This is where South Africans think the country is heading
During his Budget Speech on Wednesday finance minister, Tito Mboweni, will have a very tough job convincing South Africans and the world about the viability of the government’s plans to make ends meet during this important election year.
This is according to a new survey by Ipsos which interviewed more than 3,500 adult South Africans on their views of the country.
During the interviews, respondents were exposed to a list of policy areas and were then asked to state whether the South African government is handling the particular issue ‘very well’, ‘fairly well’, ‘not very well’ or ‘not at all well’.
Overall Ipsos found that almost four in every ten South Africans of voting age say that the government is managing the economy very or fairly well (38%), while six in every ten disagree (59%).
This is a vast improvement from the previous year’s data (November 2017) when only 25% thought that the government was managing the economy well.
Other issues about the economy yield results in the same ballpark, save for the issue of ‘encouraging international investment’, where the government gets the approval of half of South Africans (50%), although a fairly similar proportion (45%) feel that the government is not doing particularly well on this issue.
Apart from economic issues, South Africans are also worried about the level of services received from government departments.
Less than half of South Africans of voting age (44%) say that the government is doing very or fairly well in this area, while 53% say that the government is not doing very well or not at all well with ‘ensuring effective services by government departments’.
Heading in the right direction?
Currently only three in every ten (29%) South Africans say that the country is going in the right direction.
However, this is a significant improvement from November 2017, when two thirds (66%) of adult South Africans believed the country was moving in the wrong direction.
In terms of political parties, roughly half of supporters of each of the three biggest political parties say the country is going in the wrong direction.
About a fifth of South Africans (22%) are optimistic that things are better, while the same proportion say that things are worse than a year ago.
Delving a bit deeper into the views of supporters of different political parties, we see that a quarter of supporters of both the ANC and the DA (24% and 26% respectively) feel that they are better off than before, while supporters of the EFF are more despondent, with almost a quarter (24%) saying that their families are worse off than a year ago.
Looking forward, South Africans are slightly more optimistic with three in every ten (30%) saying that their families will be better off in a year’s time.
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