ABSTRACT
In North West Province, the former bantustan state of Bophuthatswana engaged in a series of disastrous attempts to create a class of commercial smallholder farmers from above. The appropriate starting point for rural development in the region must be an understanding of the constraints households face as they construct their livelihoods. The Ditsobotla district has to be seen as part of a regional economy in which white commercial farming plays a central role. Many black share croppers bought second-hand equipment from white farmers in the surrounding districts, using earnings from migrancy, sale of livestock and farm income. The most significant inequality between households in Ditsobotla, and one from which other differences follow, concerns access to a regular income. This may take the form of wages, remittances, or pensions. Black South Africans have been deliberately excluded from access to land, capital, employment and education.
