Border Rural Committee

Welcome

The Border Rural Committee (BRCs) is a non-governmental organisation working towards pro-poor rural development in the central and eastern parts of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The organisation:

advocates for enhanced resource flows into the former homelands,
acts as a project manager in pro-poor development projects, and
works towards achieving policy impact to extend and replicate the benefits of project successes.

The organisation’s work is premised on the understanding that the rights enshrined in South Africa’s Constitution apply to all it’s citizens, including the poor and marginalised, and that realising these rights is fundamental to development.

Therefore, BRC works in support of the poor acting to improve their living standards through rights-based development. The organisation understands rights-based development to be characterised by the fact that:

resources are brokered and leveraged in such a way that they are secured at local level,
planning and implementation is integrated (amongst other things, infrastructure and economic interventions must be complimentary),
local institutions take charge of planning and implementation processes.

BRC’s focus on rights-based development reflects a commitment to social justice and equality that has characterised BRC’s work since its inception. Formerly known as the Grahamstown Rural Committee, the organisation was set up in 1982 as a voluntary association to assist rural communities in the Border-Kei region in their struggle against forced removals and forced incorporation into former homelands.

"We lost our lands and our homes through betterment Now we want what’s due to us."

In many ways, the village of Cata is our flagship. It was the first betterment restitution claim to be settled (in October 2000).

On 16 June 2002, the restitution claims of seven communal localities in the Keiskammahoek district of the former Ciskei, were settled, on the basis of the Cata precedent set in October 2000. That is, the monetary value of the dispossession was calculated and then split in half, 50% was paid to the affected families as financial compensation and 50% was set aside for development purposes.
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