The South African forest sector makes a meaningful contribution to the economy of the country and has huge potential in the development of our impoverished rural areas. In South Africa, rural development poses an enormous challenge, a challenge that has not been successfully met by a great number of other developing countries.
The vast majority of these people are black, live in rural areas, many in the ex-homelands where they were driven by the policies of the apartheid Government (Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, 1995). Since the election of 1994, the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) has been working on a national forestry plan that was completed in 1998. The implementation is now in progress. Van der Zel (1994) defines a national forest policy as the relationship between the people of a nation and the forest resources at the disposal of the nation. It implies taking part and accepting responsibility in the decision-making processes of the policy. It also implies a continually changing vision and thus policy to adapt to any changing circumstances.
Mixed evergreen forests form the smallest (about 3 000 km2), most widely distributed and most fragmented biomes in South Africa. Evergreen forests occur along the escarpment and East coast in areas with a mean annual rainfall of more than 525 mm per annum during winter and more than 725 mm per annum during summer. The few large forest complexes are widely separated from one another. The large ratio of forest margin to forest area accentuates the importance of forest margins in forest survival. The natural fragmentation has been aggravated by current land use practices. The development of commercial forestry plantations of pines and eucalyptus in the grasslands and shrublands surrounding the forests contributed to conservation of the forests. The plantation stands also nurse the establishment of shade-tolerant forest species. This succession process is used to restore the forest in selected areas (Geldenhuys, 1999).
In South Africa, agroforestry systems, although not specifically identified by that name, are already partly practiced by many farmers, as will be illustrated using examples later in this paper.
