Half of ANC supporters worried about party: poll

More than half of all South Africans and ANC supporters believe the future of the ANC is uncertain due to leadership issues within the organisation, a new survey has found.

The study, released on Friday, showed that 53 percent of adult South Africans and 52 percent of ANC supporters agreed the future of the ruling party was unclear.

Two out of every 10 ANC supporters (19 percent) disagreed.

The poll was conducted by research company Ipsos in November.

Only 39 percent of South Africans currently thought the country was going in the right direction, down seven percent from 46 percent in May.

The proportion who said the country is going in the wrong direction was up to 42 percent, from 33 percent in May.

"Against this background it is understandable that the ANC nomination conferences in the nine provinces were not without incident," Ipsos said in a statement.

"At the moment it looks certain that President [Jacob] Zuma will carry the vote in Mangaung, as only the 4500 delegates to the ANC conference will decide on the ruling party's (and the country's) next president."

The 3563 randomly selected adult South Africans were also asked to assess how well Zuma and Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe were doing their jobs.

Over half, 55 percent, of the general public felt Zuma was doing his job very well or fairly well, with Motlanthe receiving 59 percent, while 68 percent of ANC supporters felt Zuma was doing well or very well.

For Mothlanthe, that figure was 73 percent.

On the opposite end, 43 percent of those polled believed Zuma was not doing well or not at all well in his job.

For Motlanthe, 34 percent believed he could be doing a better job.

Of ANC supporters, 30 percent believed Zuma was doing a poor job while 21 percent felt Motlanthe was not doing a very good job as deputy president.

"Interestingly, both the general public and ANC supporters expressed more appreciation for the way in which the deputy president went about his tasks," Ipsos said.

"It is clear that these views did not carry through to the nominations for the ANC's Mangaung conference."

Cyril Ramaphosa, a potential candidate for the deputy presidency of the ANC, received a favourability score from the public of 4.81 out of 10. Strongly supported by ANC supporters, he received 5.25, up from 4.78 in May.