This chapter discusses community development in the context of the post-apartheid era, where the government has been trying to entrench the social development approach across the country. It argues that community development should be the lynchpin of social development and serve as its springboard at the mezzo and micro levels of South Africa. The chapter also seeks to proffer conceptual clarity regarding community development. It provides the contextual and historical background to community development, beginning with a global and African overview, and then ending with a local appraisal. Its main contention is that community development has not been given serious attention in the last 30 years, and perhaps this is the reason why the social development sector is still grappling with developmental interventions and favouring residual approaches, even though purporting to be making shifts from curative and rehabilitative perspectives, to the developmental approach.