In this IEJ Working Paper, prepared as a discussion document for Economic Research South Africa’s (ERSA) current research project – Basic Income Support in South Africa, authors Kelle Howson and Zimbali Mncube demonstrate that a progressively-designed UBIG has the potential to greatly assist in addressing South Africa’s immediate humanitarian crisis of deprivation, whilst also disrupting the structural conditions, including high-levels of unemployment, which continue to produce poverty. The paper also shows that the myriad intersecting social and economic benefits of a UBIG can have dramatic macroeconomic implications, which, in part, will serve to offset the fiscal costs of the programme.