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Policy affecting the rangeland commons in South Africa has been based largely on management models developed for large-scale commercial farming. This paper examines the current policy situation and discusses some of the most pervasive ecological and economic assumptions that have influenced development in the rangeland commons: that increasing livestock sales and full-time commercial farming are the best way to improve productivity and resource management; that communal rangelands are invariably overstocked and degraded and that destocking, fencing and rotational grazing are required to address this; and that communal tenure per se is the root cause of degradation and privatisation is the answer. A wealth of research now shows that these assumptions, while they may be suited to commercial agriculture on large land holdings, are an inappropriate basis for policy on rangeland commons. Instead, policy should support multiple livelihoods to enhance resilience and reduce risk, support the aims and overcome the disadvantages of smallholder farmers, strengthen common property management and tenure security, and integrate livestock development with a broader development agenda. Rangeland commons differ in their ecological, social and economic characteristics. Policy thus needs to apply a variety of ecological and economic models appropriate to different contexts.