Government performance and satisfaction with government: Findings from the GCRO's Quality of Life survey 7 (2023/24)

This Data Brief presents results from the GCRO's Quality of Life 7 survey (2023/24) that relate to government performance and satisfaction with government in Gauteng.

HEADLINE FINDINGS

• The fieldwork for the Gauteng City-Region Observatory’s (GCRO’s) seventh iteration of its Quality of Life (QoL) Survey was completed just weeks before South Africa commemorated 30 years of democracy on 27 April 2024, and the elections for national and provincial governments on 29 May 2024. These were two key milestones on the country’s three decades long post-apartheid journey, and so this Data Brief is opportune in reflecting on how the project of democratic governance has progressed. The analysis presented here is situated in, and reinforces our understanding of the wider governance context: over the years of the democratic era, initial widespread legitimacy and approval for national and provincial governments (especially among African people) has turned, with the elapse of time, to a gradual decline and then a sharp drop in recent years.
• In overall terms, it is clear that government has indeed sought to assist many households in need through rapidly expanding social safety nets. Notwithstanding the cushion afforded, the widening of the social protection net has – at the very least – not been sufficient to ward off impressions of deteriorating government performance, especially in terms of previously taken-for-granted service provision and infrastructure maintenance. Feeling this ‘absence’, respondents’ approval for government across a host of measures has plummeted.
• Various measures suggest that perceptions of the quality of governance have deteriorated sharply. Three quarters of respondents do not think that officials stick to the principles of Batho Pele (Figure 9), and three quarters think that the country is going in the wrong direction (Figure 10). Four fifths are dissatisfied with the way in which the government has been dealing with corruption (Figure 13). More than half of respondents (57%) say that South Africa is a failed state (Figure 12). When asked which sphere of government has done the most to improve quality of life, more than half of respondents (54%) say ‘none of them’, up from a third (31%) in 2017/18 (Figure 11).
• Overall satisfaction with government is down when compared to previous surveys. Only a fifth (21%) of respondents now say they are satisfied with the performance of national government, down from a third (33%) in the last survey, and the roughly 40% satisfied in the four surveys before that (Figure 15). Similar proportions (22%) are satisfied with provincial government, down further from the already low 29% in QoL 6 (2020/21) (Figure 16). Similarly, only 22% are satisfied with local government, down from 26% in the previous survey (Figure 17).
• The survey suggests two broad responses in the face of government satisfaction: political engagement or disengagement. On the one hand, many residents have not sat passively as government-led service delivery and development has flagged. There has been an increase in engagement in participatory forums or processes, notably in ward meetings, community policing forums and street committee or residents’ association meetings (Figure 22). Furthermore, 35% said that there had been a protest in their community in the previous year (Figure 21). Approximately one in ten respondents raised concerns with their local councillor, or signed a petition, or wrote a letter of complaint, or joined a social media campaign/group in resistance to something (Figure 22).
• On the other hand, there are clear signs of political disengagement. For example, overall, more than half (54%) think that politics is a waste of time (Figure 25). However, the percentage who feel this rises with dissatisfaction: of those satisfied with provincial government, 41% believe politics is a waste of time; whereas of those dissatisfied almost two thirds (63%) hold this view (Figure 26).
• It is telling that of all the dimensions in the QoL Index, government satisfaction has seen the largest decline. The dimensions score has plunged from 51 out of 100 in 2017/18 to 44 in 2020/21 and down to 33 in 2023/24. Government satisfaction now stands with the lowest score of any of the seven QoL Index dimensions, and is the most important factor in the overall drop in the aggregate QoL Index score (Naidoo et al., 2024).