ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates the potential usefulness of a spatially-oriented approach by applying it to a case of involuntary community relocation in South Africa. A community may be deemed to have successfully passed through relocation experience when it is no longer under outside management, and when it has become integrated into its wider regional setting in such a way that it has attained economic and administrative ability. The chapter provides a brief outline of the patterns of land use and of social organization prevailing in Chatha before Betterment. Betterment planning thus became a type of holding operation, seeking to contain the population in the rural areas by rearranging patterns of land use. The physical setting of the village has been substantially transformed as a direct result of the implementation of Betterment. The Betterment-related change is that, with the exception of the irrigation settlers, the community is agriculturally worse off than before because of the loss of arable land.
