Eight months into the Covid-19 pandemic, four in 10 South Africans feel the country is moving in the wrong direction and three in 10 people are in the dark about the future.
This is according to an Ipsos poll released on Friday, which also showed that if South Africans were asked to go to the polls the next day, 50% would vote for the ANC. This is a drop of five percentage points since the previous Ipsos survey in November last year.
On the other hand, it seems support for the DA and EFF increased slightly from then.
“It appears as if the DA, a party which faced a turbulent few months since the 2019 national election, might slowly be recovering lost ground, while the EFF is building on its successes of the 2019 national election,” said Ipsos.
The poll results came two days after South Africans took to the streets to elect new councillors during by-elections at 95 wards across 55 municipalities.
Ipsos said the results were not totally unexpected.
“Although this feeling that the country is going in the wrong direction is not as strong as it was during the last few years of the (Jacob) Zuma presidency, it is still not a positive finding,” said Ipsos.
The poll indicates that ANC supporters are more optimistic than those who support the DA and EFF — only about a third of them (37%) think SA is heading in the right direction. More than half of DA and EFF supporters feel the country is going in the wrong direction.
“It is not that South Africa is home to an overwhelming number of pessimists, but almost three in every 10 are either saying that they do not know what to think about the direction of the country or that they are undecided about the question,” Ipsos said.
The poll was conducted with 3,758 interviewees who were randomly selected and 18 years of age or older.
Political analyst and associate lecturer at Unisa Dr William Mpofu said the uncertainty was expected as the Covid-19 pandemic had exposed many flaws in government.
“Covid-19 demanded maximum governance, which means it was always going to test the government’s capacity to govern under pressure. So if governments are weak, Covid-19 was bound to expose those weaknesses, so it’s not going to be surprising if Covid-19 exposes some of the limitations or shortcomings of the ruling party,” he said.
Mpofu pointed out the number of corruption cases, as well as the negligence and carelessness of some leaders during the pandemic.
However, he said the country did a remarkable job in containing the spread of the virus.
“Over and above, SA reacted to Covid-19 in an exemplary and very effective way, but like I said, the political weaknesses of some leaders were bound to be exposed because a pandemic requires strong decision-making, effective application of the law [and] effective governance ... ,” added Mpofu.
The poll further indicated that a third of South Africans (34%) felt no single political party represented their views.
“Consequently, it should be no surprise that the level of trust expressed in political parties [was] quite low. This ‘trust score’ was calculated by subtracting the proportion of those with negative trust in the party from the proportion of those who expressed positive trust in the party,” Ipsos said.
Though results had not yet been published, Ipsos said the by-elections could be an indication of how the political wind is now blowing, adding that they may not be a strong indication of things to come in next year’s local government elections.
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