An attempt will be made in this paper to describe the shared characteristics of rural communities, especially the lack of resources which lead to a failure to gratify the aspirations of the inhabitants of rural areas. Community involvement or participation may be utilised as a tool to conscientise rural communities about the need to change their deplorable situation. This could be done without necessarily disrupting the existing pace of life in rural areas. Mention is also made of the types of resources which can be employed in rural development and the need to use these resources optimally. This could however only be achieved by overcoming some of the obstacles to rural development such as illiteracy dependency and apathy. Lastly the paper deals with rural development in a post-apartheid era.
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