RCE Makana and Rural Eastern Cape

Date of RCE Acknowledgement:
January, 2007

Description of RCE and Geographic Region:
RCE Makana and Rural Eastern Cape encourages collaborative initiatives across Makana Municipality and the rural Eastern Cape of South Africa. Makana Municipality is centred on the small, historical university city of Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape. With the 1994 demise of apartheid and a recent regional change from a predominance of stock farming to game farming and eco-tourism there has been rapid urban growth.This change has led to many small land holdings being consolidated into larger game park blocks, displacing many farm workers to urban settlements where there are high levels of unemployment. The changes have also shaped a deepening poverty that is now being further exacerbated by the recent slowdown in the global economy and an attendant loss of further jobs as the market economy levels out.