Effective Planning for Rural Development in A Democratic South Africa: The Prospects of Rural Cooperatives

Abstract

This paper explores the potency of rural cooperatives for the effective planning and implementation of rural strategies to address poverty. Rural cooperatives function as a participatory approach that provides the potential to equip and empower people in rural areas with various skills. Hence, rural cooperatives represent the means and strategies to unshackle rural people from the vicious circle of poverty. The contestation about a deadlock of rural development has become pertinent in the recent and ongoing political transformation in South Africa. This paper is grounded on the social capital theory and its ideals. As such, it depends on a literature review for its premise, argument, crux and purpose, as well as drawing up results and conclusions. The paper gathers information in respect of various scholars’ notions on rural cooperatives and rural development from related articles, journals and books. The paper reveals that where the South African government is confronted and characterised by some form of upheaval and service delivery challenges, so rural cooperatives are fit to capacitate citizens to avoid depending on the government for scarce resources. The paper further reveals that rural cooperatives are deemed to ameliorate the long-standing patterns of developmental backlogs in almost all South African municipalities. The conclusion that can be made from this paper is that the authentic promotion of rural development in the formulation of a well-informed legislative framework, that is clear and unambiguous, can deal effectively with the challenges of rural cooperatives.