Transport and rural development : an overview of the north West Province - the case of Ngaka-Modiri Molema District

Abstract

Paper presented at the 33rd Annual Southern African Transport Conference 7-10 July 2014 "Leading Transport into the Future", CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa.

Transportation research has mostly focused on urban elements of development, and quite often, urban transportation planning methods and models are imported to rural transportation practice with negligible changes resulting almost always in ineffective solutions. The tide has begun to change though as planners are beginning to craft interventions that are relevant to rural areas as the example of a project discussed in this paper shows. The North West Province is predominantly rural, characterized by dispersed towns, villages and other land-uses with varying activities. Given the dispersed nature of settlement patterns, the Provincial Department of Public Works, Roads and Transport embarked on various non-motorised interventions for schools around Ngaka-Modiri Molema District Municipality (NMMD) in an attempt to address in part the legacy of apartheid planning. These interventions are being implemented within the ambit of inclusive and relevant rural transport policy and implementation programs. This paper reviews the prevailing transport development policy context in the North West Province with specific reference to the NMMD. It then describes the non-motorised bicycles project, which has been implemented in order to ensure that scholars in NMMD exercise their democratic right of accessing basic education, as most scholars walk in excess of 5 kilometers to school. The paper briefly reflects on scholar mobility in order to clarify the policy discourse and rationale that underpinned the planning and implementation of the NMMD non-motorised scholar transport project. This paper relies heavily on a review of mostly NMMD transport policies, literature and interventions.