Black youth lose confidence in parties
2013-03-19 16:02
Johannesburg - Forty percent of young black people have
little or no confidence in the country’s political parties, according to a survey
released on Tuesday.
The same was true of more than two-thirds of young people
from other races, the study showed.
It was conducted by the Institute for Justice and
Reconciliation (IJR) showed on Tuesday.
The young blacks approached for the SA Reconciliation
Barometer were under the age of 35.
Overall, about 58% of young South Africans said they
would consider supporting a political party different to the one preferred by
most of their friends and family.
The study found that 49% of all South Africans doubted
that national leaders were concerned with the views of ordinary people.
"Not only young South Africans but adults, really
believe that political leaders are not responsive to their views, and they have
no power to change the opinions of what happens in government," said IJR
researcher Kate Lefko-Everett.
About 44% of people surveyed said they had witnessed
corruption in their own communities, and more than one in three believed government
was not doing enough to fight it.
The study was conducted between March and April 2012
among 3 500 South Africans across the nine provinces.
Half of this sample population was the youth.
It showed that 70.5% of black youth had confidence in the
presidency while only 40% of their white counterparts believed in the country’s
highest office.
About 18% of the Indian youth sampled had confidence in
the presidency, while 31.4% of the coloured population had confidence in the
presidency.
The Constitutional Court was the institution which all
races and age groups had confidence in, with 69.4% of the sampled population
giving it the thumbs up.
Of the population sampled, 25.4% believed economic
inequality was the main dividing factor among South Africans.
Economic inequality had remained the main reason for
division in South Africa in the barometer since its inception in 2003.
About 47.7% of all young people surveyed believed that
their economic situation was likely to get better in the next two years.
But 46.1% of the youth also believed they were likely to
be unemployed in the next year.
Despite high levels of unemployment in the country, most
of the youth viewed themselves as "energetic" and were optimistic
about their future.
"It may be that the youth are more optimistic about
their future than the reality of what the economy can provide at the
moment," said Lefko-Everett.
About 23.7% of South Africans said they had been part of a peaceful demonstration while 17.6% said they had participated in a violent protest, an increase from 11.6% recorded in 2011.
Almost half of South Africans (49.2%) believed that government should use race categories to measure the impact of its policy and programmes.
This had increased from 40.1% five years ago.
- SAPA
