From Forward: The development of gold mines in the Orange Free State is likely to be to modern East London what Kaffir Wars were to old East London. "The Fighting Port", as it is commonly called, is the nearest harbour to these mines and is linked by good rail, road and air facilities. A wide variety of industry is already established. Development is likely to be rapid. At present the City contains over 80,000 persons, and with the addition of peri-urban suburbs has doubled its population in just over fifteen years. In the past is has claimed to be the healthiest holiday resort in the Union. This year a City-wide campaign has been organised to fight tuberculosis, as the City's statistics indicate that it has one of the highest rates of anywhere in the world. Within twelve years two government sided commissions of enquiry have sat in the City and reported on the administration and living conditions of the city's African populaton. Extremely strong adjectives have been used to describe, and drastic recommendations made to improve the socio-economic and general conditions of the African people. Under the holiday atmosphere of the City lies a very serious, complex, and potentially dangerous human problem.

This research examines how urban agriculture contributes to the sustainable livelihood of migrants’ women living in the inner city of Johannesburg. The study focuses on the Cameroonian women community living in Turffontein. It explores the significant process of migration into the Republic of South Africa and the inspiration behind the choice of urban agriculture in the inner city of Johannesburg by women. The research report assesses the impact of urban agriculture on sustainable livelihood in the life of Cameroonian women living in Turffontein. It also examines the constraints encountered by these Cameroonians women in Turffontein in the practice of urban agriculture for sustainable livelihood. The findings of this study reveal that urban agriculture is used as a strategy for sustainable livelihood to a lot of Cameroonian migrants’ women living in Turffontein. The study has also shown how through urban agriculture these migrants’ women have been able to raise substantial income to support their respective families both in South Africa and in Cameroon. The study is based on a purposeful sample of Cameroonian migrants’ women living in the inner city of Johannesburg practicing urban agriculture. It uses a mixed method of approach with a transect walk to the area where this women practice the urban agriculture. It also included an in-depth face to face interactive interview and written sources such as journals, books and research reports where combined to gather relevant data. Thematic content analysis was used to analyse the data.

Local economic development (LED) in the countries of the North is a voluntary activity of local government, in South Africa it is a mandatory activity. The purpose of LED is to build the capacity of a local area to improve its economic future and the quality of life for all. While local governments in South Africa are currently engaged with the concept of LED which is seen as a tool through which to achieve sustainable development, it is now recognized that there exists economic, social and environmental interdependence between rural and urban areas and a need for a balanced and mutually supportive approach to development of the rural and urban areas. Adopting the Rural-Urban, Economic and Enterprise Development (RUEED) concept, this study highlights the challenges and development problems experienced by the deep rural and urban communities in the implementation of LED activities within the Blue Crane Route Municipality (BCRM) due to the lack of social, economic and environmental sustainability and rural-urban linkages. This study located in the Blue Crane Route Municipality in the Eastern Cape, seeks to investigate and recommend a map or strategies linking together the urban communities with the poorer neighbourhoods in LED activities. The intensive research design that incorporates the case study method was used to achieve the objectives of this study. The empirical findings of the research indicate that the concept of rural-urban linkages is not an adopted strategy in implementing development programmes resulting in deep rural communities being excluded in LED activities initiated within the Blue Crane Route Municipality. The findings also reveal that the creation of employment opportunities and improvement in the standard of living are important dimensions of LED and rural-urban linkages. This study therefore recommends the adoption of a new perspective referred to as the rural-urban linkages for LED and the consideration of economic, social and environmental complementaries that exist between rural and urban areas in the Blue Crane Route Municipality. The study further indicates that it is critical that the LED policy and interventions reflect the existing patterns of interactions between the rural and urban areas of the Municipality.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities, School of Social Sciences, 2012 / This thesis explores the relationship between social capital/civil society and good governance/economic development both conceptually and empirically through case studies in the urban, rural, and peri-urban South Africa. As a starting point, this thesis attempts to answer the following six questions: How is social capital identifiable? Is its production exclusively confined to horizontally structured forms of associational life? Can peasant societies generate social capital? Do social capital networks accentuate divisions within communities between those who have access to authority and those without? Can political institutions play a role in producing social capital or does the enlargement of state authority take place at the expense of the associational networks which do produce social capital? And what kind of organisations in rural settings can best bridge sectional concerns and promote wider communities of trust? Can traditional existing political institutions be adapted to modern democratic requirements? I believe that in answering these questions I have gone some way in resolving some of the conceptual dilemmas identified by critics of the concept of social capital. I was then in a position to test and explore two hypotheses. Firstly, I argue that there is a relationship between social capital (a product of civil society) and good governance as well as economic and democratic development. Secondly, I argue that positive social capital will be under-produced in societies in which there is a weak market economy, that is, where members of civil society do not have independent sources of income. I demonstrate that civil society, the state, and markets have a symbiotic relationship and that they all have a role to play in the production of positive social capital. This thesis employed various data collection methods in order to navigate around the case studies chosen for the purposes of this study, viz. individual and group interviews, focus groups, direct observations, research surveys, secondary literature, and local newspapers. Evidence emanating from this thesis suggests that there is a vibrant civil society and, by implication, social capital in poorly resourced areas found in urban, peri-urban, and rural areas of South Africa, which has to some extent contributed to good governance as well as economic and democratic development. However, I conclude by arguing that the informalisation of the economy as well as high levels of unemployment in these areas certainly inhibit civil society from playing its important democratising and governance role since the production of positive social capital is constrained by this new reality.

This dissertation develops a theory about the consolidation of state legitimacy given transformations in food security. Food security has moved from a national food maximization effort to the provision of food to households and individuals, regardless of the production source. This definitional change was triggered by urbanization, industrialization of agriculture and liberalization of trade. These dynamics altered the formula for balance and control of a country’s territory; as agricultural output moved into a global context, urban centers became less reliant on its periphery for sustenance and thus governments have fewer incentives to provide governance of any quality to rural areas. Hence, the expansion of industrialized production has led to an increasing volume of international food exchanges and reliance on transnational networks for food provision. This, I argue, produced a decoupling of rural and urban areas, yielding a new form of governance in the periphery, which relies on negative legitimacy and the expansion of large-scale agriculture under public-private partnerships. This dissertation challenges conventional approaches to modern state consolidation in the sense that the monopoly of violence in the territory is no longer the core of state legitimacy. Rather, alternatives now exist that make possible the consolidation of state political power. Methodologically, this dissertation follows the critical case study approach. While it may sacrifice some external validity in terms of generalizability, it maximizes internal validity through careful process tracing. By tracing the trajectory of rural areas for state formation, agricultural policies, the concept of rural citizen and the interaction between rural and urban areas, this dissertation expresses in-depth knowledge of policy outcomes due to the change in food security. Utilizing findings from Colombia, before and after the 1990´s, this dissertation illustrates the impacts of a change in the concept of food security and its effects on the administrative capacity in rural areas. Findings indicate that large scale agricultural policies and violence concentrated rural land ownership into export productive commodities and altered the structure of rural governance. While food security initiatives and policies has been a boon to world health, this dissertation illustrates how it has also brought about changes in state consolidation.

<p> This study examines the problem of "rurbanization," which is a term that has been applied to the process by which rural areas are being changed by urban influences. This implies more than the traditional geographic concept of land-use change at the rural-urban fringe, but is concerned with bagic changes in the agricultural industry relating to appearance, land use, nengity and social structure.</p> <p> In rural Southern Ontario, there are two main phenomena occurring to effect these changes: the increage in part-time farming and in low-density residences. This study is concerned more specifically with an examination of these two phenomena. Its two main objectives are to gee how these two are interrelated and how they have affected agriculture and rural society. </p> <p> The study achieveg thege objectives through the use of a questionnaire admtnigtered to residents of Brantford township, a rural area with a thriving agricultural industry, but at the same time under considerable stress from urban pressures. Three types of residents were surveyed: full- time farmers, part-time farmers and non-farmers. The data collected was subjected to discriminant and cross-tabulation analyses in order to observe similarities and differences among the three groups . These similarities and differences allowed inferences concerning the acceptance or rejection of six postulated hypotheses. </p> <p> The following general conclusions result from the analysis: </p> <p> Part-time farmers and rural non-farmers are predominantly former urbanites who have migrated to rural areas. Both groups share similar occupations and have lived at the rural location for a similar length of time, but non-farmers tend to be older an to have been born and raised on a farm. However, there does exist a significant minority of part-time farmers who ere former full-time farmers. Both phenomena appear to be fairly permanent arrangements as the overwhelming majority of both groups wished to maintain their present status. </p> <p>Full-time farmers tend to have a larger size of holding than part-time farmers. Part-time farmers place less emphasis on livestock and tobacco as the predominant crop than do full-time farmers, and tend to place a greater emphasis upon corn and mixed grains as cash crops. The type and quality of land that is occupied and the attitude toward the preservation of agricultural land do not vary significantly by group. All three groups were strongly in favour of preservation of land for farming. The participation rates of part time and non farmers in the rural organizations of the township and in the urban organizations of nearby towns are not significantly different from those of full-time farmers. </p> <p> The study has confirmed some of the findings of other researchers and has in turn shed some new light on the "rurbanization" problem. Urban out-migration has been found to be the most important cause of the problem. Thus, the problem appears to be the result of a social phenomenon rather than a physical one, and the phenomena causing the problem appear to be persistent and permanent. It may also be noted that the choice of alternative, either part-time farming or non-farming residency, is somehow related to the age and location of birth and childhood of the urban out-migrant. Significantly, more part-time farmers were born in city and more non-farmers were born on a farm. It may be argued that is precisely opposite to the situation that might be expected. / Thesis / Bachelor of Arts (BA)

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The purpose of the study is to illustrate the challenge of providing sufficient micronutrients to the inhabitants of South Africa. Traditional foods have therefore been identified as one of the strategies that can be employed to lessen the problem in the community of Nompumelelo, Eastern Cape province and the research involves the availability of traditional foods in this area. It is common practice for most rural people in South Africa to include traditional foods in their diets and Nompumelelo is no exception. Hence, the study also explores the rural-urban linkage of the use of traditional foods by peri-urban households in the Xhosa community of Nompumelelo. It could be argued that the traditional foods produced in this community are accessible to the whole community, resulting in greater food sustainability. It is a fact that many communities are of the opinion that food is not readily available, not realising that traditional foods are locally available. / Human Ecology / M.A. (Human Ecology)

published_or_final_version / Social Work and Social Administration / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy