Robert Mattes: A SECOND LOOK
The details of the first Opinion ’99 survey (a consortium of Idasa, Markinor and the South African Broadcasting Corporation) have been widely reported. But once one backs away from the fine brush strokes of the numbers, what emerges is a distinct picture of the South African electorate six to seven months away from the second general election.
Broadly, the survey reveals an electorate that is engaged and discerning, critical in some aspects and satisfied in others. Voters are certainly not as blindly loyal to the parties they supported in 1994 as is widely depicted.
The government is in a strong strategic position – much of it of its own making, but also owing to the fact that opposition parties fail to present most voters with a credible alternative. Yet the government is not politically unassailable. Indeed, over the past year- and-a-half the African National Congress has lost a significant amount of its “confirmed” support.
>From late 1994 to mid-1997, 61% to 64% of potential voters regularly told Markinor interviewers they would vote for the ANC if an election were held the next day. However, in September 1998 that figure dropped to 51%. When asked whether they feel close to any political party, only slightly more than one-third (35%) said they identify with the ANC.
Underlying this is the fact that an increasingly large number of people think the country is headed in the wrong direction – a useful summary indicator of overall political optimism or pessimism.
Since 1994, when 76% said the country was headed in the right direction, Markinor surveys have tracked a gradual decline in optimism, with particularly sharp drops since 1996.
The first Opinion ’99 survey in September registered the first time the optimistic and pessimistic trend lines have crossed, with 44% saying the country is headed in the wrong direction, and 43% saying it’s going in the right direction.
At the same time, surveys by the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa) over the past few years have tracked a steady decrease in the proportion of people who say the national economy has been improving, as well as in those who expect it to improve in the next year. The drop in optimistic expectations has been especially notable among black voters over the past year.
Perhaps most worrying from the ANC’s perspective is the extent of dissatisfaction with government performance on issues that voters rate most important.
While 73% cite employment as the most important issue to be addressed, only 12% think the government is doing a good job in this area. Sixty-four per cent cite crime as most important, yet only 18% think the government is doing a good job dealing with it.
And, only 18% think the government has done a good job with the economy, a fast emerging problem of public attention now cited by almost one in five voters.
Thus, as the country gears up for the election, 56% of all potential voters now say they do not feel close to any political party. Four in 10 insist they do not even “lean” towards a specific party. And one in five say they do not know who they would vote for if an election were held tomorrow.
With so many voters without a “standing choice”, one might expect opposition parties to reap an electoral bonanza a few months down the line. But before opposition leaders get too excited, they need to take a deep whiff of reality.
Firstly, the ANC still enjoys a commanding lead in popular support. Even while there have been real declines in confirmed ANC support, intention to vote for any opposition party remains exactly where it was in late 1994 (28%).
Furthermore, only 9% of the electorate identify with any opposition party. If this were a fairy tale, an apt title might be “The ANC and the Seven Dwarfs”.
The measured decline in ANC support is a partial sign of the “normalisation” of democratic politics in South Africa.
Governments must make decisions. And while they hope to satisfy a majority in order to remain in power, the very act of governing will almost certainly dissatisfy many people, including many of its original supporters.
Thus, with ANC support in the 1994 election and in subsequent opinion polls already soaring at stratospheric levels, a drop could have been expected.
But in a “normal” democratic system, one would also expect government losses to turn into opposition gains. This clearly has not happened. But why is opposition support so anaemic?
Firstly, even while voters increasingly see the country going in the wrong direction, they do not necessarily blame the government. For instance, among the one-third of black voters who think the country is going in the wrong direction, only 37% would lay all the blame on the government. Fifty-two per cent of these voters say other factors (such as other parties, the media and business) are partially or wholly to blame.
In fact, the public thinks the government has been doing a good job overall. Around eight in 10 have consistently said President Nelson Mandela has been handling his job “well” or “very well” since 1995; Deputy President Thabo Mbeki has also received increasingly positive ratings (now at 67%).
This bodes well for the ANC since comparative experience from other democracies suggest the popularity of outgoing or incumbent executives has an important influence on the electoral fortunes of their party. Moreover, as of the last survey, 58% give positive ratings of the government’s overall performance.
But more problematic, from the perspective of the opposition, is that even on those key issues where dissatisfaction with ANC performance is widespread, few voters see any alternative. Thus, only 24% say they could trust the National Party to handle employment issues, 14% say the Democratic Party, and even less for all other opposition parties. You get the picture?
Across the 13 performance areas included in our questions, at no point do any more than a quarter of the electorate say they trust any opposition party on any issue. This is not simply a consequence of people who do not like or do not know about opposition policy positions. The roots go much deeper.
We asked a long list of questions about important attributes of a political party for each of the country’s major political parties. Across each question, the resulting picture was resoundingly the same.
Few voters like what the opposition parties have done over the past four years, and few see any opposition party as inclusive, believable, trustworthy, or competent to govern. On each of these ways of evaluating a political party, the ANC enjoys a positive image among far greater proportions of voters.
The prospects of a consolidated democracy in this country hinge greatly on the government’s ability to meet expectations and improve lives. But they also depend on the existence of a viable alternative capable of providing a political home to those voters who are dissatisfied with the government. At least in the minds of voters, it seems like it is the opposition more than the government that is not delivering on its part of the bargain.
The ability of opposition parties to reverse these images over the next few months may tell a great deal about the future of competitive multi-party democracy in South Africa.
Dr Robert Mattes is manager of Idasa’s Public Opinion Service. He writes this in his personal capacity and the opinions expressed are not necessarily those of Idasa or the Opinion ’99 consortium.