Community and social attitudes: Findings from the GCRO’s Quality of Life survey 7 (2023/24)

This Data Brief presents results from the GCRO's Quality of Life 7 survey (2023/24) on variables that relate to community and social attitudes in Gauteng.

HEADLINE FINDINGS

• According to the Quality of Life 7 (2023/24) Survey (QoL 7), 30% of the respondents believe that most people in their community can be trusted (Figure 4). Levels of trust are particularly low among Coloured and Black Africans respondents.
• When asked ‘what is the biggest problem facing your neighbourhood or community’, over a third of respondents (36%) indicate that crime is the biggest problem. Unemployment was the second most frequently cited problem (21%), followed by a lack of basic services (16%) (Figure 5).
• Seven out of every ten respondent stated that they had participated in organised social activites in the past year (Figure 7). These include church or religious groups or events, sports or social clubs, stokvels and burial societies, community association or neighbourhood watch, political party or trade union meetings, and other clubs and organisations.
• Participation in organised social activities has increased for respondents from higher income households and decreased for respondents from lower income households (Figure 8).
• There has been an increase in participatory/local governance engagement (57%), rising by six percentage points in QoL 7 (2023/24) from the previous survey in 2020/21 (Figure 7). Participation in local governance has increased for Black Africans while it has decreased for other groups (Figure 9). This measure includes participation in ward meetings, street committee or residents’ association meetings, community development forum meetings, integrated development planning meetings, mayoral imbizo meetings and school governing body meetings.
• One in three respondents (34%) feel they cannot influence community developments, one in three (31%) feels that nobody cares about them and one in five (21%) feel that they do not belong where they live (Figure 10). More than half of Gauteng respondents experience at least one of these feelings.
• Attitudes towards ‘gays and lesbians’ has continued to soften over time. Only 4% of respondents agreed that it was acceptable to be violent to gays and lesbians, down from 15% in 2015/16 (Figure 13).
• In the 2023/24 survey 62% of respondents agree with the statement ‘Blacks and Whites will never trust each other’, an increase of 4% since 2015/16 (Figure 14).