This paper has the objective of identifying dominant livelihood strategies in rural South Africa. It differs from previous studies done for South Africa in that it analyses a recent large household survey; classifies livelihood strategies into four broad and eight specific livelihood strategy groups and matches them with welfare strata of rural households; and analyzes socio-economic constraints poor households face to enter into high return livelihood strategies. Two approaches are applied to achieve these objectives -stochastic dominance test and multinomial logistic regression. It finds that households that generate income from wage employment in non-farm and farm activities are better off than other households. Analysis of the socio-economic characteristics of rural households also reveals that age, labour endowment, education, and community characteristics in terms of access to basic infrastructure are some of the barriers that poor households in rural areas face to enter into high-return livelihood strategies.