South Africa’s Indian community is the most fearful about what 2003 holds, suggests a newly released Markinor survey on attitudes to the year ahead.
Markinor, the local affiliate of Gallup International, conducted the survey among 3 500 respondents of all races in October and November last year. It tested South African expectations of 2003, with a particular focus on the economic prospects.
As a whole, South Africans are slightly more apprehensive about the new year than they were at the beginning of last year. Almost four out of 10 (38%) believe 2003 will be worse than 2002. The corresponding figure at the start of 2002 was 33%. Twenty-nine percent believe it will be better, and 27% say it will be the same.
Almost two-thirds (64%) expect unemployment to worsen this year, compared with 59% at the beginning of last year.
Not surprisingly — given the United States’s sabre-rattling over Iraq — only 15% of South Africans believe 2003 will be peaceful. However, a racial breakdown of the responses indicates a wide divergence in perceptions of the future, with Africans often the most optimistic group, followed by coloured people, whites and Indians, in that order.
This may reflect the extent to which different groups feel they have control over their political and economic destinies, and their differing levels of confidence in the government. The survey may, in fact, measure degrees of political alienation.
As a small minority, Indians may feel as politically vulnerable as whites, without enjoying the economic cushion available to most white South Africans. Most Indians are workers, not — as commonly supposed — members of a mercantile elite.
Answering the question “Do you think 2003 will be better, the same or worse than 2002?”, 36,5% of Africans believe it will be worse, compared with 38,5% of coloureds, 43,8% of whites and 46,2% of Indians.
On the economic prospects in 2003, 35,5% of Africans believe it will be a year of economic difficulty, compared with 39,6% of coloureds, 46,6% of whites and 58,4% of Indians.
A slightly higher proportion of Indians than whites expect a year of prosperity — 14,8% compared with 14,5%. Africans (24,8%) and coloureds (21,6) are markedly more upbeat.
It is over employment prospects in 2003 that the groups diverge most strongly. On whether unemployment will increase “a lot” over the next 12 months, 37,9% of coloureds believe it will, compared with 40,9% of Africans, 41,8% of whites and — a long way out in front — 59,9% of Indians.
This is despite the fact that 33,4% of the Indian respondents were in full-time employment, compared with 18,4% of Africans. Twenty-nine percent of coloured respondents and 43,8% of whites had full-time jobs.
Although the African respondents were most fearful of losing their jobs in 2003 (51,2%), a much higher proportion of Indians (44%) were worried about the possibility of unemployment than coloured people (29,3%) or whites (20,4%).
Whites feel most confident that their jobs are safe (68,2%), followed by coloureds (65,9%), Indians (40,8%) and Africans (30,3%).
Indians are again the most pessimistic group over the prospects for strikes and other industrial disputes in 2003. Fully 61% believe industrial conflict will worsen, compared with 46,4% of whites, 39,7% of coloureds and 36,5% of Africans.
Interestingly, the survey suggests the pessimistic outlook of South African Indians extends to the international arena. Asked whether 2003 would be more peaceful, more or less free of international dispute, 54% of Indians predicted it would be more troubled.
Whites were the next most pessimistic, with 43,1% predicting a troubled year, followed by coloureds (41,9%) and Africans (27,4%).