When the world turns inward, SA’s social fabric begins to fray

South Africa is entering a social crisis that is unfolding quietly – not through dramatic collapse or mass protest, but through the slow disappearance of the everyday structures that make life in fragile communities bearable.

This crisis is not driven by a sudden increase in need. Poverty, inequality and violence have long shaped South African life. What has changed is the weakening of the civic systems that buffer communities from these pressures – systems that sit between the state, the market and the most vulnerable.

For decades, a significant portion of this social infrastructure was carried by civil society organisations, many of them supported through international development funding. European governments and the US invested in health, education and social programmes as part of a broader commitment to global stability. That commitment is now receding.

Across Europe, domestic pressures, security concerns and rising populism have pushed governments to prioritise voters at home over long-term stability abroad. In the US, foreign aid has become increasingly transactional and ideologically contested. Development funding, once framed as shared responsibility, is now treated as a discretionary expense.

Growing gap between social need and capacity

The result is a widening gap between social need and social capacity.

Across the country, community programmes are shrinking or closing. After-school centres are reducing operating days. Skilled social workers, youth workers and educators are leaving the sector. Long-standing relationships of trust, built patiently over years, are being quietly dismantled. This is not because these services are no longer needed, but because the systems that sustained them are eroding.

What makes this moment particularly dangerous is that its consequences are cumulative rather than immediate. When after-school programmes disappear, learning losses surface years later. When family support services close, the impact shows up in higher rates of violence, school dropout and mental health crises. When youth development pathways are disrupted, the costs are borne by society long after the organisations themselves have vanished.

Civil society as social infrastructure

Civil society is often spoken about as if it were an optional add-on to democracy – a moral extra rather than a functional necessity. In reality, it is part of the country’s social infrastructure. It performs work that neither the state nor the market can do well or cheaply: long-term accompaniment, trust-building, early intervention and moral accountability.

As this infrastructure weakens, pressure shifts elsewhere – onto schools, clinics, police services and families already stretched beyond capacity. The social fabric does not tear all at once; it thins until it can no longer absorb shock.

Yet public debate continues to focus narrowly on the viability of individual non-profit organisations. We ask why they are retrenching staff, closing programmes or “failing to fundraise”. This framing misses the deeper issue. What we are witnessing is not organisational failure, but systemic withdrawal in a changing global order.

South Africa now faces a choice. We can continue to treat civil society as charity-dependent and externally funded, or we can recognise it as core social infrastructure and invest accordingly. This means rethinking funding models, strengthening local partnerships, supporting social enterprises and moving beyond charity towards approaches rooted in dignity, agency and shared responsibility.

If we fail to do so, the costs will not be confined to the non-profit sector. They will be paid later, at far greater expense, through remedial schooling, emergency healthcare, policing and social repair that could have been prevented.

This is not a non-profit crisis. It is a social one – and it is already unfolding. DM

Deon Snyman is the MD of the Goedgedacht Trust, a rural development organisation in the Western Cape. He holds a PhD in Old Testament, an MA in Ancient Languages, and an MPhil in Political Studies, and has worked for more than two decades at the intersection of social justice, community development and leadership formation, with a focus on children, youth and families in vulnerable communities.