Cape Town - Black South Africans are in increasing numbers joining white South Africans in the view that the president, Parliament and state political institutions can’t really be trusted.
That is one of the findings of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation’s annual Afrobarometer survey of racial groups’ attitudes to reconciliation, a unified South Africa and perceptions of patriotism, racial identity and tolerance.
At the IJR’s offices in Cape Town on Wednesday, institute director Dr Fanie du Toit said a cost benefit analysis of the current presidency - headed by President Jacob Zuma - could be done which would show that there has been a large drop in confidence in the office.
The study, led by Dr Kim Wale, has studied trust in national leaders and Parliament across race groups, the latter defined by the apartheid definitions.
While black South Afrcans still demonstrate the highest levels of trust in leaders and parliament and their white counterparts still had the lowest levels of trust - the divide and disagreement between the two groups had dropped.
For example in 2003, 65.5% of black South Africans compared with 20.5% of white South Africans agreed that national leaders are trustworthy. Over the past 11 years, these figures decreased by 8.7% for black South Africans to 53.8 percent but increased among white South Africans by 6.7 percent to 27.2% in 2014.
The survey asked about 4 000 people across South Africa whether apartheid was a crime against humanity. White South Africans demonstrated the lowest agreement with this statement - about five in every ten compared to an average of seven in every ten among all groups.
