BREAKING NEWS
SA Former President, Jacob Zuma Bad Behaviour Damaged His Image, ANC
Former
South African President Jacob Zuma's bad behaviour damaged his image and that
of the ANC.
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| © AFP FILE: Former President Jacob Zuma dances at the ANC's party rally at the Dan Qeqe stadium in Port Elizabeth on 23 July 2016 ahead of the municipal elections. |
Opinion
polls in South Africa have clearly shown the sharp decline in citizens’
approval of Jacob Zuma’s performance as president over the past three years.
What has been less clear is the impact on the governing African National
Congress (ANC). He was also the president of the ANC, until his term ended in
December and he was replaced by Cyril Ramaphosa.
For many
years, Zuma was considered a 'Teflon' president. He seemed to maintain public
support even in the face of controversial decisions and scandals because of his
personal appeal as an affable populist. Several surveys placed his approval
ratings in the 60% to 70% range throughout his first term in office. Once that
image was finally pierced, one might have logically expected his downfall to be
equally personal, and not take the party down with him.
But new
results from the December 2017 South African Citizen Survey demonstrate just
the opposite. Asking a widely used measure of party support called partisan
identification, a strong predictor of both voter turnout and vote choice, only
32% of those surveyed said they “felt close” to the ANC. This is the worst
result recorded in the past 17 years, and statistically tied as the lowest
level since 1994.
Zuma, it
seems, pulled the ANC down with him. But this question is not asked very
frequently by South African polling organisations. Fortunately, it’s possible
to turn to an alternative indicator to get a more fine-grained take on recent
trends in ANC support.
The South
African Citizen Survey also asks respondents to rate how much they “like or
dislike” each major political party on a scale of 0 to 10. In mid-2015, 61% of
South Africans held a positive view of the ANC. Two and a half years later,
only 43% feel this way. More importantly, the proportion who give the ANC a
higher score than any other party has shrunk from over one half of the
electorate in mid-2015 (55%), to just over one third (37%) in the most recent
survey as shown below.
PRESIDING
OVER ELECTORAL DECLINE
To be
sure, it was already clear from the ANC’s loss of seats in the National
Assembly and provincial legislatures in the 2009 and 2014 national elections
that Zuma was presiding over an electoral decline, however small. This should
have become even clearer in 2016, when large numbers of ANC members lost their
seats as municipal councillors, positions in executive councils, and mayorships
of major metropolitan councils.
Yet many
of these losses could have been pinned to the poor performance of the post-2008
economy. Indeed, ever since 1994, the degree of economic optimism (as measured
by the proportion of South Africans who expect the economy to improve in the
next year) has been a strong predictor of popular support for the ANC.
But the
evidence suggests that over the past year, voter support for the ANC became
tied to their views of Jacob Zuma, rather than the economy. While Zuma’s
popularity has fallen steadily since at least the end of 2015, the biggest
single drop took place in April 2017 when his support levels plummeted by 12
percentage points on the heels of the public firestorm that followed the March
Cabinet reshuffle and sacking of Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan.
Yet, even
with the resultant damage to the currency and the markets, South Africans began
to sense an economic turnaround. By year’s end, 48% expected the economy to get
better in the next 12 months, and 59% expected their household living
conditions to improve. But peoples’ evaluations of Zuma’s job performance
continued to plummet (to just 22%), and the public image of the ANC remained at
historically low levels.
Thus,
voters finally turned on Zuma, but only after a long string of personal
scandals, bad political decisions, and public outrage over the use of public
money on his private homestead Nkandla, the “capture” of key state institutions
by Gupta-friendly ministers and directors, and cabinet reshuffles.
Yet the
ANC continued to shield him from the courts, the Public Protector, and from
successive votes of no confidence in parliament. Indeed, the party came very
close to electing his hand-chosen successor, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, as its new
leader and presumptive national president.
But at
some point in the past few months, a sufficient number of party members finally
seemed to grasp the fact that Zuma’s continued presence threatened the
electoral interests of the party as well as their own political futures,
particularly those who appeared downwind on the party list. But it took them a
very long time to reach this conclusion, and the party has paid dearly in terms
of its connection with the electorate.
Zuma dragged
the ANC down with him. Yet many might justifiably argue that it has been a
mutual waltz to the bottom: while his behaviour and decisions damaged his own
image, the ANC’s tolerance of his sins of governance has tarnished theirs.
President
Cyril Ramaphosa therefore faces a double challenge. Not only must he
reestablish a positive connection between the residency and the people, but he
must also transform the battered image of the ANC.
The South
African Citizens Survey is based on face-to-face interviews with a nationally
representative sample of 1,300 respondents a month. Results are reported
quarterly on a total of 3,900 respondents, which produces results with a margin
of error margin of error of ±1.5 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.
Sampling sites are chosen at random across all provinces, and metro, urban and
rural areas, with probability proportionate to population size, based on the
latest StatsSA estimates of the population aged 18 and older. Interviews are
conducted in English, isiZulu, isiXhosa, Afrikaans, Sesotho, Sepedi, and
Setswana. Weights are applied to ensure the sample represents the most recent
national population with respect to province, race, gender, age and area type.
Robert
Mattes is a professor in the Department of Political Studies, University of
Cape Town.
Jacob Zuma
in pictures and scandals (Supplied
by International Business Times)
 |
| Jacob Zuma in pictures and scandals: Nkandlagate, Guptas, corruption, rape trial and more |
Source MSN News
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