This important book painstakingly documents the meager and uncertain economic condition of most South African blacks as a starting point for thinking about how to achieve a more equal distribution of opportunity-now and in the period after apartheid. Significant in its insistence on preparing today for economic and political institutions in a majority-ruled South Africa, the study also has implications reaching beyond the borders of the republic, in its incisive analysis of the links between institutionalized inequality and persistent poverty.