As South Africa celebrates 25 years of democracy and with citizens heading to the polls in 12 days time (May 8), a book launched at the University of Pretoria (Tuks) this week could not be more apt and well timed.

Part of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) series named State of the Nation, it is titled Poverty & Inequality: Diagnosis, Prognosis, Responses and is edited by Crain Soudien, Vasu Reddy and Ingrid Woolard, with contributions from a range of other academics and experts in the field aimed at “provoking thought and constructive political thought criticism".

In his introduction, Reddy, the dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Tuks, says the book explores important and complex questions about poverty and inequality.

Certainly it does not mince its words, and in the introduction asks whether South Africa will learn from experience and pursue a process of nation building around “a more humane and egalitarian society", or whether it will continue to “stumble and perpetuate the division so redolent of our history".

The introduction points to the failure of the government to build the developmental state envisaged in the liberation Struggle, and growing inequality. It also offers a warning that the state does not provide the nurturing capacity required to deal with the challenge.

Soudien, who is the chief executive of the HSRC, outlined the organisation's history, noting the irony of its origin as the National Bureau of Educational and Social Research in 1929, with a focus on poverty from the start.

That focus was on poor whites in rural areas and now, 90 years later, the focus returns to the question of poverty and inequality at a time when South Africa is considered the most unequal country in the world.

Woolard, the dean of the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at Stellenbosch University, said poverty and inequality were real and tangible experiences for many South Africans, but warned that while the two co- existed and were intertwined, they were not the same thing.

Poverty signalled social exclusion and deprivation, and inequality related to the uneven distribution of resources and opportunities, she said.

While poverty and inequality existed worldwide, and were one of the greatest global challenges, the authors pointed to distinctive forces in South Africa that produced conditions of poverty and inequality.

Woolard outlined the motivation behind the book as an effort to tackle a complex problem in a fresh and provocative way by offering a diversity of perspectives. Hence, the “diagnosis" identifies the nature and circumstances of the problem; the “prognosis" gives opinions and forecasts related to its symptoms, while “responses" offers new ways of thinking about the issue and directions to take to reduce poverty and inequality.

• Photograph by Val Boje, Pretoria News:

  The editors of Poverty & Inequality, part of the Human Sciences Research Council State of the Nation series, Professor Vasu Reddy from Pretoria University, left, Professor Ingrid Woolard, Stellenbosch University, and Professor Crain Soudien, HSRC.