Opinion polls bring little comfort to ANC president
Jacob Zuma and his broad coalition dominated the Polokwane popularity contest but the broader public is much more ambivalent about the ANC president, polls suggest.
Approval of Zuma as party president is hovering around 36% in urban areas, according to surveys conducted in February and April by research firm TNS. That places him about level with President Thabo Mbeki, whose approval rating slipped to a five-year low of 37% in April.
The surveys were conducted by face-to-face interview with 2 000 adults in seven metropolitan areas and have a 2,5% margin of error.
As TNS director Niel Higgs points out, however, roughly a quarter of the people surveyed were undecided about Zuma.
Overall approval of the ANC president among black respondents remained level, at 50%, in February and April. However his approval ratings among whites improved dramatically from 8% to 16%, perhaps as a result of Zuma’s charm offensive among working-class whites and growing disaffection with Mbeki among more affluent whites.
Approval among coloured and Indian voters was low in February and even lower in April. Zuma’s positive ratings sank from 11% to 6% and from 18% to 12% among coloureds and Indians respectively.
Among black voters women are less impressed by the ANC president. They give him a 46% positive rating compared with 55% among black men.
Ethnicity plays a role in perceptions of Zuma. His approval rating among Zulu speakers remained unchanged at 64%, but fell from 50% to 44% among Sotho speakers. Xhosa speakers were even less impressed, with just 28% approving of Zuma in April, down from 31% in February. Among Tswana speakers support for Zuma rebounded over the months, to 53% from 44%.
Only 14% of Capetonians approve of the job Zuma is doing but that is more than double the percentage from respondents in Port Elizabeth, where just 6% view him positively, down from 11% in February.
Another survey paints a different picture. Ipsos-Markinor’s Pulse of the People survey asked 3 500 adults across the country to rate Zuma and Mbeki on a scale of 0 to 10, where 10 means: “You are completely in favour of him,” and 0 means: “You are completely against him.”
Between May 2007 and May 2008, Mbeki’s rating declined steadily among all race groups apart from coloureds, where it was unchanged, while Zuma’s increased among all groups, said Ipsos-Markinor’s Mari Harris. In May last year Mbeki rated an aggregate 6,7 and by last month the number was down to 6,0. Zuma’s aggregate score climbed from 5,1 to 6,2 in the same period.
Black respondents marked Mbeki down from 6,8 to 6,4 in the six months from November 2007 to May 2008, while they assessed Zuma better, up from 6,5 to 7 over the same period.
Among whites Mbeki’s rating dropped slightly, from 4,5 to 4,4 while support scores for Zuma jumped from 1,8 to 3,8. Coloured respondents upped their Zuma rating from 2,8 to 3,8 while Indian approval of the ANC president also improved to 3,7 in May this year, up from 3,1 last year.
Anecdotal evidence suggests Zuma has been quite successful at calming the nerves of investors, with ratings agencies and business leaders apparently comforted by his message of steady economic management. The fact that they have become increasingly disenchanted with Mbeki also helps Zuma, one senior executive in the state system who is in touch with international investors told the Mail & Guardian.
Faced with this mixture of ambivalence and downright hostility, what is the ruling party to do?
A senior ANC national executive committee member says the ANC has to position itself as a fresh face, to say: “We learned from things that went wrong and will try to do [them] better.”
“Zuma’s popularity is definitely not on the high level that it used to be,” said the committee member.
“The ANC and Zuma must get on an election footing. Zuma must talk domestically and present a fresh face.
“He has said some things about crime but his charm offensive has largely been for an international and white audience. The ANC’s core constituency needs to have a sense that their aspirations are being taken into account. People are beginning to wonder: ‘Why were we mobilised against Mbeki? Things are not getting better.’
“The ANC must step away from this idea that nothing will change and present a message of hope and change, like Barack Obama does in the United States. The message that nothing will change is not a sustainable one.”