SA's rural women who save — driving social cohesion, gender equality and climate resilience
Last year in South Africa, women, vulnerable individuals and rural communities collectively saved more than half a billion rands.
NoWinile Lungiswa Mangquzana is a smallholder from Ntabankulu Mabofu, Eastern Cape, who grows organic produce and raises chickens. She sells her cabbages and spinach to Boxer Store and Spar, and supplies the local community with vegetables, seedlings, chickens, and eggs.
Mangquzana, a successful entrepreneur, continues to grow her small business enterprise through careful saving and directed grants. She has even installed an irrigation system run on solar power for when the taps run dry, as they often do.
Most middle-class South Africans still haven't managed to install solar power (3.51%) despite load shedding, which has been part of the national sensibility for almost two decades. So, what has allowed Mangquzana to allocate for this significant cost alongside the challenges of running a business that supports her family? Spoiler alert: It's not a miracle, winning the lottery, or a gift from the gods.
Wealth management
It's saving. A word that pairs nicely with chores, paying taxes, bureaucratic form-filling, and queuing at Home Affairs. For most of us, saving is something we should do, but we'll get to it later. Maybe. And, while some of us may be lucky enough to have parents who espoused the virtues of emergency funds, nest eggs, and cash flow, for the most part, the wealthy teach wealth management to their kids, and the poor and middle-class operate under the system of 'getting by'.
However, now, more than ever, saving needs a massive rebrand. And the taglines of old, 'Save for a rainy day' and 'Waste not, want not', are simply not cut out to compete with the heady allure of consumerism and spending.
Yet, in rural parts of the country, for Mangquzana and thousands of other South Africans (particularly women), saving is a growing movement. Since 2008, the NPO SaveAct, along with its partners, has empowered vulnerable individuals, provided financial education, and facilitated the formation of savings groups.
SaveAct founder and executive director Anton Krone explains, 'Twenty years ago, I dared to imagine that rural women would save and take collective steps towards claiming their rights to safety and food security. Then, 1,000 women in savings groups seemed like a realistic goal to demonstrate that this would be an effective model. Now, there are more than 100,000 (savers), and we have ambitious plans to build an ecosystem of collaborators to reach two million women.'
These community-led savings groups are a simple and innovative way to develop sustainable livelihoods and promote a circular economy, wellbeing and enterprise development. The system is simple enough; participants (92% women) consistently save small amounts in a collective pool and then provide each other with interest-bearing loans.
At the root of the structure are community, trust, discipline, accountability, and support that foster confidence to build, grow, and improve.
Krone sees the potential for growth by 'building a collaborative ecosystem of partners playing various complementary roles to enable this work to be scaled more rapidly to attain the goal of reaching two million women over the next decade. With more stakeholder engagement, the vision of social and economic justice is achievable.'
Last year, the members in SaveAct's collective savings groups saved a whopping R535-million. In the current context of the country, this is a staggering feat.
As a culture of consumerism, spending is promoted as an important driver of GDP, business growth, job creation, and a generator of tax revenue. However, there's a more problematic facet. Post-apartheid South Africa has framed spending and consumerism as cultural and social signifiers of success, freedom, and equality.
Since democracy, aspirational culture has broadened through advertising, social discourse and the ever-present credit facilities that make it easier for low-income South Africans to participate in the cycle of consumerism. And with this participation comes massive debt.
Under the allure of conspicuous consumption and aspiration is the harsh reality that most South Africans live paycheck to paycheck. Between May 2022 and May 2023, FNB estimated that middle-income South Africans spent up to 80% of their salary within just five days of payday. This finding specifically applies to earners in the R180,000-R500,000/year bracket.
Responsible Finance Forum's 2025 survey indicates that about 10 million adults are over‑indebted, with 12 million struggling financially when informal debt is included.
Of course, it's easy to cast aspersions on how people spend their money. However, many people are in debt not because of overspending on luxuries, but because of everyday costs, exacerbating long-term debt issues, and cultural expectations. And, while the government has introduced measures to encourage saving, these don't always translate into practice.
The reality is that daily survival is more important than long-term security, which is compounded by apathy and disenchantment about the country's political, personal and economic security.
As a business owner, having a bank account and access to capital are crucial. Yet, as of 2022, 15% of South Africans, or about nine million people, were unbanked. The reasons include insufficient funds, limited access to banking infrastructure (both offline and online), and a lack of identification. These problems are even worse for women and youth because of systemic barriers to financial inclusion.
So, while South Africa has made significant strides in financial inclusion, there's still a long way to go, as Mangquzana describes. When she tried to go the traditional route to open a bank account, after months and months of waiting, she was eventually stonewalled. That's when she started with SaveAct and simultaneously entered into their enterprise development support programme.
Asset-Based Community Development
SaveAct applies an internationally recognised Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) stakeholder-driven planning framework. In layman's terms, it helps vulnerable individuals and households identify economic possibilities in their local environment and contexts.
There are many misconceptions about the NPO and NGO sector, such as that these organisations are just handouts or charity-based. However, organisations like SaveAct are committed to long-term problem-solving, giving communities agency and a sense of purpose. The SaveAct model is incredibly successful – savings groups in South Africa save on average six times more than groups across Africa.
And it's not just about saving. SaveAct also addresses the challenges of gender inequality, economic marginalisation and climate vulnerability. SaveAct's programmes are designed to improve livelihoods and empower individuals so that women such as Mangquzana can grow their businesses while also addressing social challenges.
Nolufefe Nonjeke-Dlanjwa has been a passionate programme manager at SaveAct since 2008.
She explains the impact she sees in the communities she works in, 'There is nothing more fulfilling than seeing savings group members, particularly from vulnerable households, diligently putting money aside in these savings groups, strongly believing that what they want to achieve to better their living conditions is possible within realistic milestones. With financial education lessons embedded in the savings group operations, members can make well-informed decisions to better manage their household finances.'
Emerging research shows how savings groups build gender equality in communities through empowerment and gender dialogue. Facilitated gender dialogue raises awareness of unequal power relations and social norms, encouraging shifts in attitudes and behaviours.
Through these interventions, men become gender allies, which reduces domestic conflict and even GBV. Women in savings groups become respected members of the community through their proven ability to manage finances and invest in assets, education, maintenance, and so on.
Climate resilience
SaveAct also helps mitigate the damaging effects of climate change through agroecology and sustainable land management. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2019), climate change is happening more rapidly than predicted.
Many South Africans depend on the land for farming, and the impacts of overgrazing, unsustainable land use and biodiversity loss are worsened by climate change, particularly in regions prone to drought, erratic rainfall and soil degradation. This also has a gendered element because women are more vulnerable to climate change because of economic inequality, their role as caregivers, limited mobility because of restricted access to travel, and health impacts. In rural areas, women are also often responsible for food production and water collection.
Savings groups help communities ease the effects of unanticipated climate shocks and act as a catalyst for resilience by improving cash flow and emergency relief funds. Furthermore, they help secure finances that may be needed to combat land degradation. Reversing land degradation can help adaptation to climate change, but a major challenge is mechanisms to incentivise rural communities to address it. One of the core tenets of SaveAct is sustainable land management because it has immediate and long-term benefits.
Driving change
Mangquzana has implemented what she has learnt from SaveAct and is committed to organic farming and sustainable methods. She uses onions, pepper water and other agroecology methods to keep pests away and is fastidious about her soil quality. Mangquzana keeps a vigilant eye on soil health and has measures in place to ensure it isn't too acidic or degrading. And, she is proud that she is passing on knowledge to the community so that she can drive change.
At face value, these savings groups are just groups of women armed with notebooks. However, they are communities of practice where women drive tangible social, economic and ecological change.
Krone elaborates, 'As women take advantage of these opportunities, they grow in confidence and assume control over their destinies. They are able to assert their agency and push back against systemic violence and marginalisation.'
The burgeoning savings groups in rural South Africa are lived experiences of positive and sustainable change, improved social cohesion, robust gender discourse, social and economic empowerment and climate change resilience.
Rural South African savings groups drive positive, sustainable change, fostering social cohesion, gender equality, empowerment, and climate resilience.
These groups inspire a counterculture of long-term thinking and delayed gratification that proves financial resilience isn't a dream, but a real possibility. And real freedom is in saving. DM
Dr Jaqui Hiltermann is a writer with a PhD in media studies from the University of Cape Town. She writes in her personal capacity.
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