Along with inequality and unemployment, poverty is seen as South Africa’s biggest challenge with over half of South Africans living below the national poverty line.
Poverty is arguably the most pressing social, economic and political problem faced in South Africa. When SA finally held its first democratic elections in 1994, the country had a much higher poverty rate than in other countries at a similar level of development.
In the book, authors Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass demonstrate who has and who has not remained poor, how public policies both mitigated and reproduced poverty, and how and why these policies were adopted.
By Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass
