Abstract: The paper reviews the backgrounds of the change of South Africa's unemployment security policies with an introduction to the main unemployment security policies in the current South Africa. The paper also evaluates the relevant policies from the following few aspects: policy coverage, beneficiaries, increasing jobs, reducing poverty, enhancing skills and so on. The result shows that either the South Africa's unemployment insurance or the project of public works cannot create sustainable jobs or solve its unemployment problems that mainly consist of structural unemployment.