More than seven in every ten South Africans (72%) do not feel that the president is performing.

The big question in the news at the moment revolves around who should deliver the SONA (State of the Nation Address) on Thursday.  Opinions are divided on whether it should be the president of the country, Jacob Zuma; or the president of the ANC and deputy president of the country, Cyril Ramaphosa?

Although South Africans will not be making this decision, they do have some opinions on how well each has been doing their job. More than half of South Africans of voting age (53%) say that the current deputy president of the country is doing his job well, compared to a meagre 24% who believe that President Zuma is doing his job well.

These are some of the findings of an opinion poll conducted by Ipsos in November 2017.  A total of 3,447 face-to-face interviews were conducted with a representative sample of South Africans, 18 years and older. The question was asked whether respondents felt that the president and deputy president were doing their jobs “very well”, “fairly well”, “not very well” or “not at all well”.

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From the results shown above, it is clear that more than seven in every ten South Africans of voting age (72%) do not feel that the president is performing optimally.  

It could be argued that this opinion is strongly influenced by the opinions of opposition supporters, but actually,  six in every ten ANC supporters share the view that the president is not performing well.

When asked to evaluate political leaders on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 means that you are totally against the person as a political leader and 10 means that you are totally in favour of the person as a political leader, a comparable sentiment emerges from the views of South Africans and the president still receives much lower scores than the deputy president – also from ANC supporters.

Fieldwork for this study was conducted from 2 November to 7 December 2017.  A total of 3,562 South Africans, 15 years and older, were interviewed.  They were randomly selected and interviewed face-to-face in their homes and home languages. Interviews were conducted all over the country, from metropolitan areas to deep rural areas. This methodology ensured that the results are representative of the views of the universe and that findings can be weighted and projected to the universe – i.e. South Africans 15 years and older.  Ipsos filtered the results of these specific questions by those 18 years and older, a total of 3,447, representing those of voting age.

Trained quantitative fieldworkers from all population groups were responsible for the interviewing and CAPI (Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing) was used. All results were collated and analysed in an aggregate format to protect the identity and confidentiality of individual respondents.

All sample surveys are subject to a margin of error, determined by sample size, sampling methodology and response rate. The sample error for this sample at a 95% confidence level is a maximum of 1.63%.