One of the largest policy debates in South Africa currently revolves around the issue of whether or not poverty and inequality have been reduced since political transition from the apartheid regime to democracy. When it initially came into power in 1994, the new government was tasked with alleviating widespread poverty within the context of high unemployment rates and, at that time, a stagnant economy. This study tracks trends in the South African income distribution over the past decade and a half, with a particular focus on poverty trends in the post-transition period. The assumptions used throughout the study are those likely to yield the lowest estimates of poverty reduction that the national accounts data support. Thus these estimates are also purposely biased towards recording the least rather than the most likely estimates of income growth for the Black population, since this group contains the majority of the poor. From ELDIS