The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer shows that South Africans are placing responsibility on business leaders and employers to act as trust brokers and help bridge divides across society.
23 April, 2026 - South Africa - As economic pressure and uncertainty mount, people are pulling closer to what they know, demonstrating unwillingness or hesitation to trust others who are different from them. This points to a more insular mindset taking hold, with trust settling into smaller, more familiar circles and making it harder for society to move forward together. While all institutions are expected to help bridge these divides, employers and business leaders are seen as best placed to do so.
According to the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer, nearly seven in ten South Africans (68%) say they are either unwilling (30%) or hesitant (38%) to trust someone who has different values, information sources, approaches to solving societal problems, or backgrounds.
“The issue is that those who are more inward-looking consistently express lower levels of trust in institutions, particularly where leadership does not reflect their own values or backgrounds,” said Karena Crerar, CEO at Edelman Africa. “The Edelman Trust Barometer measures trust across business, government, media, and NGOs, and what it shows is that people are not experiencing these institutions in the same way, arriving at very different conclusions about whether they are competent, whether they act fairly, and whether they can be relied on, with income, in particular, becoming a defining line in how those judgements are formed.”
For the first time since 2014, neither high- nor low-income South Africans fall into outright distrust of institutions (on average across business, government, media, and NGOs). High-income respondents record a Trust Index of 61, placing them in the “trust” category, while low-income respondents sit at 53, in the “neutral” range, leaving an eight-point gap that, while narrower than previous peaks, is quite evident. This divide extends into how these institutions are perceived. Business is rated highest on both competence and ethics scores by both income groups, while government ranks lowest, with negative scores across both measures. NGOs and media sit closer to the middle. Across all institutions but government, high-income respondents consistently assign higher scores than low-income respondents, with the gap most pronounced in perceptions of business.
“When trust is not held consistently across society, institutions lose their ability to function as shared points of reference, making it harder to build consensus and move forward on issues that require collective alignment,” said Crerar. “There is a way around this, however, and it is through a novel concept called trust brokering. A trust broker helps to create a path for progress and cooperation despite insularity by surfacing common interests and translating their needs, goals, and realities for one another.”
The responsibility to act as trust brokers in South Africa is being placed squarely on employers and business leaders, but their performance is falling short of expectations. Seventy-six percent of South Africans say CEOs are obligated to help bridge divides, yet only 52% believe they are doing well, with a similar pattern at an organisational level where 81% of employees say their employer has this responsibility compared to 66% who say it is being met. Across business more broadly, 78% see an obligation, while just 50% believe it is being fulfilled.
“The findings show strong support for creating more direct interaction between people from different backgrounds, whether within organisations or through partnerships that bring together groups that would not ordinarily engage. There is also a clear view that teams should be structured to require individuals with different values and viewpoints to work together, supported by a shared sense of identity and the ability to navigate disagreement productively,” said Crerar. “Leadership, in particular, is expected to play a more active role, with CEOs being asked to seek out perspectives that differ from their own and engage directly with groups that may be critical or distrustful, not to resolve disagreement immediately, but to ensure it is understood and taken into account.”
Done effectively, trust brokering at this level has the potential to bridge divides and narrow the income-based trust gap evident across South Africa.