Social Isolation and Loneliness Among Older People in South Africa: Building Connected Communities

An older person may live with relatives and still spend most of the day alone. Another may live independently yet remain deeply connected through neighbours, faith communities, friends and local organisations. A third may have a large family living hundreds of kilometres away because younger relatives have migrated for work. Social connection in later life cannot therefore be measured simply by asking who shares an address.

This distinction is increasingly important as South Africa's older population grows. The wider South Africa Ageing, Long-Term Care & Community Support Knowledge Hub examines how demographic change is reshaping care, family support and community services. Loneliness and social isolation add another dimension: whether longer lives remain connected to relationships, participation and a meaningful place within community life.

South Africa already has important foundations. The Older Persons Act 13 of 2006 places participation, community-based support and the maintenance of older people's status and wellbeing within the country's legislative framework. The Department of Social Development's Active Ageing Programme promotes engagement, physical activity and social participation, while registered community-based services can provide meals, recreation, education, exercise and cultural or spiritual activities.

Yet access to these opportunities is uneven. Transport, personal safety, disability, poverty, settlement patterns, family migration and service availability can determine whether an older person can actually participate. The central policy challenge is therefore not simply to create activities for older people. It is to build communities in which maintaining relationships and participation remains practically possible as people age.

Loneliness and social isolation are related but different

Social isolation describes an objective shortage of social contact, relationships or participation. Loneliness is the subjective experience of feeling that one's relationships do not provide the connection, companionship or belonging one needs. The two frequently overlap, but not always.

An older person living alone may have regular contact with neighbours, attend religious services, participate in a service centre and speak frequently with family. Another person may live in a crowded multigenerational household but feel excluded from decisions, spend long periods without meaningful conversation or experience little companionship.

This distinction matters operationally. A response based only on household composition will miss people who are lonely despite being surrounded by others. Conversely, treating everyone who lives alone as socially isolated can undermine autonomy and overlook strong informal networks.

Statistics South Africa reported that around 11% of older people were living alone in 2024, compared with just under 10% in 2003. Provincial patterns differ considerably. These figures are useful for understanding household structure, but they cannot measure the quality of relationships within or beyond the home.

The more useful assessment therefore considers several dimensions together: frequency of contact, strength of relationships, participation outside the home, practical barriers to participation and the older person's own experience of connection.

This is consistent with person-centred planning for older people. Social connection should be understood from the individual's perspective rather than reduced to a standard number of visits or activities.

South Africa's ageing pattern is changing the geography of connection

South Africa's population aged 60 and older has grown substantially during the past two decades. This demographic transition is occurring alongside urbanisation, internal migration and continuing movement between provinces and between rural and metropolitan areas.

These processes can reshape family support. Adult children may move to Gauteng, the Western Cape or other economic centres while older parents remain in the Eastern Cape, Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal or another home community. Remittances and telephone contact can maintain important family relationships, but physical distance changes what relatives can provide day to day.

Migration can also operate in the opposite direction. Older people may move to live with adult children after bereavement, declining health or increasing support needs. The move may improve practical care while separating the person from longstanding neighbours, friends, faith communities and familiar routines.

Older women are particularly important within this picture because women substantially outnumber men in South Africa's older population. Women may also have longer periods of widowhood and can remain central to multigenerational households through childcare, household management and income sharing.

The implication is that demographic ageing should not be interpreted only as rising demand for personal care. It also changes the infrastructure required to sustain relationships. Community organisations, transport, safe public spaces, communication technology and local meeting places become part of the practical response to ageing.

Organisations considering how demographic and geographic changes could alter future demand can use the Digital Twin Scenario Modeller to structure alternative capacity and population scenarios. It is a general analytical resource rather than a South African demographic forecasting system.

The Older Persons Act creates a community participation framework

South Africa's Older Persons Act marked an important shift away from viewing older-person services primarily through residential institutions. Its wider purpose includes maintaining and promoting older people's status, wellbeing, safety and security while supporting participation and community life.

Community-based care and support services operate within this framework. Registered services are expected to comply with national norms and standards and are subject to monitoring. Their role can extend beyond personal care into activities that maintain health, social engagement and participation.

Service centres are particularly relevant to social connection. Depending on local provision, they can offer combinations of meals, physical activity, recreation, educational opportunities, awareness programmes, cultural activities and spiritual participation. They can also provide an informal point at which changes in an older person's circumstances become visible.

This matters because loneliness rarely arrives as a neatly defined service request. A person may simply stop attending. Someone who previously joined activities several times a week may gradually disappear after a fall, bereavement, deterioration in vision or loss of affordable transport.

The operational opportunity lies in noticing the change. Attendance data alone should not become intrusive surveillance, but unexplained withdrawal can be a useful prompt for proportionate contact where a relationship already exists.

Community-based provision therefore has both social and preventative value. It can strengthen prevention and early intervention by creating ordinary settings in which emerging difficulties can be recognised before they become crises.

Operational scenario: absence from a service centre reveals a changing life

A 73-year-old widow in the Western Cape has attended a local older-person service centre for several years. She joins exercise sessions, eats lunch there twice a week and has developed a close group of friends. Staff notice that she has stopped attending and has not responded to messages from other members.

The absence could easily be treated as a personal choice. Instead, because the change is unusual, a worker makes proportionate contact. The woman explains that she recently fell while walking to the transport point. She was not seriously injured but has become frightened of falling again and now leaves home only when her niece can accompany her.

The problem is therefore not primarily loneliness, although isolation is beginning to develop. The underlying pathway includes fear of falling, reduced confidence and transport access. A response based only on inviting her back to activities would not address those barriers.

With her agreement, the situation is connected to appropriate health and rehabilitation support. Her mobility and falls risks can be considered, while the service centre explores whether existing community arrangements can help her return safely. Friends from the centre maintain contact during the transition rather than allowing the social relationship to disappear while the practical issue is addressed.

If several members begin withdrawing for similar reasons, the evidence becomes more significant. Repeated transport or mobility barriers should be visible within service planning rather than being interpreted as unrelated individual attendance problems.

The scenario demonstrates an important principle: social isolation can be an outcome of another unresolved need. Effective responses identify the barrier to connection rather than simply prescribing more social activity.

Neighbourhood safety can determine whether social participation is realistic

Community participation requires people to feel sufficiently safe to leave home. This is a significant issue in South Africa. Recent national evidence shows substantial concern among older people about walking alone in their neighbourhoods, particularly after dark, with a meaningful minority also reporting that they feel unsafe during the day.

The effect on ageing can be cumulative. An older person who stops walking to shops, visiting neighbours or attending community activities may become physically less active as well as socially isolated. Reduced activity can contribute to deconditioning, which then makes leaving home more difficult even when the original safety concern is not present.

Fear does not need to be dismissed as irrational to recognise this cycle. Crime, poor lighting, inaccessible routes, traffic, uneven surfaces and previous experiences can all affect people's willingness to move through their neighbourhood.

This creates an intersection between social care and the built environment. Community safety, street design, transport and public space are not traditionally classified as older-person services, yet they influence whether older residents can exercise the rights and participation envisaged in social policy.

The previous article in this series examined housing and ageing. The same principle extends beyond the front door: an accessible home cannot guarantee independence if the surrounding environment effectively confines the person indoors.

Responses to loneliness therefore need to include health inequalities and prevention. The opportunity to remain socially active should not depend entirely on having a private car, paying for transport or living in a neighbourhood with extensive amenities.

Family connection is vital, but family presence cannot be assumed

Family remains one of the strongest sources of practical and emotional support for many older South Africans. Multigenerational households can provide companionship, reciprocal care and continuity across generations. Older people may contribute substantially through pensions, childcare, household knowledge and support for younger relatives rather than occupying a passive dependent role.

However, the strength of family networks should not lead policy to assume that loneliness is automatically prevented within families. Employment patterns can leave an older person alone for most of the day. Migration can place adult children far away. Conflict, bereavement, illness or changing household relationships can weaken previously reliable support.

Family involvement can also become dominated by tasks. A daughter may visit to collect medication, buy groceries and clean the house yet have little time for relaxed companionship. Practical support is essential, but it is not identical to social connection.

Older people themselves may hesitate to disclose loneliness because they do not want to appear ungrateful or place additional demands on relatives. Some may experience ageism within households, including being excluded from decisions because younger family members assume they are no longer interested or capable.

This makes constructive involvement of family and wider networks valuable without turning relatives into an unlimited social-care resource. Assessment can explore who matters to the person, which relationships they want to maintain and whether support could help preserve those connections.

Families separated by distance can use digital communication to maintain relationships, but digital contact works best as an extension of human connection rather than a complete substitute for physical presence.

Bereavement, retirement and declining health can change social identity

Loneliness is not simply a shortage of people. It can follow the loss of roles through which a person previously understood their place in the world.

Bereavement may remove a lifelong companion and alter relationships with mutual friends. Retirement can reduce everyday contact with colleagues. Disability or chronic illness may prevent participation in church, community organisations, sport or voluntary activity. Moving home can separate somebody from neighbours who have known them for decades.

These transitions can be especially important where identity is strongly connected with contribution. Older South Africans often remain economically, socially and practically active. Some continue working, while many provide childcare, support households financially or participate in community and faith organisations.

Approaches that define active ageing only as organised exercise therefore capture too little. Participation can include mentoring younger people, volunteering, gardening, caring for grandchildren, religious activity, cultural life, informal enterprise, neighbourhood leadership or simply maintaining friendships.

The question is not whether every older person is sufficiently "active". People have different personalities, abilities and preferences, and solitude can be valued. The appropriate outcome is choice: people should not become isolated because physical, financial or systemic barriers remove opportunities they would otherwise choose.

This distinction also protects against paternalism. Social participation programmes should not treat older people as recipients who need to be entertained. They can create opportunities for older people to shape activities, contribute knowledge and remain recognised as participants in community life.

South Africa's Active Ageing Programme provides an important platform

The Department of Social Development's Active Ageing Programme is delivered with partners including provincial social development departments, other government actors and the South African Older Persons Forum. Its activities have included dialogue, cultural participation and the Golden Games, through which older people take part in sporting and recreational events.

The programme is significant because it presents ageing as a normal stage of life associated with participation and capability rather than only frailty and dependency. National dialogue associated with active ageing has also explicitly recognised issues including mental health, social isolation, loneliness, abuse and access to services.

Large events, however, are only one layer of an effective participation strategy. Sustainable connection is created mainly in everyday communities. An older person benefits from a national celebration of active ageing, but the more persistent question is what opportunities exist during the remaining weeks of the year.

Local service centres, community organisations, faith groups, sports and cultural organisations, libraries, neighbourhood networks and older people's groups can provide that continuity. Their reach will differ substantially between provinces and communities.

This creates a governance challenge. Success should not be measured only through attendance at events. Decision-makers also need to understand who is not participating and why.

Useful evidence can include geographic reach, repeat participation, accessibility, reasons for withdrawal and feedback from older people. Organisations examining similar evidence questions can use the Quality Dashboard Builder to connect activity measures with outcomes and patterns of access. The framework does not replace South African programme monitoring requirements.

Operational scenario: relocation creates practical support but unexpected loneliness

A 79-year-old man from Limpopo moves to Gauteng to live with his son after developing increasing difficulty managing household tasks alone. His son and daughter-in-law provide a secure room, meals and help with appointments. From a conventional care perspective, the move appears successful.

Several months later he becomes increasingly withdrawn. He speaks less, spends much of the day watching television and tells a primary healthcare worker that there is "nothing for me here". His family initially interprets this as normal ageing.

Further conversation reveals that the move separated him from the church he attended for more than 30 years, neighbours with whom he met regularly and the language and routines of his previous community. His family is at work during the day, leaving him alone for long periods.

The response does not require reversing the move automatically. His practical support needs remain real. Instead, the family and community services explore what connection could be rebuilt in Gauteng while maintaining relationships with Limpopo. A nearby faith community is identified, transport to an older-person activity is explored and family members help him establish regular calls with friends from home.

Most importantly, he is asked what he wants rather than being assigned activities considered appropriate for an older person.

Over time, his family recognises that housing and food had solved only part of the original problem. The scenario demonstrates why cultural and identity needs can be central to later-life wellbeing. Continuity of belonging may matter as much as continuity of physical care.

Poverty can narrow the radius of social life

Social participation often has costs even when an activity itself is free. Transport must be paid for. A person may need suitable clothing, food while away from home or money to contribute to a community event. Mobile data costs affect digital contact. Disability may require accompaniment that creates another transport cost.

South Africa's Older Person's Grant provides crucial income security for millions of people, but grant income often contributes to wider household expenditure. An older person may therefore have little discretionary income available for social participation.

This can produce a gradual narrowing of life. Visits become less frequent because taxi fares are expensive. Church attendance reduces. Trips to friends or relatives are reserved for special occasions. Eventually, the person's social world becomes concentrated around whoever can reach the home.

Poverty and loneliness should not be treated as interchangeable. Many low-income communities have strong social networks, while wealth does not protect someone from loneliness. Financial resources nevertheless influence the choices available for maintaining connection.

Community-based services can reduce some barriers by providing activities and meals locally, but their distribution matters. A programme several kilometres away may technically exist while remaining inaccessible to someone who cannot afford or manage transport.

This is why equity analysis should examine effective reach rather than service presence alone. A map showing one service centre within a district says little about whether older residents in surrounding communities can actually use it.

Rural communities combine strong networks with distinctive access risks

Rural ageing should not be described only through disadvantage. Long-established communities may provide strong neighbour relationships, cultural continuity and informal mutual support. Older people can hold valued social roles and maintain deep attachment to place.

At the same time, distance can make formal participation difficult. Transport to services may be irregular or costly. Younger relatives may have migrated for employment. Poor mobility can transform relatively modest distances into substantial barriers.

The result can be a paradox: somebody may feel strongly embedded in their community while becoming increasingly physically isolated within it.

Outreach therefore matters. Community-based organisations, health workers and social development services can extend contact beyond fixed facilities. Mobile and outreach models may be particularly useful where population density does not support a large permanent service in every locality.

Workforce planning has to account for travel time. A worker covering dispersed households cannot achieve the same number of face-to-face contacts as somebody operating within a dense urban neighbourhood. Performance measures that ignore geography can inadvertently discourage the very outreach required to reach isolated people.

Technology can extend specialist and family contact, but connectivity and digital confidence vary. Rural inclusion therefore needs blended models in which digital communication complements rather than replaces local human relationships.

Townships and informal settlements present a different connection challenge

High population density does not automatically prevent loneliness. Townships and informal settlements can contain extensive family and neighbourhood networks, yet older residents may still become isolated when disability, safety concerns or inaccessible environments restrict movement.

A person may live only a short distance from shops or neighbours but be unable to negotiate uneven ground, steep pathways or busy roads. Fear of crime can further restrict movement. Overcrowded housing can paradoxically coexist with limited privacy and poor-quality social interaction.

Local community organisations can be especially important in these settings because they understand neighbourhood relationships and can identify older residents who have gradually withdrawn. However, reliance on informal networks without adequate formal support can place excessive responsibility on volunteers and families.

The stronger approach combines community capacity with accessible infrastructure and accountable services. This reflects the wider principle of community benefit and local partnership: formal systems can strengthen existing community assets without assuming those assets have unlimited capacity.

Digital connection can reduce distance without eliminating loneliness

Mobile phones and digital communication have changed the possibilities for maintaining family relationships across South Africa. An older parent in the Eastern Cape can speak regularly with children in Gauteng. Video calls can enable grandparents to remain involved in grandchildren's lives. Messaging groups can sustain connections between friends and community organisations.

Digital participation may also provide access to information, religious services, health communication and interest-based communities. For someone whose mobility is restricted, these connections can materially expand daily life.

Yet digital inclusion is not simply a question of whether a person owns a phone. Data affordability, device capability, electricity, network coverage, eyesight, hearing, dexterity, literacy and confidence all affect usability. Fraud and scams can also create understandable anxiety.

There is a further qualitative limitation. Digital contact cannot always substitute for physical companionship, touch, shared meals or being present within a community. Technology should therefore expand the range of relationships available rather than becoming justification for withdrawing face-to-face services.

Good practice follows digital inclusion and access principles: offer support to build confidence, retain non-digital alternatives and allow the older person to decide how technology fits within their relationships.

Organisations considering technology-enabled community support can use the Digital Transformation Readiness Assessment to examine infrastructure, digital capability, governance and implementation risks before expanding digital models. It should not be interpreted as evidence that digital delivery is appropriate for every older person or South African community.

Operational scenario: technology reconnects a family but does not replace local relationships

An 81-year-old woman lives alone in the Eastern Cape. Two of her children work in Cape Town and another lives in Johannesburg. They telephone regularly, but visits are infrequent because of distance and cost. After developing arthritis, she attends church less often and spends increasing amounts of time at home.

Her children buy her a smartphone and begin weekly family video calls. The calls are valuable: she sees her grandchildren, participates in family discussions and feels less distant from important events. Yet her everyday routine remains largely unchanged.

A local community worker learns that the main obstacle to participation is not absence of family contact but difficulty walking the route to activities. With the woman's agreement, her mobility needs are considered and local relationships are explored. A neighbour who already attends a community group begins accompanying her when practical, while the family continues digital contact.

The combination works because each intervention addresses a different type of connection. Technology maintains geographically distant family relationships. Local support restores participation within the community where she actually lives.

Governance should preserve that distinction. A service should not record "digital contact established" and assume social isolation has been resolved. Follow-up needs to ask whether the person's desired relationships and activities have genuinely increased.

The scenario also illustrates why technology should be evaluated through outcomes-focused support. The meaningful measure is not the device supplied or calls completed, but whether the person has greater connection, choice and participation.

Health services can identify isolation without medicalising it

Older people with chronic conditions have regular contact with parts of the health system even when they have little contact with formal social services. Primary healthcare clinics, community health workers, rehabilitation professionals and hospital teams can therefore encounter social isolation that would otherwise remain invisible.

Recognition does not mean treating loneliness as a disease. The purpose is to understand whether social circumstances are affecting health, recovery or ability to follow treatment.

An older person repeatedly missing clinic appointments may have transport difficulties and no one available to accompany them. Someone recovering from illness may become deconditioned because they are afraid to leave home alone. Depression, bereavement, hearing loss or cognitive change may also affect participation.

Health workers need somewhere meaningful to refer people when social needs are identified. Screening without a functioning community pathway risks documenting loneliness without changing it.

This is where relationships between primary healthcare, community-based older-person services, social workers, rehabilitation and local organisations become important. The goal is not to create a single organisation responsible for loneliness. It is to ensure that recognised needs do not disappear at organisational boundaries.

Referral quality can be tested through simple questions: Was contact made? Could the person access the service? Did the intervention address the barrier they identified? Did circumstances improve?

These closed-loop principles strengthen accountability without turning ordinary community relationships into overly clinical processes.

Operational scenario: repeated clinic attendance reveals bereavement and withdrawal

A 68-year-old man in KwaZulu-Natal begins attending a primary healthcare clinic more frequently with vague physical complaints. Clinical assessment does not identify a new condition explaining the change. During a longer conversation, he tells a nurse that his wife died six months earlier.

Since her death he has stopped attending community activities they previously enjoyed together. His adult children live elsewhere and he rarely cooks proper meals. He insists that he is "managing", but acknowledges that some days he speaks to nobody.

The appropriate response is not to label every symptom as loneliness. His physical health still requires proper assessment. At the same time, bereavement and social withdrawal are relevant to his overall wellbeing.

With his agreement, the clinic connects him with locally available community support and discusses whether he would value contact with an older-person group. His preferences matter: he is not interested in organised sport but would consider joining a community gardening activity and reconnecting with his faith community.

Follow-up focuses on whether he has begun rebuilding meaningful routines rather than merely whether a referral was issued.

If the clinic repeatedly identifies older patients whose social needs contribute to deteriorating wellbeing, the pattern can inform relationships with social development and community organisations. The purpose of data is then not simply case recording; it is identifying where community pathways need strengthening.

Workforce practice should recognise connection as part of wellbeing

Social connection does not require a new specialist profession for every older person. Existing workforces can nevertheless become more attentive to it.

Social workers, community-based caregivers, community health workers, nurses, rehabilitation professionals and staff within older-person services may all notice changes in participation. The required competence is often not specialist loneliness treatment but curiosity about the person's ordinary life.

Questions about who the person sees, what activities matter to them and what they have stopped doing can reveal information that conventional task-based assessment misses.

Training should also challenge ageist assumptions. Withdrawal should not automatically be regarded as an inevitable part of ageing. Neither should every person be pressured into group activities. Some people prefer smaller networks or substantial time alone.

Good practice therefore combines recognition with respect for autonomy. Workers can create opportunities, address barriers and connect people with appropriate services without prescribing a preferred social lifestyle.

Supervision can help staff distinguish between social isolation, safeguarding concerns, depression, cognitive change and ordinary personal preference. Where risk is emerging, escalation should follow the relevant professional and service pathways rather than being contained within an activity programme.

This connects social participation with the wider skills required within older-person services. Relationship-based observation is an important form of intelligence when it leads to proportionate action.

Governance should ask who remains outside the network

Community programmes can appear successful because the people who attend them are visible. The greater governance challenge is understanding those who do not.

High attendance at an active ageing event says little about an older person confined to home by inaccessible transport. A well-used service centre may still have limited reach into surrounding rural communities. Digital engagement figures can obscure people without devices or connectivity.

Effective oversight therefore needs to examine distribution as well as volume. Useful questions include whether participation reflects the communities served, whether particular geographic areas have limited access, why people stop attending and whether disability or transport barriers recur.

Older people's own feedback is essential. Satisfaction with an activity is useful, but participation in service design can reveal different questions: what is missing, which times are impractical, whether transport feels safe, whether activities reflect local culture and whether people feel genuinely welcomed.

Organisations examining how community experience reaches leadership can use the Governance Maturity Assessment to structure questions about responsibility, evidence and escalation. Its value in an international context lies in the governance discipline rather than any assumption of a particular South African organisational model.

Where patterns persist, governance should lead to adaptation. Repeated non-attendance caused by transport is not simply an individual behaviour issue. Consistent exclusion of people with mobility impairments is not solved by increasing publicity. Evidence should influence service location, outreach, partnerships and resource decisions.

Connected communities are created across systems

No single government department can eliminate social isolation. The conditions that support connection extend across social development, health, human settlements, transport, safety, communications, culture, sport and municipal infrastructure.

Nor does government create every meaningful relationship. Families, neighbours, churches, mosques, community organisations, older people's associations, sports groups and informal networks generate much of the social connection that matters most.

The public-system role is partly to avoid placing unnecessary barriers around those relationships and partly to provide support where informal networks are insufficient.

This suggests a layered response. Individual assessment can identify people experiencing significant isolation. Community services can create participation opportunities. Accessible transport and neighbourhoods make those opportunities reachable. Digital inclusion can maintain distant relationships. Income security can reduce financial barriers. Health and social services can recognise emerging withdrawal. Governance can identify communities that remain underserved.

The strength lies in the interaction between these layers rather than any single loneliness programme.

International learning: connection should be treated as infrastructure for ageing well

Many countries are examining loneliness as their populations age, but South Africa's context cautions against importing models built around very different welfare systems, household structures and service networks.

The transferable principle is that social connection is shaped structurally as well as personally. Transport, housing, safety, income and digital access can determine whether relationships remain practically sustainable.

South Africa also demonstrates why family-centred cultures should not be assumed to protect automatically against loneliness. Strong family networks can be enormously protective, yet migration, employment, bereavement and changing household structures can still create isolation. The existence of relatives is not evidence that the person's need for belonging is being met.

A further lesson concerns community assets. Informal networks and civil-society organisations can provide connection that formal services cannot manufacture. Systems should recognise and strengthen those assets without transferring unlimited responsibility onto unpaid communities.

Finally, social participation is not merely a wellbeing extra added after health and care needs have been addressed. Connection can influence physical activity, confidence, recovery, nutrition, mental wellbeing and the sustainability of living independently. Its relevance therefore extends across the wider long-term-care system.

Conclusion

As South Africa's older population grows, maintaining social connection will become an increasingly important part of ageing well. The challenge is not adequately described by counting how many older people live alone. Loneliness and isolation emerge through the interaction of relationships, bereavement, migration, health, disability, income, neighbourhood safety, transport, digital access and the opportunities available within each community.

South Africa already has valuable foundations. The Older Persons Act places participation and community life within the country's approach to older people. Community-based services, service centres, the Active Ageing Programme and extensive family, faith and neighbourhood networks provide practical routes through which connection can be sustained. Their effectiveness, however, depends on whether older people can actually reach and shape them.

The stronger forward direction is therefore not a single national intervention for loneliness. It is to make social connection visible across ordinary ageing policy and practice: in community services, primary healthcare, housing, transport, digital inclusion, family support and local planning. Evidence should show not only how many people participate but who remains outside those networks and why.

Connected communities cannot remove every experience of loneliness. Bereavement, changing relationships and personal circumstances will always form part of human life. They can, however, prevent avoidable isolation from becoming an accepted consequence of ageing. For South Africa, that means treating participation, belonging and meaningful relationships as part of the infrastructure that enables people to live longer lives with independence, identity and a continuing place in their communities.