Confidence in Ramaphosa decreasing, study finds
A new poll has found that confidence is waning in President Cyril Ramaphosa's ability to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Research conducted by the University of Johannesburg and the Human Sciences Research Council was released on Wednesday afternoon.
It showed that confidence in Ramaphosa's handling of the crisis dropped by 24% to 61% from the first phase of lockdown.
Ben Roberts, research director at the HSRC, said South Africans are also less trusting of the police.
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"Relative trust across these different institutes (decreased), going from the president to local councillors.
"What we saw is that late 2017 his (Ramaphosa's) rating stood at 43% trust. That obviously increased in that 'Ramaphoria' period to 58% by late 2018, early 2019."
This improved even further during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"This buoyant sense of confidence up 85% represented quite a big optimistic bubble during that hard lockdown phase.
"What we are seeing now is a return to pre-lockdown pattern," Roberts said.
The research also showed that members of the Democratic Alliance (DA) were less willing to sacrifice certain human rights to help fight the coronavirus pandemic.
