Based on a study of members of stokvels in the Orange Farm community in Johannesburg, South Africa, the article examines the role of stokvels in improving the lives of their members.The results of the study showed that stokvels enable members to meet their basic needs.South Africa continues to face severe poverty and high rates of inequality, with half of the country's population surviving below the poverty line (Statistics South Africa, 2014).A poverty profile survey conducted in 2008/2009 estimated that South Africa's gini coefficient was approximately 0.64 (Statistics South Africa, 2013).
This could be on a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis.Furthermore, many black people were very unfamiliar with formal institutions such as banking and most of those who were illiterate found the formal institutions intimidating therefore; they resorted to accumulating credit through stokvels (Schulze, 1997).As pointed out earlier on, stokvels fall under the realm of informal social security and constitute an important form of social security.Although stokvels are very common in South Africa, "no official recognition is given to this vital savings mechanism in official statistics, which contributes to an underestimation of the importance of these organisations both as saving institutions and as mechanisms of poverty alleviation and social advancement" (Verhoef, 202).Nevertheless, despite the lack of official recognition, stokvels continue to function in post-apartheid South Africa as they provide tremendous socio-economic benefits to society.