Corruption crushing South Africa’s core
Support for South Africa’s hard-fought democracy has weaned quite significantly over the past decade as a result of various governance and societal woes.
Compounding societal issues have left many disenfranchised, with a preference for democracy has reportedly gone down by 29 percentage points over the past decade in South Africa, now sitting at 43%.
This is according to a new Afrobarometer survey, titled Democracy at risk – the people’s perspective.
The survey spans more than a decade across 39 countries, “to highlight trends in and drivers of democratic support and satisfaction.”
“Most Africans still prefer democracy to any other system of government, reject non-democratic alternatives, and endorse core democratic norms, institutions, and practices,” said the think tank.
“But some cracks are showing in the bulwark of democratic support; over the past decade, popular support for democracy has declined sharply in several countries, including some of the continent’s current or former democratic leaders,” they added.
According to the survey, 25% of South Africans expressed satisfaction with the current state of the country’s democracy – down 35 percentage points from a decade ago and sitting well below the 37% average across the 39 African countries surveyed.
This lack of satisfaction manifested in the recent general elections.
A dwindling proportion of South Africa’s population is heading to the polls to make their mark in the country’s democratic elections, with fewer than 60% of registered voters casting their ballots, and less than 40% of the eligible population participating in the electoral process.
Although there was a record 27.78 million registered voters for the May 29th National and Provincial elections, only 16.29 million voters made their mark.
This represents a 58.6% voter turnout rate – the lowest general election turnout rate in the country’s 30-year democratic history, down around 30% from 1994.
Researcher Gareth van Onselen (using Stats SA data) estimated a 2024 voting age population in South Africa of 41.4 million.
With 16.29 million votes cast, that means that South Africa’s 2024 National and Provincial elections had a voter participation rate of ~ 39.4%.
Positively, South Africa sits above the African average of views towards free and fair elections, with 66% believing that they are “completely free,” and 18% believing that they are “somewhat free.”
“Although [South Africa] remains democratic and free, waning public support for the system, if left unchecked, could spell potential problems in years to come,” said Afrobarometer.
Why we are seeing a deteriorating perception
The deriation of performance in the survey and perception of democracy is attributed to various reasons.
Afrobarometer said that people’s increasing dissatisfaction across Africa as a whole is tied to perceived declines in socioeconomic and political performance like changes in political conditions such as declining election quality, increasing levels of corruption, and failure to promote the rule of law.
Looking locally, “poverty, unemployment, and inequality remain persistent obstacles to improving many South Africans’ quality of life, and a series of major corruption scandals in the government and private sector have strained the country’s accountability mechanisms,” said Afrobarometer.
The declining perception comes “amid growing disillusionment with the government’s inability or unwillingness to address corruption,” added the think tank.
Out of the 39 African countries surveyed, South Africa showed the second highest prevalence of people believing that levels of corruption have increased over the past year (eight in 10 citizens). This is about the continent average of just under six in 10.
The majority who see corruption as having increased during the previous year dropped from 83% to 64% during a brief period of optimism at the start of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s term in 2018, but then shot back up to 82% in 2022.
Earlier this year, anti-corruption advocacy group Transparency International released its Corruption Perceptions Index for 2023, with South Africa receiving its worst score to date.
The Corruption Perceptions Index ranks 180 countries by perceived public sector corruption on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean), using 13 data sources from 12 institutions.
In 2023, South Africa dropped to its lowest ranking since the index was created, with the country ranking 83rd in the overall list.
In terms of scoring, the country dropped by two points from 2022, receiving 41/100 – below the global average.
“The region’s persistent challenges stem from decades of severe underfunding in public sectors, exacerbated by corruption and illicit financial flows siphoning resources away from basic public services,” said the report.
“Our findings underscore the importance of restoring faith in African governments’ ability to deliver accountable, democratic governance,” said Afrobarometer.
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