Chapter 8 Quadrant 2: Securing rights, enabling social, institutional and capacity development

5 Getting there 5.6 Capacity development and learning

There is an increased understanding that rural development works best when conceptualised as a learning process which recognises that all actors need to learn as they go. Likewise, there is the growing acknowledgement of different types of knowledge – e.g. ‘local', ‘indigenous' ‘scientific' and ‘gendered' – with different types of explanatory power which need to articulate with one another. Within emerging extension and development practice, there has been a progressive evolution from attempts to ‘transfer technology' and hand down pre-packaged technical and economic models to a more facilitative approach. In the literature, there is broad agreement that outsiders are not able to determine ‘best practices' for rural people (Hagmann et al. 1999). However, this agreement has yet to inform much of the practice in South Africa which still privileges technocratic expert/service provider- led approaches and sets great store on documents – business plans, development plans and the like – as the key deliverables, which then often mark the end of the engagement. As discussed in Chapter 4, in eMpangisweni, a lot of money was spent on developing a business plan which then the project participants and their appointed farm manager have never seen. This is not an isolated occurrence and is an indicator of the disjuncture between planning and accountability for implementation. As outlined in more detail in Chapter 10, a very different approach underpins the SIS Strategy. This envisages enabling medium-to long-term engagements by consortia to service projects in designated areas in ways which combine responsibilities for planning, implementation and development of local management capacity. The Strategy envisages that this new direction will need to be underpinned by a learning process approach, which deepens and enables exchange of knowledge and skills between all participating role-players. Local SIS service entities will require a learning process facilitator who will be responsible for organising area-based training and capacity interventions and documenting lessons and approaches. This will contribute to the expansion of a local and national knowledge base on how to make land reform work. This, in turn, will require support to develop a new culture of learning at local and other levels.