South African equity has had a meaningful resurgence. After years of global funds dominating shorter-term performance tables, the JSE has reasserted itself — helped by rand stability, commodity strength, and the early fruits of political normalisation. The 3-year peer group median for SA equity general funds is now sitting above 14% per annum. That’s a number worth paying attention to.
But peer group medians don’t pay your bills. What matters is whether your fund is consistently above them — ideally across more than one time horizon. In this update, we’ve refreshed the rankings using data to 30 April 2026, sourced from Morningstar. We cover the top 5 performers across both the ASISA SA Equity General and SA Equity SA General categories, over 3-, 5-, and 10-year periods.
One housekeeping note before we get into the tables: the two categories differ mainly in mandate scope. SA Equity General funds can hold up to 45% offshore; SA Equity SA General funds are restricted to local assets only. For most investors, the distinction is less important than understanding which managers are consistently delivering — and that’s what this article focuses on.
- Key Definitions
- Why SA Equity Deserves a Closer Look Right Now
- Top 5 SA Equity Funds: 3-Year Performance
- Top 5 SA Equity Funds: 5-Year Performance
- Top 5 SA Equity Funds: 10-Year Performance
- Which Managers Keep Showing Up?
- The Boutique Dominance Story
- What Should You Actually Do With This?
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Rankings Don’t Build Portfolios — Context Does
Key Definitions
ASISA SA Equity General
A unit trust category covering funds that invest primarily in South African-listed equities. Funds in this category may hold a portion offshore (typically up to 45%), which means returns also reflect currency movements and global market conditions. Classified by the Association for Savings and Investment South Africa (ASISA).
ASISA SA Equity SA General
A more restrictive sub-category covering funds that invest exclusively (or near-exclusively) in South African-listed shares. No significant offshore exposure. Returns reflect only local market and rand-denominated asset performance.
Peer Group Median
The middle return among all funds in a given ASISA category over a specified period. Half of all funds performed above this level; half performed below. A useful benchmark for assessing whether a fund is genuinely adding value or simply delivering what the market gave everyone.
Annualised Return
A return expressed as an equivalent annual rate over a multi-year period. A 5-year annualised return of 18% means the investment compounded at 18% per year on average — it does not mean 18% was earned each year.
Why SA Equity Deserves a Closer Look Right Now
For the better part of the 2010s and early 2020s, the conversation around SA equity was mostly defensive: “how much do I actually need to hold locally?” The JSE lagged global markets materially, the rand weakened persistently, and the macro backdrop — load-shedding, policy drift, state capture — made it hard to build a constructive case for local shares.
That framing is shifting. The 3-year peer group median for SA Equity General funds to April 2026 is 14.68% per annum. For the SA-only sub-category, it’s 16.89%. These are real returns, above most clients’ CPI+ targets, delivered by the median fund — meaning roughly half the category did even better.
This doesn’t mean global diversification no longer matters — it absolutely does, and we’d argue offshore exposure remains structurally important for most South African investors (more on that in our offshore investing guide). But it does mean SA equity is no longer a reluctant holding. The better managers have been rewarded, and the data shows it.
Top 5 SA Equity Funds: 3-Year Performance (to 30 April 2026)
The 3-year rankings draw on the full combined universe of both SA equity categories — General and SA General — and list the five funds with the strongest annualised performance over the period. Where a fund appears in both categories (which can happen with closely related strategies from the same manager), we’ve noted this.
| # | Fund Name | 3Y Annualised Return | vs Peer Median |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Methodical BCI Equity | 25.75% | +11.07% |
| 2 | Ninety One Value | 23.92% | +9.24% |
| 3 | PSG SA Equity | 23.43% | +6.54% |
| 4 | Steyn Capital Equity Prescient | 23.02% | +6.13% |
| 5 | PSG Equity | 20.08% | +5.40% |
Data to 30 April 2026. Source: Morningstar. Peer median based on SA Equity General category (96 funds). Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.
A few things stand out here. Methodical BCI Equity is a name most investors won’t recognise — it’s a smaller boutique that has put up exceptional numbers over the past three years, well ahead of peers. The caveat is that it has a shorter track record than some of the names further down this list, which matters when you’re assessing durability rather than just recency. We’ll come back to that in the consistency section.
Ninety One Value at #2 is significant. This is the value-oriented offering from one of South Africa’s largest and most established asset managers — and its strong showing here reflects the broader value-style recovery that has played out since 2022. PSG appears twice — their general equity fund and SA-only fund both placing in the top 5 — a sign of genuinely consistent process, not just circumstance.
Top 5 SA Equity Funds: 5-Year Performance (to 30 April 2026)
| # | Fund Name | 5Y Annualised Return | vs Peer Median |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | PSG Equity | 20.98% | +8.32% |
| 2 | PSG SA Equity | 23.31% | +8.57% |
| 3 | Methodical BCI Equity | 19.34% | +6.68% |
| 4 | Perpetua SCI Equity Fund | 17.49% | +4.83% |
| 5 | Steyn Capital Equity Prescient | 20.02% | +5.28% |
Data to 30 April 2026. Source: Morningstar. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.
The 5-year picture tells a more convincing story about manager quality than any single 3-year snapshot can. PSG Equity leads the General category with just under 21% per annum — well clear of the 12.66% median — while PSG SA Equity leads the SA-only category at 23.31%. For a firm with a large and well-resourced investment team, this kind of consistency across time periods is exactly what you’d want to see.
Perpetua SCI Equity is another boutique worth noting — a contrarian, value-oriented manager with a disciplined process that has compounded well over the medium term. Steyn Capital, also a boutique, continues to demonstrate that concentrated, high-conviction strategies can deliver material alpha in local equities when the process is right.
Top 5 SA Equity Funds: 10-Year Performance (to 30 April 2026)
| # | Fund Name | 10Y Annualised Return | vs Peer Median |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Camissa Equity Alpha | 12.27% | +3.39% |
| 2 | 36ONE BCI Equity | 12.17% | +3.29% |
| 3 | Truffle SCI General Equity Fund | 11.91% | +3.03% |
| 4 | Merchant West SCI Value Fund | 11.91% | +3.03% |
| 5 | PSG Equity | 11.77% | +2.89% |
Data to 30 April 2026. Source: Morningstar. 63 funds with full 10-year record. Peer median: 8.88% p.a. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.
A decade is long enough to see through most market cycles, style rotations, and management changes. The 10-year list brings in some names that may be familiar to more experienced investors — and notably removes some that looked strong over shorter periods.
Camissa (formerly Kagiso Asset Management) leads over 10 years — a quality-manager with a disciplined, research-intensive approach. 36ONE at #2 is perhaps the most interesting story across the full dataset: a hedge fund manager by heritage that runs a long-only equity fund with the same high-conviction, value-oriented thinking. Their 10-year track record in the SA-only category is equally strong (#1 at 13.47% p.a.). Truffle, well known as the investment engine behind the Nedgroup Stable and Balanced funds, demonstrates that boutique IP can compound quietly and effectively over a full decade.
PSG Equity appearing at #5 on the 10-year list — having already shown up at #1 over 5 years and #3/#5 over 3 years — is worth pausing on. We cover this in the next section.
Which Managers Keep Showing Up?
Raw rankings are useful; consistency matrices are more useful. The question that matters for a long-term investor isn’t “who topped the table last quarter?” but “which managers have earned their place across multiple time horizons?”
| Fund / Manager | Top 5: 3 Years | Top 5: 5 Years | Top 5: 10 Years |
|---|---|---|---|
| PSG Equity | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| PSG SA Equity | ✓ | ✓ | — |
| Methodical BCI Equity | ✓ | ✓ | —* |
| Steyn Capital Equity Prescient | ✓ | ✓ | — |
| 36ONE BCI Equity / SA Equity | — | — | ✓ (both) |
| Ninety One Value | ✓ | ✓ | — |
*Methodical BCI does not have a full 10-year track record.
PSG Equity is the standout. It’s the only fund in the entire SA equity universe that appears in the top 5 across all three time horizons in the General category. That’s not luck — it reflects a team that has applied a consistent, contrarian value-oriented process through multiple cycles. Whether that continues is never guaranteed, but the track record is as coherent as you’ll find in SA equity.
36ONE deserves mention on the other side of the consistency argument: not yet in the shorter-term top 5 as a General equity fund, but the strongest 10-year performer across both categories. Their heritage as a hedge fund manager — with a focus on deep fundamental research and concentrated positioning — translates well to a long-only mandate over time.
The Boutique Dominance Story
Look at the names across all three time horizons: Methodical, Steyn Capital, Perpetua, Camissa, Truffle, Merchant West, 36ONE. These are not the traditional household names in South African asset management — Coronation, Allan Gray, Ninety One. The large managers are not absent (Ninety One Value features strongly in the 3-year rankings), but the consistent pattern is boutique outperformance.
This is consistent with what we see in asset management globally. Smaller managers tend to have: more concentrated portfolios, fewer constraints around index weight, stronger alignment between investment professionals and the fund (skin in the game), and less pressure to gather assets at the expense of performance. None of this is guaranteed — there are poorly run boutiques, and there are excellent large managers. But the data suggests that in SA equity specifically, being small is not a disadvantage.
We wrote about this pattern more broadly in our piece on the best asset management firms in South Africa — worth reading alongside this data if you want the fuller picture.
What Should You Actually Do With This?
Performance rankings are a starting point, not a conclusion. Here’s the framework we’d apply:
Look for consistency across time periods, not just the top of the most recent table. A fund that ranks in the top quartile over 3, 5, and 10 years tells you something structurally different from one that’s had an exceptional 12-month run. The former suggests process; the latter may reflect circumstance.
Understand the fund’s style and where we are in the cycle. Value funds have done exceptionally well since 2022. Quality-growth funds outperformed through the 2010s. No style wins forever. A fund that “only works” in one environment isn’t a durable choice for a long-term portfolio.
Track record length matters, especially for smaller funds. Methodical BCI has outstanding shorter-term numbers — but a 5-year track record, however impressive, doesn’t tell you how the manager navigates a severe bear market. That’s not a reason to exclude it; it’s a reason to size it appropriately and hold it alongside managers with longer records.
Consider the role of SA equity in your broader portfolio. Most investors with meaningful offshore exposure are already structurally underweight SA, which is fine. For those rebalancing toward local, the question is whether active SA equity management adds enough value over a RAFI-weighted index (the RAFI 40 appears in the 5-year and 10-year SA-only rankings, which is worth noting — passive alternatives are not always inferior). For more on building a well-structured investment portfolio, we’re happy to have that conversation.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between SA Equity General and SA Equity SA General funds?
A Equity General funds can invest up to 45% offshore, so their returns reflect both local market performance and currency movements. SA Equity SA General funds are restricted to South African-listed assets only. In practice, the distinction is less important than the fund manager's quality and process — but it's worth knowing which type you hold, especially if you're separately managing offshore allocation.
Are the best-performing SA equity funds worth switching into now?
Not necessarily. Performance rankings reflect what has happened — they don't predict what will happen. A fund at the top of the 3-year table has often already had its best run. A more useful approach is identifying managers with consistent process across multiple time horizons and understanding whether their style suits your current portfolio balance. Switching based on past performance alone is one of the most common and costly mistakes in fund investing.
How often should I review which SA equity funds I'm holding?
An annual review of your fund holdings is generally sufficient. The goal is not to chase recent winners but to check whether the manager is still delivering consistent above-median returns, whether their investment team and process remain intact, and whether the fund's style still makes sense in the context of your broader portfolio. Quarterly is too frequent; longer than 18 months risks missing meaningful drift.
Is a passive SA equity fund ever a better choice than an active one?
Sometimes, yes. The RAFI 40 index funds (Satrix and Old Mutual versions) appear in the top 5 SA-only rankings over 5 and 10 years — they've outperformed a large proportion of active managers. A passive approach eliminates manager risk, costs less in fees, and consistently beats the average active fund. The case for active SA equity management rests on selecting the right manager — which is harder than it sounds and where a good adviser earns their keep.
What fees should I expect to pay on a top-performing SA equity unit trust?
Active SA equity funds typically charge between 0.75% and 1.50% per annum in total investment charge (TIC). Some boutique funds with strong performance records charge at the higher end of this range. The relevant question isn't just "what is the fee?" but "what is the net-of-fee alpha over the peer median?" A fund charging 1.2% and delivering 4% above the median is better value than one charging 0.8% and delivering 1% above it.
Rankings Don’t Build Portfolios — Context Does
SA equity has re-earned its place in the conversation. After a difficult decade relative to global markets, the asset class is delivering — and a meaningful cohort of active managers is beating the median by a significant margin across three, five, and ten years.
But the most important insight from this data isn’t which fund is at the top of the table. It’s that consistent process beats recent performance. PSG Equity appearing in the top 5 across all three time horizons, or 36ONE holding the #1 and #2 positions in the 10-year SA-only rankings — these are signals about manager quality, not just market timing. That’s what long-term investors should be paying attention to.
If you’re reviewing your existing SA equity exposure — whether inside a retirement annuity, living annuity, or discretionary portfolio — the question worth asking isn’t “am I in a top-performer?” It’s “do I understand why my fund manager does what they do, and do the recent returns reflect genuine skill or a favourable style environment?” Those are harder questions, but they’re the right ones. If you’d like to work through your portfolio in the context of a full financial plan, we’re here for that conversation.
If you’re reviewing SA equity funds inside a retirement annuity, living annuity, or discretionary portfolio, we’re happy to model the numbers. Independent, fee-only — no product incentives. Talk to us about whether your current fund selection holds up.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Henceforward (Pty) Limited is an authorised representative of Graviton Wealth Management (FSP 8772). References to market events and historical performance are for illustrative purposes only and are not indicative of future results. Projections and illustrations are for discussion purposes only. Consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.