Cape Town - Eskom’s load shedding had impacted upon the potential electoral performance of the ANC, decreasing from 63% in February to 61% last month.
This is according to research company SA Citizens Survey (SACS).
It also shows that the EFF has been the principal beneficiary of the drop in ANC support as the party’s potential electoral performance rose from 9% in February to 11% last month.
The DA saw a return to 19% in February and March after seeing an increase in their estimated electoral performance in January (21%).
“Political parties are doing their utmost to gain as much support as possible in the next few weeks, but the unmotivated registered voters who are currently feeling politically alienated should be a core group that they attempt to reach,” Reza Omar, strategic research director at SACS said.
Within the (just short of) 27 million registered voters, the number of unmotivated voters has grown from 15% in January to 18% in February and reached an all-time high of 19% (5.1 million unmotivated voters) last month.
“The 8% decrease in the number of South Africans who believe the country is heading in the right direction - in comparison to January and February this year - shows the need for drastic action to be taken to reassure the South African public that socio-economic conditions can, and will, improve,” Omar said.
“People had very high hopes of the future of this country, now it has collapsed and when you look at our political parties you look at their credibility. What do people see when they watch TV, they see corruption and mismanagement and state capture and citizens mindsets start believing that it doesn’t really matter what happens if they vote, the results will stay the same.”
Alan Winde The DA’s Western Cape premier candidate said: “I have no doubt that the international community looks at us as a corrupt country and we are not the same country as we were 25 years ago.”
EFF provincial chairperson Melikhaya Xego said: “The poor in this country feel extremely despondent, mostly because of the lack in service delivery and the EFF is confident that we can do the job properly.”
ANC Western Cape election manager Grant Pascoe has disputed the validity of the survey: “While we acknowledge there have been major issues, the ship is been steady
under the leadership of Cyril Ramaphosa.
“And as a party we acknowledge that there has been elements in our party that wants to move our party away from core values and principles.”
He said there was a positive feeling on the ground.
