Here’s what South Africans get wrong about spending, saving and survival

For years, a familiar narrative has shaped how we understand South Africans and their finances: they are over-indebted, under-saving and prone to conspicuous consumption. Cowhan Govender, group head of personal banking at Standard Bank Personal and Private Banking, said this narrative is reinforced by statistics, the low household savings rate, rising unsecured lending and high levels of personal debt. On the surface, the conclusion seems obvious.

But it is also incomplete. “To truly understand financial behaviour in South Africa, one must move beyond spreadsheets and into lived realities in rural villages, townships and informal settlements,” he said. “There, a very different story unfolds.

It is a story not of reckless consumption, but of aspiration, resilience, and, in many cases, investment under constraint.” Govender said homes financed through a traditional mortgage would correctly be classified as an asset, an investment in long-term wealth and stability. But when a home is built through personal loans or credit cards, it is too often dismissed as evidence of financial imprudence. “This is not just a semantic issue,” he said.

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“It reflects a deeper structural bias in how we define ‘good’ financial behaviour, one that privileges access to formal, secured credit and penalises those who must navigate the system differently. “Yes, unsecured credit can fund consumption, but it can also fund transformation. It builds homes where there were none.

It pays school fees that unlock future earning potential. “It buys vehicles that are not status symbols, but lifelines that enable people to access work opportunities, arrive on time and maintain employment in an economy where public transport is often unreliable.” Govender added that in such cases, what may appear as conspicuous consumption is, in reality, a survival strategy and, at times, a form of long-term investment. He said the same misreading applies to how we measure savings.

“South Africa is often labelled a nation of ‘dissavers’, yet this view relies heavily on formal financial data and overlooks a deeply embedded culture of collective saving outside traditional systems.” Govender highlighted that stokvels continue to grow, mobilising billions across communities. Making reference to theNational Stokvel Association of South Africa, he said more than 11 million South Africans participate instokvels, with over R50 billion circulating through these schemes annually. “This figure excludes informal schemes among families and friends,” he said.

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