The National Development Plan (NDP) boldly asserts that it seeks to contribute
towards achieving the objectives of the Reconstruction and Development Programme
(RDP). Invoking connections between the NDP 2030 and the RDP takes place amid
ongoing debates about continuities and discontinuities in rural development policies
nearly two decades since the end of apartheid in 1994 (Hebinck, Fay and Kondlo
2011; Jara and Hall 2009; Sender 2012). In the pre-1994 era, as has been widely
acknowledged, rural South Africa was deliberately starved of adequate investment
– especially in the former bantustans. Consequently, rural areas were entrapped
in extreme underdevelopment and impoverishment. In the post-apartheid era,
the volume and impact of investment for the eradication of rural deprivation and
marginalisation thus became a focal point, irrespective of whether such investments
would originate from government or non-state sources. However, commentary
was not restricted to how much role-players were investing in rural areas. The type
and form of such investment, ranging from land reform and smallholder farming,
to education and skills development, to housing and social infrastructure, and to
participatory forms of local governance, among other routes out of rural poverty, did
not escape critical scrutiny