The uprooting and relocating of blacks to the rural areas created untenable conditions for communities. The lack of work in the rural areas resulted in the availability of cheap labour and resulted in a migrant labour system. This led to the situation where most rural households were headed by women, dependent on income from absentee male members of the family. Many rural people were dependent on inadequate land resources. This resulted in environmental degradation, with over-grazing and erosion.

Non-governmental organisations recorded and highlighted the situation of rural communities. After 1994, many rural communities filed claims for the land from which they had been forcibly removed. The material refers to individual communities that returned to their land and to those that filed land claims.