MORE political parties and more candidates than ever will be contesting next week’s elections, but they will be facing a more disenchanted electorate, according to a survey released yesterday.
While the IEC has said there will be a record 200 parties and 61 014 candidates chasing votes, more than half of South Africans (57 percent) say they are dissatisfied with the current political leadership.
This suggests enthusiasm for politics is, unsurprisingly, much higher among politicians than it is among voters.
Speculating on why this might be, the authors of the SA Social Attitudes Survey suggest possible explanations: that voters are so sceptical of politicians that they have put themselves forward as candidates in the belief they could do better themselves; that the depressed economic climate has led more people to see political office as an employment opportunity; and that political office may increasingly be seen as a means to secure access to public resources for personal or sectional benefit.
They note an “intriguing correlation” between the poor local government audit outcomes in Limpopo, North West and the Northern Cape and the proliferation of new parties and candidates in these provinces.
“If the increased numbers of parties and candidates reflect a commitment by aspirant candidates to get involved and disrupt increasingly entrenched patrimonial hierarchies, local democracy may be about to undergo a long overdue revival,” the authors of the Human Sciences Research Council study say.
“It is possible, however, that some newly elected leaders seek merely to take power in order to appropriate public resources for themselves.”
The authors suggest that transparency in private funding of political parties might be one “tool” to help voters to distinguish the “possible range of agendas” of those standing for office.
“Local democracy cannot thrive, or survive, if elections are seen as merely a scramble for resources,” they conclude.
While 57 percent of South Africans were dissatisfied with the current crop of political leaders, just more than a quarter (28 percent) were satisfied, according to the survey.
Although racial minorities were the least satisfied, even among black Africans, more than half – 51 percent – were dissatisfied.
Levels of satisfaction declined from 37 percent of black African respondents in 2011 to 33 percent last year.
However, there was no significant difference in attitudes towards politicians between younger and older voters.
These high levels of disillusionment have not translated into a loss of faith in democracy itself.