The paper attempts to provide a concise and holistic overview of post-apartheid South Africa's competing imperatives in designing its economic policy, in which trade and industrial strategy features prominently. It shows how South Africa's trade policy was developed in order to address the twin challenges of reversing the skills deficit in the country's labour force and reintegration into the global economic system. It also highlights South Africa's attempts to move towards a trade strategy aimed at effectively reducing the distortions created by the apartheid regime and tackling the scourge of underdevelopment and poverty prevalent in the daily lives of the majority of people. Overall the objective is to able to understand how the growth and economic development pattern of democratic South Africa has been influenced by the type of industrial policy pursued in the past.