Johannesburg - With just a few weeks to go to the local government elections on August 3, a survey has found that the performance of local government in Gauteng is better than that of the national government.
It also found that overall, black South Africans are 10 percent less satisfied with local government in Gauteng than their white counterparts.
This was revealed in a Quality of Life Survey from the Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO), released on Tuesday.
The negativity over national government is probably due to the axing of former finance minister Nhlanhla Nene in December and replacing him with little-known politician Des van Rooyen, which sent the rand into a tailspin and had a crucial effect on the results of the study, GCRO executive director Rob Moore said.
The study found that 43 percent of whites are more satisfied with local government compared to 33 percent of blacks.
The research, which was conducted between July 2015 and May 2016, provides insight into the way about 30 000 respondents from across Gauteng, as well as key outlying areas such as Rustenburg and Sasolburg, feel about various issues ranging from race, government and other matters pertinent to the province.
“The survey asked questions on a range of factors that shape the quality of daily life in the city region, including provision of basic services, satisfaction with government, transport and mobility, livelihoods, local community and neighbourhood dynamics, health and well-being, migration, as well as political and social values and attitudes,” Moore said.
The study is conducted every two years by GCRO together with the University of Johannesburg, the University of the Witwatersrand, the Gauteng government as well as organised local government in the province.
“Satisfaction with national government was clearly knocked by national political events such as Nenegate during the course of the survey,” Moore said.
Respondents ranked dissatisfaction with local government around 55 percent when the survey started in July/August 2015, but the figure declined to less than 40 percent when fieldwork ended in April/May 2016.
“There were big gains in local government satisfaction over the period of the survey,” Moore pointed out.
He explained that the performance of councillors clearly has a large impact as those satisfied with them were also found to be happy with local government in general. “Personal experience with government services plays a powerful role in shaping attitudes towards government as whole,” he observed.
But according to the survey’s findings, the same can’t be said for the satisfaction with national government which has dropped significantly over the years.
“Dissatisfaction with national government climbed to 48 percent in February 2016, then recovered,” said Moore.
Overall, the survey found slightly lower levels of satisfaction with national, provincial and local government in 2015 compared to 2013.
“However there has also been a significant decline in levels of dissatisfaction.”
The Gauteng-based survey also found “high and stable levels of satisfaction with services since the 2013 survey”.
“By way of example, 83 percent of Gauteng respondents are satisfied with water services, 65 percent with public health services and 71 percent with local education services,” said Moore.
But respondents were less satisfied with energy services, possibly reflecting the impact of load-shedding, as well as government initiatives to grow the economy.
The study also focused on respondents' take on race and other key social attitude issues.
It found a “softening” of general racial attitudes over the two-year period.
In 2015, 58 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that “blacks and whites will never really trust each other”, a drop from 66 percent in 2013.
These results differ noticeably by race as 62 percent of black respondents agreed with the statement last year, down from 73 percent two years before.
But the proportion of white respondents agreeing with the statement increased from 40 percent in 2013 to 44 percent in 2015.
The Star