An analysis of the content, policy effort, resource allocation and enjoyment of the constitutional right to food.

This research report has two broad thrusts. It firstly reviews some of the main policies which seek to alleviate and eventually eradicate poverty and its causes and , secondly , the report provides a budget and benefit incidence analysis which puts a spotlight on the figures behind the policies. Five departments were chosen as the subject of the poverty audit review and they are the national and provincial departments of education, health, housing , social development and transport. The reasons for the choice of the latter department are set out elsewhere in this report.

Studies in Poverty and Inequality Institute (SPII) with the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) hosted a high level seminar on 6 July 2012 to debate how the ANC policy conference might shape the immediate and longer term interests for South Africa's unemployed, working poor, working middle class, business elite and political elite respectively around the following three issues: 1) access to basic services and the notion of the 'Developmental State'; 2) economic transformation a nd the ANC's version of a 'mixed economy'; 3) incomes: employment and access to key assets.

Policy brief on transformation 2013.

This is an ambitious document, in that it seeks to place a theoretical approach to understanding the issues involving the
conceptualisation, definition and measurement of poverty in an accessible manner, as well as to reflect more technical concerns regarding the nature and quality of data that exists which any poverty measure would have to draw on in a manner that does not alienate “lay people”. We have also tried to provide a description of historical attempts to measure poverty in South Africa to ensure that current discussions do not take place in an a contextual manner.