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Bibliography: pages 201-214. ; Environmental degradation is widely regarded as an integral part of South Africa's homeland areas. Conventional thinking often blames so-called traditional farming practices, attitudes and values for this situation. In other words, the blame is placed with the residents of the areas and environmental degradation is explained away as the result of a particular cultural make-up. Following this line of thought, education via agricultural extension is mooted as the primary solution to what is regarded as an inherent problem. The central concern of this dissertation is to examine the dynamics of natural resource management by residents of a rural area in KwaZulu known as oBivane. The thesis shows that the conditions leading to environmental degradation are best seen as the result of particular historical and political processes and not simply as the results of particular patterns of behaviour that are culturally driven. These processes, given primary impetus by massive population influx onto a restricted land base and combined with the peculiarities of differential access to resources and the need to preserve the interests of elite groups, have forced sectors of the South African population into situations where physical survival has necessarily had grave environmental cost. One of the consequences of apartheid policies has been to institutionalise environmental degradation in particular areas of the country.