Ways To Meet Over 60s In South Africa

Meeting new people gets harder as you get older, especially once work has finished, or the children have moved to another province or overseas. It is worth the effort though, for your head as much as your heart. Here are ten ways for South Africans over 60 to meet other over 60s. Most of them cost little or nothing, and online dating is one of them:

• Go To A parkrun

  If you do one thing on this list, make it this one. parkrun is free, it is 5km, it happens every Saturday at 8am, and there are well over 200 of them across South Africa. You are welcome to walk the whole way, and every event has a tail walker whose job is to come in last so that nobody else does. You register once, print your barcode, and it works at any parkrun anywhere. It runs in ordinary public parks in every province, it costs nothing, and everybody is there for the same reason. The coffee and the chatting afterwards is really the point.

• Enter The Golden Games

  The Golden Games are run every year by the Department of Social Development together with the provinces and the South African Older Persons Forum, and 2025 was the nineteenth year. Over a thousand people aged 60 and up take part, from all nine provinces. The events are a mix of the sporting and the sociable: a brisk walk, athletics, soccer, jukskei, ring the ball, throwing a rugby ball, and then choral music and a national dialogue alongside it. It is free to take part. Ask at your local service centre or your municipality about the provincial rounds.

• Find Your Local Service Centre

  Provincial Social Development departments fund registered organisations to run service centres for older persons. They put on exercise, recreation, cultural and spiritual activities, classes, and in many cases a meal. They are the closest thing South Africa has to a national network of places built for over 60s to spend time together, and they are usually free or very cheap. In the Western Cape you can ring 0800 220 250 to ask what is near you; elsewhere start with your municipality or your provincial Social Development office.

• Join A Bowls Club

  Bowls is one of the biggest over 60 social networks in the country and most people underestimate it. Bowls South Africa has around 513 clubs and more than 23,000 registered members, with a veterans stream. Every club has a bar or a tea room and the sitting around afterwards is half of it. It is gentle on the knees, you can start as a complete beginner in your sixties, and clubs are generally short of new members and glad to see you.

• Try U3A

  U3A stands for the University of the Third Age, and it is learning for the pleasure of it with no exams and no qualifications at the end. The Cape Town branch alone runs more than seventy courses at a time, holds a monthly talk at the Baxter that draws several hundred people, and has its own hiking group. Membership is R100 a year. There are branches in the Helderberg, Johannesburg, Gqeberha, Plettenberg Bay and Fish Hoek. Classes are held in municipal libraries, community halls, retirement villages and members' homes.

• Walk Somewhere Free And Busy

  You do not need a club to go walking, and the best places are the ones that are already full of people. Durban's Golden Mile and the Sea Point promenade are flat, paved, busy and free. Most cities have a park or a green belt that does the same job. The national botanical gardens are worth knowing about too, because South African pensioners with an ID get in free on Tuesdays. If you would rather walk with a group, the Mountain Club of South Africa has been going since 1891 and has sections in fourteen places around the country.

• Join Probus, Rotary Or Lions

  Probus is specifically for retired and semi-retired people, with 55 clubs and around 2,200 members in South Africa, meeting monthly for a speaker and an outing. One thing worth knowing before you ring: you need to be proposed and seconded by existing members, so it helps to go along as somebody's guest first. Rotary and Lions both have a strong presence and take a wider age range, and both are a good fit if you would rather be doing something useful than sitting in a circle.

• Your Church, Mosque, Temple Or Synagogue

  Worth stating plainly because it is where an enormous number of South Africans over 60 actually see people every week. Beyond the service itself there are usually study groups, choirs, catering teams, outreach work, bazaars and social mornings, and most of them are permanently short of hands. If you have drifted away from yours, going back for the social side alone is a perfectly good reason.

• Get Involved Where You Live

  Community policing forums are set up by law and attached to your local police station, and neighbourhood watches work alongside them. People join for the safety side and stay for the company, because you end up knowing your neighbours properly, which is not nothing at any age. Street committees, residents' associations, community gardens and the school governing body all do the same thing. If you are in a retirement village or complex there is usually a committee and it is usually looking for people.

• Online Dating

  Last of the ten, and worth a try. Sites built for older South Africans, like Singles Over 60, keep it simple, because everyone is in the same age bracket and there for the same reason. You can search, send a message and take as long as you like before meeting anybody. It works on a phone, which for most people here is the point, and you can do the reading and the deciding in your own time. Put some effort into your profile, use a recent photo, be clear about what you are looking for, and meet somewhere public and busy the first time.

Whichever you pick, it works the same way: going back a second and a third time is what turns strangers into people you know. Most of these will let you come along once and see how you find it before you commit to anything, and if the first one does not suit you, there are nine others above it.

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