EFF still considered less corrupt than the ANC among voters

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) is proving to be the single most dangerous political challenge to the ruling ANC in many aspects.

This includes voters trusting the young party more to fight corruption than the ANC.

The ANC is perceived negatively among black voters on satisfaction pertaining to service delivery, and does even more poorly among South African voters in general.

Interestingly, even ANC members gave a 51% “very unsatisfied” score to the ANC-led national government’s performance on fighting corruption in a new survey released by the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) yesterday.

However, although the ANC got a negative score, the ruling party was rated as the party best placed to deliver on issues such as economic growth, crime, healthcare and land reform.

“Among all voters, across five of the six issues at a national level, the ANC is selected as the party best placed to deliver on that particular issue.

“The only exception, as a national issue, is fighting corruption, on which a majority of all voters (30.1%) stated that the EFF would do the best job.

“These are among the banner headline findings in the second tranche of results from our February 2019 election poll,” said IRR head of politics and governance Gareth van Onselen in a statement yesterday.

As could be expected, while not trusting their party on service delivery, 47% of ANC party members believe the party, rather than the Democratic Alliance (DA) or EFF, is best at fighting corruption.

The IRR report further showed voter dissatisfaction with government service delivery with negative net satisfaction scores across the board with regards to core issues such as economic growth, crime, healthcare, corruption and land reform. This is a blow to the ANC.

The IRR recently found that the party’s support had dropped to 54% among voters compared to the 62.1% it received in the 2014 general election.

Previously, the IRR said the ANC and the EFF were locked in a battle over 5% and 10% of alienated black ANC voters.

Political analyst Dirk Kotze, who is professor and head of politics at Unisa, said the report was not surprising considering that service delivery was the ANC’s major weakness.

This was exacerbated by President Cyril Ramaphosa’s tendency to focus solely on the economy at the expense of service delivery and governance issues.

But the analyst was not convinced about the EFF survey results either, showing scepticism about them being the champion of anti-corruption. The party and its leaders were often mentioned in instances of graft, such as the VBS bank looting scandal.

“When it comes to corruption, the EFF has not covered itself in glory. But it is generally seen as critical of the ANC and it benefited in perceptions for taking a strong anti-corruption stance during the Zuma era. But since Zuma left, the EFF had nothing tangible to present on anti-corruption,” Kotze said.

The survey details indicated that, overall, black voters give negative net satisfaction scores to the ANC government on economic growth (-48%); crime (-31%); corruption (-33%); and land reform (-7%).

There were marginal positive net satisfaction scores on education (+5%) and healthcare (+3%).

Among all voters, the ANC national government has a negative net satisfaction score on all six core issues, with economic growth at -56%; crime at -41%; education at -11%; healthcare at -13%; corruption at -45%; and land reform at -22%.

The survey focused on two areas – satisfaction or dissatisfaction among voters on service delivery with the ANC government on the six core issues and on the big three parties – ANC, DA and EFF – with regard to the same.

The IRR said its poll staff were in the field between February 12 and 26 and the sample total of 1,611 respondents was fully demographically representative and comprised only registered voters.

– ericn@citizen.co.za

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