The rural areas are faced with the challenges of creating a liveable environment for their communities. After the fall of apartheid in 1994, hopes and expectations were raised by South Africans, even though the effects of the democratic transactions could not be considered in the short term. South Africans had high hopes because it was a black government. According to Statistics SA (2006: 4) the analysis of the last census shows that significant residential movements have taken place during the last twenty years. African rural areas have experienced a population decrease reflecting the rural migration of Africans towards African townships and informal settlements.
The end of apartheid raised new hopes especially amongst the African population. Many efforts have been made by the three spheres of government to improve service delivery and to act for the benefit of the underprivileged people. The large majority of Africans are still the poorest and the most excluded people. Social inequalities have increased during the post - apartheid era and this social cleavage seems to be even stronger and sharper than during apartheid. This new kind of polarization shows the emergence of new dynamic - class desegregations. In South Africa the historical impact of apartheid policies such as influx control, the pass laws and the homelands, were the cornerstone of the labour migration system which set the stage for high levels of temporary migration (Stats SA: 2006). The pattern of movement from villages and deep rural areas to small towns differs from migration between the rural village and metropolitan areas.
Migrants are hard - working and they provide labour for economic development. The network connections between previous migrants in a destination area and aspiring migrants in an area of origin can facilitate migration by reducing its costs to the aspiring migrant (Gelderblom and Kok 2006: 227). According to Gelderblom and Kok (2006: 12) migrant networks are sets of interpersonal ties that connect migrants, former migrants, and non – migrants in origin and destination areas through ties of kinship, friendship, and shared community origins. These are social relationships that connect to at least two areas or possibly more. People do not migrate simply for
38 better wages. This would imply that households always choose destinations with the highest wages, but they migrate to handle risk to income streams. Assuming that the migrant gets a job, he or she participates in an economy different from that of the sending home. This characteristic is central to their functions of keeping the migrant involved in the life of the former home village, helping to ease the new migrant‟s adaptation to their new home, and providing assistance to the aspiring migrant in making the move (Gelderblom and Kok 2006: 227). The South African data show that much of the rural to urban migration is temporary. Migrants stay in touch with their rural households, usually remit money or goods, and are likely to return to the rural area on retirement or retrenchment (Stats SA 2006: 3).
Migrant networks involves flows of people in two directions: Firstly, they facilitate the flow of new migrants from their area of origin to their new destination and Secondly, migrants may be visiting family and friends to renew their social connections, or to ferry goods and money backwards and forwards, or to oversee their affairs in the home community (Gelderblom and Kok 2006: 227). Successful migrants feel obliged to help their family members back home in order to migrate, because they depended on these family members when they made their first move. Advancement in technology makes it possible for network members to keep up their social connections. Therefore, a social network develops relationships of mutual trust between people based on pre-existing ties of kinship, friendship and shared community origin. Rural African migrants continued to retain economic ties with their households of origin (Gelderblom and Kok 2006: 227).
Posel (2003: 165) maintains that a large and growing proportion of rural African households that reported at least one migrant works as a household member also reported receiving remittances at least once in the years. Hence this is the reason why migrant workers continue their connection with their social networks even after having left the rural areas. The same researcher found that between 1993 and 1999, internal labour migration has increased slightly, and that rural households, with a migrant worker outside the house, were increasingly likely to receive remittances over time (Posel: 2003: 180). James D (2001: 5) maintains that rural and urban worlds are essentially interlinked and that incomes within the rural world depend upon wages earned within the urban.
39 The challenges experienced by people living in rural areas include: poor rural – urban linkages, migration remittances and unemployment, constraints on entrepreneurial activities and restrictions on women. Migration may play a key role in the socio – economic and poverty dynamics of rural communities, but demonstrating this may become difficult for two reasons. Firstly, migration is a diverse phenomenon with both permanent and temporary patterns, each with different gender dynamics, underlying motivations and potentially different outcomes. Secondly, there is a relationship between migration and poverty (Stats SA 2001: 10). A research conducted by Statistics SA showed that African women, who have been identified as migrant members of rural households, increased. There was a small, but identifiable shift in the gender composition of labour migrants in the 1990‟s. An estimated 30 % of African migrant workers in South Africa were women. By 1999, this had increase to approximately 34 % (Stats SA 2001: 10).
The majority of the challenges to rural development can be traced back to the long period of apartheid and its unfair laws. The successful development of rural areas requires institutional development, investment in infrastructure and social services, improving income and employment opportunities. Hence, the national government is committed to trying to meet the demand by establishing a new department dealing with rural development. According to Todes (1985: 29) structural problems are facing rural development in South Africa include overcrowding and limited land, migrant labour, a lack of markets and difficulties associated with marketing, a lack of access to resources, a lack of harmonization in regional development and political factors.
According to Mohanty (2009:1) the challenges facing urbanization are: overcrowding and the growth of slums, increases in urban poverty and inequality, high levels of unemployment, increased pressure on infrastructure and basic services, urban living normally entails higher living costs, food prices which rise as demand increases and supply from areas decreases, increases in the occurrence of lifestyle diseases, increases in urban environmental problems such as pollution, crime and traffic
40 congestion, the difficulty of re-establishing community networks and social safety nets, and urbanization, which can be a threat to social, cultural, economic and ecological sustainability.
The Government, in addressing the challenge of rural – urban migration, can do so through policies advocating and implementing regionally balanced development. In spite of years of powerful commitment and intensive delivery, many of South Africa‟s poor still lack government - provided infrastructural services and housing that are seen as adequate. This situation leads to a significant competition over which groups, communities or settlements should have priority for upcoming delivery projects. According to HSRC research findings this kind of competition for government infrastructure and benefits, as well as for jobs, has probably led to outbreaks of xenophobic violence (Naidoo 2008: 20).
According to Van der Berg (2006: 2) it is very important for the government of South Africa to accelerate its efforts to redress the economic imbalance that characterizes its economy. This can be done through the implementation of the economic development programmes and the redistribution of income policies. Van der Berg (2006: 1) maintains that poverty and housing solution can only manifest itself in job creation initiatives, more especially among black people. Since 1994, the government‟s policy principle has not done justice to the full complexity of spatial choices and population movements.
According to Klasen (1997: 8), there are advantages and disadvantages of living in both rural and urban areas. The main problem facing South Africa is poverty and the creation of livelihoods. This can be done either in urban or rural frameworks. Under apartheid, poverty was exacerbated by the migrant labour system that forced a large proportion of the black population to relocate to unproductive rural areas – homelands. This ensured that the socio - economic level from which to measure change was low. According to Klasen (1997: 10) the poverty rate in rural areas was 73 % more in metropolitan areas and the poor households in rural areas were much poorer than their urban counterparts. This highlights the national inequalities, as well as the socio – economic diversity within communities.
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