In the late 1980s Robert Ross and co-author Pieter van Duin reversed the widely accepted view of the Cape economy as a ‘social and economic backwater’ of widespread subsistence farming and overall poverty, scattered with small islands of relatively affluent farmers. Exploring the rich...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess whether any meaningful lessons can be learned from South Africa's early twentieth century experience of White poverty and to what extent such lessons can be applied in order to combat Black poverty today. Design/methodology/approach – This...