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The main objective for this paper is to test Wagner's law by analysing the causal relationships between real government expenditure and real income for South Africa for the period 1960-2006. The paper tests the long-run relationship between the two variables using the autoregressive distributive lag approach to cointegration suggested by Pesaran "et al." We use the Granger non-causality test procedure developed by Toda and Yamamoto, which uses a vector autoregression model to test for the causal link between the two. Evidence of cointegration is sufficient to establish a long-run relationship between government expenditure and income. However, support for Wagner's law would require unidirectional causality from income to government expenditure. Therefore, cointegration should be seen as a necessary condition for Wagner's law, but not sufficient. This research does find a long-run relationship between real "per capita" government expenditure and real "per capita" income. Results for the short-run causality find bidirectional causality. On the basis of empirical results in this paper, one may tentatively conclude that Wagner's law finds no support in South Africa. Copyright (c) 2008 The Author. Journal compilation (c) 2008 Economic Society of South Africa.