F A C U L T Y OF

E D U C A T I O N
OCC A S I ON AL
PAPER NO. 3

COM M UNITY
DEVELOPMENT
1963

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF RHODESIA

F A C U L T Y O F E D U C A T IO N : O C C A SIO N A L P A P E R NO. 3

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
with special reference to rural areas

PAPERS DISCUSSED AT A CONFERENCE ORGANIZED BY

THE INSTITUTE OF ADULT EDUCATION, AUGUST, 1962

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE O F RHODESIA

SALISBURY
1963
 (C) UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OE RHODESIA

Contents
Page

Introduction ... ... ... ... ... ... iii

What is community development? Jam es W . G reen ... ... 1

The role of government in community development R . H ow m an 12

Financing community development N . K . K in k e a d - W e e k e s ... 26

Training for community development T . 1. J o r d a n ... ... 36

Excerpts from discussions during the Conference ... ... ... 43

Recommended reading ........................................................... ... 50

PPFP.TNTFD 5T
t T * n a p !3 p t p j? Y

IN
mcrr T T ‘5 T> . iW^

UNIT?PSITT COLLEGE
CP PHCIESIA
1967

it
 INTRODUCTION

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT has become almost as popular

a subject of international discussion as the problems of Africa. It is the
new technique which is taking the under-developed (better known as the
developing) areas of the world by storm. In Central Africa it was
introduced in Northern Rhodesia some years ago, in Nyasaland it is being
actively pursued and in Southern Rhodesia it is being officially talked
aoout. It is thus a very live issue for the Rhodesias and Nyasalanu.

Some see community development as a piece of government policy,

and up to a point it is. Community development projects usually depend
on government support and are most successfully accomplished where
the government has the confidence of the people. But to think of community
development simply in terms of official policy is to lose the real essence of
the idea. In a final summing-up to the Conference, Professor T. Paterson
of the Royal College of Science and Technology reminded his audience
that community development is a means towards achieving a greater end.
True, it produces many material manifestations which are of immense
practical value. But much more important is the spirit it engenders within
the community itself—a spirit which enables nations and communities
to discover their real strength. In Central Africa it could be a means
whereby petty prejudices are forgotten and a genuine spirit of community
fostered amongst all people.

Community development relies on patient consultation and sound

planning. It is not something which can he expected to yield quick and
startling results. It needs careful administration with a watchful eye on
finance. It demands that those engaged in roles of professional leadership
should be thoroughly trained for their tasks. But even if all this is done,
community development will not become a living reality without enthusiasm
for it amongst the people. There must be a feeling of pride and jov in
the movement. This was graphically described by Miss Freda Gwilliam,
of the Department of Technical Co-operation, who gave a paper describing
the growth of community development in African territories.

Miss Gwilliam also outlined how the idea had first originated in
the United Kingdom—a surprise to many who had regarded the whole
concept as an American creation—and how its shape is constantly
changing in the light of new experience and fresh challenges. In her talk
she also described the great contribution Britain has made to those
countries desirous of taking help from her in the spheres of training and
technical advice on community development.

Adult education and community development are two inter-woven

strands. Community development is a massive movement of education
encouraging people to take responsibility and show initiative in all aspects
of living. This implies that community development will give fresh impetus
111
to the demands for education both amongst children and their parents,
demands which will necessitate swift and imaginative action by government
departments, churches and voluntary organizations. Furthermore, it is
inevitable that once community development gets under way and a
renaissance takes place in the lives of the people, the demands for
political representation, at both local and national level, will increase. This
is only to be expected since it is unrealistic to think that people will
become enthusiastic over material gains without also having a proper
say in the councils which control their daily lives.

This conference was held in response to a ‘real' need if not a

‘felt' one. Southern Rhodesia has reached the stage of giving urgent
consideration to the idea of community development and it seemed
important, therefore, to give the public a chance of discussing a matter
of such national importance. It would also provide people in the south
with an opportunity of learning from the experience gained in the two
northern territories, and those who w'ere able to attend from Northern
Rhodesia contributed very greatly to the success of the conference.

The Institute of Adult Education is deeply indebted to Miss F.

Gwilliam. Dr. J. W. Green. Mr. R. Howman. Mr. T. I. Jordan. Mr. N. K.
Kinkead-Weekes and Professor T, Paterson for giving papers at this
Conference, and to Professor J. Clyde Mitchell for chairing and guiding
some of the deliberations.
E.K.T.C.
 WHAT IS COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT?
JAMES W. GREEN
C o n s u lta n t to th e S o u th e r n R h o d e s ia n G o v e r n m e n t

A variety of descriptive names has been applied to community

development, each designed to give its substance in encapsulated form. It
has been termed ‘a m e t h o d of applying behavioural sciences for human
welfare’, ‘a p r o c e s s of social action’, ‘a p r o g r a m m e of social, economic
and political development’, and ‘a s ile n t r e v o lu tio n of rising expectations
and how to meet them’. None of these, of course, constitute an adequate
definition, nor were they intended to be such. Community development
is really self-explanatory, i.e., it is development of the local community
oy the community itself, with or without outside assistance. Thus it is just
the opposite of compulsion and paternalism—of doing things for people,
or of compelling people to do things for themselves simply because some
person or agency outside the community thinks these things are good for
the people.

Therefore, there is no reason for you to make difficult the subject of

our conference. That is my job, as I shall proceed to demonstrate in the
next hour! For example, ‘community development is an organized activity,
inclusive as to participants and beneficiary, with multiple interests and
objectives, and operated in a delimited geographic area’. Believe it or not,
the person who wrote that w a s a friend of mine—but now we just don’t
speak any more!

Before we proceed further perhaps I should make dear what is

meant by ‘community’. As we all know, it is an ambiguous term with
many meanings—‘the community of nations in the U.N.’, ‘the English-
speaking community', ‘the Jewish community’, ‘the Church community’, etc.
However valid these meanings may be in their respective contexts, com­
munity as used in modem community development refers to a much smaller
geographically-based entity. Aristotle was not far from the mark when he
stated that ‘a community is a form of social organization lying between the
family and the state’. I like a more specific description such as: ‘a com­
munity is a locality with a set of basic interacting social institutions
(families, schools, religious bodies, economic enterprises, etc.), through
the functioning of which the people have a potential ability to act as an
entity on matters of common concern’.

More simply put, it is the area which the people living within it
define as their community. In the tribal areas of Southern Rhodesia it was
traditionally the area under the control of a headman (sub-chiefl called a
‘dhunu’ in Mashonaland and an ‘isigaba of a mlisa’ in Matabeleland.
Within its boundaries the major concerns of life were carried on. Two
functions were especially important, the control of land by the headman
and thereby the entry to the community, and his function as adjudicator of
disputes between its members. In other words, the ‘dunhu’ was the economic
I
and judicial unit of the society. The traditional dunhu, as is true with
communities anywhere, has not remained static. It has been modified
especially by population increase and by the forcible resettlement of large
numbers of people. Research into this matter shows that some traditional
units have now split into as many as six or eight d e fa c to communities
each containing from as few as five to more than twenty villages each.
Returning now to community development it is apparent that it is a
very simple concept but one which is complex in its execution. For
community development as a process of social and cultural change implies
a great increase in the assumption of responsibility by the people, a
reallocation of the functions and organization of government, a new
‘partnership’ between the people and the central government, and an
integration of the efforts of government officials through becoming true
‘servants of the people’. Obviously then, community development is not
something to be tacked on to existing governmental structures. Furthermore,
its philosophical bases which are found in both western and non-western
thought, have consequences for economic, social, political, administrative
and personal growth and development. But, before setting the stage for a
discussion of these matters let us have a brief look at the historical origins
and evolution of community development.

ORIGINS OF G OM M LM TY DEVELOPMENT

The term community development is one which originated in Africa,

or at least was first used by administrators concerned primarily with
Africa. It is not, I am glad to say, an American importation! It was at the
1948 Cambridge Summer Conference that the term community development
replaced mass education. The latter was abandoned for a variety of
reasons, including the fact that ‘mass’ had undesirable political overtones,
‘education’ when translated into most vernaculars was rendered narrowly as
‘schools’, and even when understood broadly as adult education it proved
to be an inadequate stimulus to community action.

Development of the community by the people of the community

has, of course, been carried on by the people of every frontier society
such as those of the U.S.A.. Canada, and the Rhodesias. Such central
governments as existed were usually too poor to build up local community
schools, roads, churches, and the like. Indeed, they did not accept these
matters of local concern as a responsibility of the central government.
Local government, of course, did not exist until it was created by the
people themselves, usually out of the need for maintaining the results of
communal construction effort, and for extending services requiring the
consistent support of all the people in the community.

Social welfare organizations have been another major developer of

methods and practices of community development. Just as it was gradually
realized that rehabilitation of families depended largely upon positive work
with the groups to which the family members belonged, so it became
2
apparent that an increase in group effectiveness was often dependent upon
changes in the community and of co-operative effort of its special interest
organizations. The settlement houses erected in the problem areas of
cities in the U.S.A. and Britain are examples of concrete efforts to weld
together the diverse elements of the community for community action.

Like their counterparts in social welfare, the professional proponents

of extensive technical education in health, literacy, agriculture, small-scale
industry and other fields have found that the effectiveness of their work on
individuals and families was much enhanced if the community was behind
their efforts. Then too there were many projects which inherently required
co-operative effort of the entire community for their success, such as
small-scale drainage and irrigation works, one-variety crop areas, control
of insects, immunization against infectious diseases and marketing of
agricultural products. For example, in Pakistan the Department of
Education made adult literacy an integral part of the national community
development programme. As its Director stated, all past efforts in this
field by his department had failed owing to the lack of acceptance by the
people of literacy training as a normal activity for adults. Under the
community development programme literacy became a necessity, or at
least fashionable, and literacy classes an acceptable activity in which adults
might participate without fear of ridicule. The failure of the massive
‘Grow More Food’ campaigns in both Pakistan and India forced the
governments of these countries to reject the campaign method of planning
for people on the basis of assumed ‘real’ needs and instead to approach
them in terms of their ‘felt’ needs, as the people themselves defined them.
Similarly, in Japan the health authorities told me in 1957 that much of
their success in reducing the birth rate by half in a decade lay in getting
the people to use the clinics through a community approach.

Success of the community approach has led to the adoption of

community development as a major mechanism for helping people to help
themselves in their local communities by such international organizations
as the United Nations, UNESCO, the United Kingdom Colonial and
Commonwealth Relations Offices and the foreign aid agencies of the U.S.A.
government. In addition, various countries have adopted community
development as a basic policy. India did this in 1952 when the Prime
Minister inaugurated community development as the cornerstone of rural
development in the sub-continent. All 550,000 villages and their 350 million
inhabitants will be involved by October of 1963. Pakistan also adopted
this approach in 1953 and made excellent progress for several years until
the political situation deteriorated so badly that a military dictatorship
was imposed. The late President Magsaysay of the Philippines in 1956 also
adopted community development as the method of helping the thousands
of small barrios in his country to advance. Five years after his untimely
death the Presidential Assistant for Community Development still
administers this nation-wide programme from the office of the President.
Many other countries have adopted the community development approach
in modified form including Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika, Nigeria,
Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Iran and South Korea.
3
 Lest it be thought that community development is purely a
governmental approach, it should be noted that in the U.S.A. some of
the largest and most important community development efforts are
conceived and carried out by private business interests in co-operation
with local communities. Government agencies, such as the agricultuial
extension service, participate in these privately-sponsored programmes by
providing educational or other technical services as requested by the people
of the communities themselves. But it is the private companies pursuing
their own economic self-interest who are the stimulators and sponsors of
community development. In one instance a chain of banks employed a
community development specialist and gave him considerable sums of
money to be used as prizes to communities which excelled others of their
county and region in developing themselves in any of a thousand different
ways ranging from community club houses to such individually-centred
items as acquisition of electrical appliances. Those administering the
banking system had discovered that no matter what communities did in
the way of development, the end result was an increase in the turnover
rate of money in the community and the influx of new money from the
stimulus to greater economic activity occasioned by development of other
types. In other words, a n y kind of development resulted in the demand for
more banking services. Therefore, no attempt was made to direct the kind
of development but merely to stimulate the people to increase the pace of
fulfilling their own needs. Similarly, several large electric power companies
in the south-eastern U.S.A. found that when their community development
agents stimulated the members of a community to develop within their own
priorities of felt needs, it resulted in an increase in the consumption of
electric power and thus of their profits. Another example is of a seventeen-
county development scheme sponsored by a regional Chamber of Commerce
and using competition for prizes and prestige as a stimulus to communities
to develop along their own lines. These examples show that community
development is not a government monopoly but a social process which
can be successfully sponsored by any social or economic organization
willing to trust the judgment of the people and to work within the
framework of the people’s priorities, rather than attempting to impose the
sponsoring organizations’ concepts of what these priorities ought to be.

All these diverse efforts to help communities to help themselves

have quite naturally led to the study of community development by many
behavioural scientists and the creation of a large and growing body of
research literature. In fact, it was through such study that I myself became
interested in this field and in helping governments to understand and adapt
it to their own particular situations. Based upon such study, a definition of
community development has been formulated which is, I believe,
operationally useful:

‘Community development is a continuous, or intermittent, process

of social action by which the people of a community organize themselves
informally or formally for democratic planning and action; define their
common and group “felt” needs and problems; make group and individual
plans to meet their felt needs and solve their problems; execute these plans
4
with a maximum of reliance upon resources found within the community;
and supplement community resources when necessary with services and
material assistance from governmental or private agencies outside the
community.’

PHILOSOPHICAL BASES OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

As I stated earlier, community development has its roots firmly

embedded in the philosophy of both western and some non-western thought.
In preparing this paper four propositions came to mind as the roots of
community development.

The first is that human growth and development is the paramount

good. Thus growth in the capacity of individuals to solve their own
problems and assume responsibility for themselves is infinitely more
important than the physical goods and services which such effort produces,
or which may be given to them. A necessary corollary is that people grow
as they achieve, and this human growth is the most important product
of achievement although the ostensible purpose may be the production of
physical items.

It follows then that the development of human groups with their

definition of positions and rdles, the establishment of their own goals and
norms, and the devising of methods of co-operating with each other to
attain their objectives, are more important than any amount of purely
economic development brought about by atomization of groups and com­
pulsive measures. Beyond the group the development of self-reliant com­
munities able to participate as autonomous units in their own total growth
and self-government is more important than all the physical benefits which
can accrue from the greater efficiency of totalitarianism or the paternalism
of a benevolent but distant central government Furthermore, as an added
dividend, the growth in such individual capacity, group coherence and
communal self-reliance through the community development process when
p la c e d f r s t produces greater material benefits than concentration on
material production. In other words, if you follow a method that puts
human growth and development first, the people themselves will take care
of producing material things.

May I put in a personal reference at this point to say that it is the

evidence of such human growth and development that keeps me in this
business of community development. I have seen villagers who all their
lives, like their forebears for generations before them, had folded their
hands and implored their gods and the government to look after them.
These same villagers, when given responsibility and assistance through
the community development process, straightened their backs, unfolded
their hands and showed both in word and deed that they were to a large
extent masters of their own fate and not the mere pawns of forces which
5
they could not control. Witnessing such growth in human capacities is
more thrilling than seeing the thousands of miles of roads built, of canals
and drainage-ways dug, of schools and clinics constructed, which issue
from the community development process. For these are mere by-products
of the process compared to the human changes which take place.

The second of these philosophical bases may be stated as follows:

that freedom of choice transcends plans by others, no matter how imperfect
the choices nor how perfect the plans. This proposition means that the
people of a community must be free to decide what they want to do in
their own priority of felt needs, and equally as important, what they don’t
want to do within the scope of the community good. That is, choice must
be based upon how the people define their own needs and set their own
priorities, and not on the basis of what outsiders, whether administrators
or technicians, think is good for them. Does this mean a downgrading of
the administrator and technician, making them less necessary? By no
means; rather they become absolutely indispensable in helping people to
give effect to their own choices.

The third basis follows from the second; that the local good is pri­
marily a local concern. By local good I mean that which the doing of or
the failure to do affects primarily the people of a community and does not
infringe upon the rights of those not of the community. Examples of such
items of local good are primary schools, health services (except for infec­
tious diseases), water supplies, housing, local (not national or administra­
tive) roads, production of agricultural or cottage industry products, and
the like. If these things are done or are not done, it is primarily the people
of the local community who benefit or who suffer. On the other hand, the
national good remains a concern primarily of the national government.
Items which transcend the local community or even a combination of local
communities, such as Karibas, national roads and national defence, are
clearly not the responsibility of the local community. But sheer scope is not
the only criteria for vesting control in the national government. Those
things which the doing of or failure to do within the community infringe
upon the rights of others outside the community, clearly cannot be left to
the discretion of the local community. Examples of such things are the
control of infectious diseases of men and animals and of the wanton waste
of the natural resources of soil and water (which forfeit the rights of future
generations).

Of course it may be argued that if children are not forced by the

national government to go to primary school, they will not contribute to
the gross national product, nor pay taxes, and therefore the national good
suffers. Or. if people are not forced to produce more there will be less for
all to share. These arguments may be accepted as logically correct but they
lead straight to stateism and dictatorship. Furthermore, it is an illusion
that a national government can in fact control all spheres of the local
good. Even Russia, with her total disregard of the individual and after
forty years of the most extreme compulsion ever devised by man, has been
6
unsuccessful in making her own peasants increase agricultural production
in accordance with plans of the all-powerful central state.

The fourth basis is the belief that all peoples have the innate capac­
ity to manage their own local affairs. No matter how illiterate they may
be they have an intimate knowledge of the complex of factors in the local
situation and in inherent wisdom gained from long experience with things
that affect them in their daily lives. Furthermore, they corporately have
the ability to synthesize the complex of factors affecting them and to
reach wise decisions about them. And, finally, they have the potential of
increasing their capacities and of growing in ability to govern themselves
when assisted, not dominated, by the state and its administrative and
technical officials.

It is. I hope, apparent that these four propositions mutually support

one another. Even if human growth and development are given paramount
importance, it will be meaningless to do so without permitting freedom
of choice, including the right to make wrong choices. But such choices
can be permitted only for matters which are primarily of local concern and
for which the participants have local knowledge, wisdom, and the ability to
manage with the assistance of technicians and administrators.

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT IS ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Gone are the days when economics saw man as merely a creature
moving in response to the laws of the market-place. Today, economists
increasingly see economic development as part and parcel of total develop­
ment—the social and political are inextricably tied together with the
economic. Experience in underdeveloped countries has shown them that
development is unlikely to take place unless people acknowledge certain
values. We shall discuss very briefly a few of these which are considered
as prerequisite to economic development, and to the holding of which
community development contributes.

The first of these is that people must want development and be

willing to pay for it through harder and better quality work, more savings
and the use of modem technology. In community development, because
the community begins with the things it wants for itself, and for which its
people have to work and help pay, this value is made operational. The
people can see that in this way they can achieve their cwn ends. Further­
more. obtaining these ends leads to an ‘entraining of wants.’ Successful
attainment of some ends, while leading to a temporary reduction of wants,
sooner rather than later leads to the desire for other things which they now
know are obtainable. This is simple a truism, of course, to all of us with
wives!
The second value is that there must be prestige symbols and rewards
for initiative and entrepreneurial activity. Again the community develop-
7
ment process provides a mechanism for defining these symbols and re-
wards, fir:: in the social approval which accrues to those who lead the
community in attaining its defined ends, and second in creating or further
bolstering the norm of greater individual gain as a basis for contributing
further to oiher community ends. In other words, the usual resistance of a
static society t o change which sees the elevation of the economic level of
individuals as a threat to the established status system; for example the
pattern of relationships between individuals and between families, is now
seen not as a threat but as the way to attain the community’s ends.

A third value closely related to the others is the confidence of people

in their ability to improve their own lot through their own efforts. So
long as ihev believe that only through the intervention of outside forces,
of having livings done for them, will their lot be bettered, so long will
develoarr.crt be restricted to the little the outside forces can achieve. And
with the always limited resources available, these outside forces, chiefly
central governments, can accomplish but little in the thousands of com­
munities under their control. But community development, by concentrating
upon things which people can do for themselves with a minimum of outside
help, gives this confidence through concrete demonstrations of the peoples’
ability to achieve their own ends through their mutual efforts. In simpler
words, successful achievement leads to a belief in their capacity to achieve.

The fourth value Is that of growth perspective, that is the desire for
growth plus a perception of the way which leads to it. But this perception
is dependent upon growth itself—a vicious circle. Community development
has the power to break this circle in a static society By concentrating upon
attainable and wanted ends the enthusiasm to attain them is generated
and the perspective of growth is developed by doing the possible here and
now. fn addition to furthering the holding of these intangible values, com­
munity development promotes and is part of economic development by
utili -•fag unused community resources in the construction of the infra­
structure demanded by large-scale economic development. Previously idle
labour, the greatest economic assets of most communities, is put to a pro­
ductive use and new skills, both manual and managerial, are developed.
The building of a new school, the construction of a new road or clinic
requires both unskilled and skilled labour as well as those with skill in
manaeement. Use is also made of local building materials of stone, an d
and timber, which would otherwise have no economic value. Land which
is marginal for other purposes is often put to productive use in com­
munal undertakings such as vegetable gardens, fish ponds and playing
fields, from which the whole community benefits. When community devel­
opment gets under way it becomes a necessity to save to pay the continuing
costs of old protects and the initial costs of new ones. There is much less
available to be dissipated on elaborate weddings or beer parties and other
entertainments. L; several countries advantage o? this fact h is been taken
by governments sponsoring community development to gain acceptance
of a restriction on such conspicuous consumption, in the very areas where
such proposed restrictions had been rejected in the pre-community develop-
8
ment period. The s u m s saved in th is way and used for development are
very large in the aggregate.

Of even greater significance for economic development than the

items so far mentioned is the incentive built into community development
for increasing production. At first glance it seems that community develop­
ment is largely concerned with providing amenities which cost money to
build and maintain. Schools, dispensaries, drains in the streets, roads, wells,
women’s clubs, etc., are all good in themselves, but it may be asked if they
should not come later when production has been raised to provide a surplus
to pay for them. This is very good logic but is most inconsistent with
human behaviour. How many of you save enough money to pay cash for
your automobile, your home, household equipment or other large items?
Of course you don't. You first get the item wanted and then through
regular payments you are enabled to enjoy it while paying for it. As the
billions of pounds of hire-purchase agreements so tellingly illustrate in
the most advanced countries of Europe and America, this is the way that
highly urbanized and educated people behave who have high incomes and
the capacity as individuals to control to a large extent their economic and
social situations. To expect a tribesman whose income is comparatively
tiny, whose social and cultural situation is far more restrictive of individual
behaviour, who lives in a community with a high leisure preference, who
accepts as right the claims of kinsmen for any surplus beyond his imme­
diate needs—I repeat, to expect these tribesmen to save and then spend
is little short of ridiculous.

Rather the process works the other way around. A community is

helped to get the things it wants with grants-in-aid and technical assistance,
provided in varying amounts by the central government. The community
must pay a part not only of the initial cost but of the recurring costs as
well—nothing in community development is free. It is this necessity of
having to continue to pay for what is wanted which provides the mass
incentive to produce. If the school, the clinic, and other amenities con­
structed and owned by the community will simply close down unless the
community does its part, then the community does its part. Also, people
will give up some of their leisure for work which is easier to do now that
everyone has to do it. They will take the considerable economic risks
involved in purchasing fertilizers and other production inputs. They can
now risk the demands of relatives for the increased output because these
relatives know that it must be used to pay the local government rates. Thus
community development becomes the incentive to increased agricultural
production which in underdeveloped countries is the usual source of finance
for industrial and other development.

A by-product of this process is the more efficient use made of

technicians, who are always in short supply in a developing country. In
the absence of mass motivation the extension agent in health, or agriculture,
or adult literacy, or small industry, must spend a great deal of his time
9
in trying to convince the people of a need for his services—in selling his
product But this is no longer true especially in agriculture and small-scale
(cottage) industry when true community development is under way. People
who were formerly completely apathetic and unresponsive to all the
techniques and blandishments of extension education are now d e m a n d in g
the services of the technician. Thus he can spend his time on his technology
and not waste a large part of it as formerly in a nearly futile round of
meetings and the like. Incidentally, this demand requires that the
technicians be adequately trained in the results of technical research to
meet the greatly increased demands for technical knowledge.

Observation of community development in the field has led a number

of development economists to endorse it as an essential component of
development For example, W. Arthur Lewis in his chapter on ‘Capital’
in T h e T h e o r y o f E c o n o m ic G r o w th states that ‘there is everything to be
said for putting into community development all the resources which it
can take.’ In his chapter on ‘Government’ he states further that ‘community
development is the best development of all and every programme should
set aside for this work sums amounting to one or two percent of the
national output’.

COMMUNITY DEVELOPM ENT IS POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT

So far I have been talking as if community development was a
self-contained process. This notion I want to dispel by stating that it is
only the one side of a coin, the other being local government Neither one
is viable without the other. Community development employs a more or
less a d h o c approach, using informal organizations at the primary
community level in order to mobilize enthusiasm, labour and materials
for local projects, and, as we have just seen, to motivate people to increase
their agricultural and cottage industry production. On the other hand,
local government is formal organization at the ‘coherence of communities’
level, that is the lowest political unit, which may be a tribe, a district
or a specially demarcated development area. Essentially it is a banding
together of local communities on the basis of common interests to carry
on where community development leaves off, especially in levying rates
for systematic development and for maintenance of the amenities and
services created by community development.

The rural local government system in Southern Rhodesia, known as

‘native councils’ has been given high praise for its conception as expressed
in the Native Councils Act, Regulations and Circulars. However, the
present system is gradually dying owing to a number of deficiencies, which,
I may add, are all correctable. This is not the time nor place to go into a
description of these. All I need indicate is that in most areas native councils
are not considered to be really necessary by the people since central
government carries on all the major functions of government. Thus the
people in a given area get about the same number of services—and in
10
their view are denied about the same number—whether there is a council
in the area or not. No local government can possibly hope to survive
unless it is essential to the people. Unless central government gives
responsibility to local government for servies considered by the people
to be necessary, such as primary schools, local roads, and clinics, and
then itself refuses to provide such services directly, locai government
perishes. A second major deficiency in the present system is the vacuum
which exists between the people and the council. The community itself
has been skipped over in this process of organization and there is no
identification of the average villager with his council, especially the larger
ones. The answer is the creation of community development boards in
each community which wants one, such boards to be assisted on community
self-help projects by the local government.

Thus community development and local government between- them

carry out many of the functions of government which most affect the
people. The peoples’ representatives develop a sense of responsibility as
they have to recognize that income must equal expenditure—that nothing
is free. They leam that amenities and services must be maintained as
well as built and that the maintenance is often far more expensive than
the original cost. They learn to use government technicians and not to be
dominated by them. They leam what all ot us know who work in
governments, that he who governs can expect little gratitude. No matter
what is done there will be those who will not like it nor think that
enough has been done for them. Therefore, in these and other ways
community development and local government prepare people to assume
responsibility for government at higher levels, and thus assure a continuity
of stable central governments oriented to serving the people.

APPLICABILITY OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPM ENT TO

SOUTHERN RHODESIA

After two years of intensive and extensive study of African

development, local and central government, and indigenous social structure
in Southern Rhodesia, I have come to the conclusion that Southern
Rhodesians have the need for and the capability of carrying out community
development. And I have recommended to Government that they be given
the opportunity. This recommendation has received strong support from
many quarters including the Mangwende Commission, the Paterson Com­
mission and the various Working Parties set up to implement the Robinson
Corr ms >*:on Report. The Southern Rhodesia Government in June, 1962,
ac: J community development as basic policy for district administration,
local government and technical development at the community level,
and signed an international agreement to this effect. I am looking forward
to the process of implementation within the unique context of factors in
this country, and hope that in the papers and the discussions to follow that-
we shall throw light on the many problems that are bound to arise.
11
T h is w o rk is lice n se d u n d e r a
C re a tiv e C o m m o n s
A ttrib u tio n - N o n c o m m e rc ia l - N o D e riv s 3 .0 L ice n se .

T o v ie w a c o p y o f th e lic e n s e p le a s e see:
h ttp ://c re a tiv e c o m m o n s .o rg /lic e n s e s /b y -n c -n d /3 .0 /

This is a download from the BLDS Digital Library on OpenDocs

http://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/

Institute of
Development Studies