable land reform, food security, rural development and job creation linked to skills training and development. A range of complex and often overlapping distinctions are made with regard to the distinction between a ‘vibrant’ and ‘sustainable’ community (DRDLR 2009: 10) in terms of expected outcomes envisaged in rural communities. Each of six such distinctions demarcates what constitutes ‘vibrance’ and ‘sustainability’ in the targeted communities. For instance, one of the key featuresof a vibrant community is ‘a high work ethic and industrious character’. Achieving sustainability in this regard will entail promoting ‘a savings and investment culture’ (ibid).