This article examines the privatisation and restructuring of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and explores whether these pursuits contribute towards enhancing the capacity of the state in addressing the socio-economic inequities: reducing poverty and unemployment and extending public services to the poor in communities. At the behest of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), the ANC assumed neoliberal macro-economic policies such as the Growth Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy, the New Growth Path (NGP) and the National Development Plan (NDP). In all of these the intention was said to be to address poverty, unemployment and expand access to public services. General observations, after two decades, indicate that, given their welfarist orientation, privatisation policies seem to present the government with a paradox, as they oscillate between meeting social needs and adopting neoliberal policies. From a social