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In the process of socio-economic development, the rural environment has witnessed various setbacks, mostly in agro-social and the socio-economic sustainability of the QwaQwa community of South Africa. Evidence exists from the literature, our observations and experience that sustainability in the rural economic development of the QwaQwa community is not equal and stable, which has exposed the youths of the community to crime and various anti-social activities such as drugging, drinking, gangsterism, raping, among others. Therefore, the asset-based community development approach was adopted to instigate stakeholders' intention toward community emancipation. This was done within the lens of the transformative paradigm designed with the community-based participatory action research process. The research comprised key stakeholders such as community leaders, NGOs, and youths. A structured interview was used to elicit information from the selected participants. We used socio-thematic analysis to make sense of the data in order to understand the sociality of the people living within the spotted problem. The study revealed that the community is endowed with arable farming land and team spirit, but criminalities were found to challenge their development. In its quest for rural emancipation, the study also found out that the QwaQwa community needs empowerment programs in social and agricultural skill development.

Theoretically, community participation decolonises research ethics in settings where a 'coloniality of power' persists. We used ethnographic methods to document our experiences of 'ethics in practice', and interrogate the (de)colonising outcomes, of community participation in voluntary informed assent and consent (VIAC) procedures with 16–17-year-old Black South African youth and parents. Community participation decolonised by: (1) disrupting and problematising the power dynamics of written VIAC procedures and (2) minimally shifting power to youth and parents. However, community participation sometimes reinforced existing power hierarchies. In postcolonial qualitative research settings, community participation has potential to, but will not necessarily, decolonise ethics in practice.