SA trust in government dwindling

The results of the South African Afrobarometer public opinion survey, released on Monday in Pretoria, reveal that compared to three years ago, South Africans trust the government—except local government, state institutions and political parties less than they used to, Business Day reported.

The survey was carried out by the Afrobarometer Network and Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa) and assess the views of the South African electorate on critical political issues.

It is done as a ‘policy-relevant project that inserts results into national and global policy discussion”, says Mxolisi Sibanyoni, outreach officer at Idasa.

The Afrobarometer is a comparative series of public attitude surveys in 20 countries across Africa. It measures public attitudes on democracy and its alternatives, evaluations of the quality of governance and economic performance.

Sibanyoni told the Mail & Guardian Online that ‘Zimbabwe was excluded from the survey because of political instability” in that country. He added that ‘founding democratic elections were a criteria for inclusion” in the barometer.

The project has a declared purpose of uncovering the most important problems facing the country that government ought to address. Among these is service delivery, which in South Africa stood out as a priority with the majority of the respondents in the survey.

The poll further reflected that 64% of South Africans have never contacted their local government councillors and 95% have never had contact with their representative in the National Assembly.

In one category respondents were asked that if a non-elected government or leader could impose law and order, and deliver houses and jobs, how willing or unwilling would they be to give up regular elections and live under such a government. Sixty-five percent replied they were willing.

The 2008 Afrobarometer was conducted among a random sample of 2 400 urban and rural members of the population.