Building bridges or deepening divides: Resources and formal volunteering in post-apartheid South Africa
Stellenbosch Working Paper Series No. WP03/2017Publication date: May 2017
Author(s):
[protected email address] (Dept. Economics, Stellenbosch University)
This study investigates volunteering in a highly unequal society. It uses post-apartheid South Africa as a case study: the enduring apartheid legacy has left deep divides between classes and races in the country. The research asks if formal volunteering serves to enhance social cohesion or reinforces such social divides. Logistic analysis is applied to the 2001 South African World Values Survey, to measure the strength of the relationship between the likelihood to volunteer, and selected human, social and cultural capital variables. The analysis shows that volunteering tends to align with existing social divides. Individuals are more likely to volunteer if they are educated and affluent, supporting the dominant status theory. Prejudice and not valuing sharing are also associated with a higher proclivity for volunteering. Broadly, we find that the available evidence suggests that volunteering is associated with bonding, rather than bridging, social capital. Although hardly uncontentious, broad-based support for and involvement in religious volunteering suggest that religious communities and congregations could in the future provide a bridge to help heal the rifts if links between such communities are strengthened.
JEL Classification:C51, D64, D71, L32
Keywords:Volunteering, human capital, social capital, ‘Ubuntu’, religiosity
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18 Jul 2025 Encouraging data, but messy politics while US tariff deadline loomsThe big global data prints of the week came on Tuesday, with better-than-expected Chinese GDP growth for Q2 and US core CPI coming in lower than expected, but still (finally) reflecting some signs of tariffs being passed on to consumers. Locally, the uptick in mining production and retail sales was positive for Q2 GDP dynamics. In addition to the data,...
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