DVA3706
RURAL DEVELOPMENT
ESSAY QUESTION EXAMPLES WITH E-RESERVE
REFERENCES FOR EXAM PREPARATION
,TOPIC: Rural-urban migration
INTRODUCTION
Migration in South Africa originated from its colonial regime, when black males were
forced to work by the colonists in urban areas for themselves and their families
(blacks) to survive (Ndlovu 2017:30). Today, rural-urban migration is an individual
choice that is fuelled by a variety of factors that will be discussed in this essay. This
essay will firstly discuss how migration came about in South Africa and Africa as a
whole. We will also discuss contemporary migration and its accompanying socio-
economic effects on rural development as we relate it to current affairs.
WHAT IS MIGRATION?
As Ndlovu (2017:2017:29) defines it, migration is “the movement of people from rural
spaces to urban spaces within the borders of a single country”. Lipton (1980:1)
defines migration as “the departure of individuals or households, for more than a
week or so, from the small, primarily agricultural community in which they live”.
Furthermore, according to The Human Research Sciences Council (HRSC) as cited
by Ndlovu (2017:29) migration is defined as “the crossing of a spatial boundary by
one or more persons involved in a change of residence”. From the above definitions,
it can be concluded that migration is not merely moving from one place to another
but a crossing of a spatial boundary. We will now define migration as the movement
from one area to another be it nationally or internationally, in search of a better life,
economic freedom, cultural or personal reasons.
THE HISTORY OF RURAL-URBAN MIGRATION IN SOUTH AFRICA
The current socio-economic crisis in Africa can be rooted back to colonialism.
Colonialism on rural-urban migration has an enormous effect on how Africa’s
economy and sociocultural patterns turned out (Ndlovu 2017:30). In this section, we
will discuss how migration came about in Africa, especially South Africa in colonial
times.
Colonialism has left so much trauma in many of its victims (slaves) and its impacts
are still visible today I the context of Africa. According to Khan and Moseki (2020:8)
migration in South Africa began as labour migration, as young men were forced to
work in mines to earn a living and to support their families. Ndlovu (2017:30)
, supports this by mentioning that African locals were forced to pay tax on their own
land. They did so by paying the oppressors with their livestock. Eventually, the whites
did not accept the payment in the form of livestock anymore and forced men to
become labour migrants in the mines and cities that were white-owned. African
women were left home to become housewives and to look after children while the
men went out for labour purposes (Khan and Moseki 2020:10).
The apartheid government limited black people in their cities and forced them to stay
in single-sex compounds. The apartheid government, as Ndlovu (2017:31) puts it,
viewed black Africans as rural, cheap, and vulnerable and thus forcing them to be
migrants while underpaying them, to push their own capitalist intentions.
Today, we have an imposed culture from colonial roots that cause fathers to leave
their families to seek for job opportunities and for most black women to become
domestic workers (Khan and Moseki 2020:10) because that’s what occurred in
colonial South Africa, and it somewhat became a cultural norm.
However, Ndlovu (2017:31) and Khan and Moseki (2020) argue that the history of
migration in South Africa is deliberately made to believe that it was only Africans who
migrated throughout the country, when that is not the truth because other races,
even white migrated from one place to another for various reasons such as financial
and/or disease outbreaks.
Migration is not a racial phenomenon. Everyone from all over the world can migrate
for various reasons. Now that we have discussed the history of colonialism in South
Africa, it is fair enough to discover the socio-economic effects of contemporary
migration on rural development, keeping in mind how history shaped migration in
South Africa.
CONTEMPORARY RURAL-URBAN MIGRATION
Currently, migration can be caused by various reasons such as educational,
environmental, political, and social (Ndlovu 2017). Migration in South Africa is very
dynamic, it is no longer about forced labour as people always perceived. According
to Lipton (1980:4) and Ndlovu (2017:32), people are influenced by push factors and
pull factors. Push factors being any factors (e.g., rural inequality) that lead individuals
to migrate from rural areas to urban areas and vice versa. Pull factors being the
