Since President Jacob Zuma assumed his current role in 2009, South Africans have been consistently losing confidence in our governments ability to delivery basic services such as electricity and education.

This report comes from The Pulse of the People national survey conducted with 3 617 adult citizens by independent market research company Ipsos. The results include views of performance in the areas of governance and administration, the economy and social issues.

The survey results that in May 2009, 61% of citizens interviewed in a similar survey felt that government was delivering on water and electricity, while 64% felt that it was addressing the educational needs of all South Africans.

By November 2015, those numbers had declined to 48% and 50% respectively.

Economy-related issues were also topics which respondents felt government wasn’t performing well in, with just under 40% saying it’s doing very well or fairly well in creating jobs, controlling the cost of living and inflation.

When asked how well they thought government was performing overall, 48% of respondents in 2015 agreed that it was performing fairly well, compared to 56% in 2009.

Citizens also apparently don’t think their local municipal government isn’t performing any better as 53% stated they feel it’s not performing well at all.

“It is clear that the government fares best in their handling of social issues and some of the issues fall in the “orange light zone” [between 50% and 74%]  – i.e. needing attention, but not a burning issue,” Mari Harris, Director of Public Affairs at Ipsos South Africa, said in a statement.