A new book by Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass explains why poverty has persisted in South Africa since 1994. In Policy, Politics and Poverty in South Africa - published by Palgrave Macmillan in the UK- the authors 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. Their analyses of the South African welfare state, labour market policies and the growth path of the South African economy challenge conventional accounts that focus only on 'neoliberalism'. They argue, instead, that policies were, in important respects, social democratic. They show how social democratic policies both mitigate and reproduce poverty in contexts such as South Africa, reflecting the contradictory nature of social democracy in the global South.