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Cape Town – A sample of South Africans in an internet study have expressed their dismay at President Jacob Zuma's decision to fire Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene.
President Jacob Zuma replaced Nene with David van Rooyen on Wednesday night in a shock move that resulted in the rand plummeting past R15 to the US dollar.
Subsequently, an online survey by Pondering Panda on M4JAM has found that a sample of South Africans disapproved of the move.
Over 300 people on the M4JAM platform ranging from 20 to 60 years old participated in the online survey by Friday morning.
Pondering Panda conducts surveys via digital channels and respondents were evenly split along gender lines.
The survey found that 71% of respondents most strongly disapproved of the move on a scale from 1 – 10, with 1 being most negative position.
In terms of responses on Friday morning, 80.5% said the decision was “terrible for South Africa”, 3.8% said was a “good move” and 9.2% were unsure. At the other end of the scale, 1.53% approved of the decision to axe Nene.
South Africans are also spilt on the reasons for Nene’s firing. Responses to this question indicated that the reason could be related to the former minister’s position on government spending (27.2%), the presidential jet (18.2%), the nuclear build programme (21.1%) and the bail out of SAA (22.7%).
In terms of race, support for the decision among black South Africans scored a high of 2 out of 10, declining to 1.16 among whites.
Support was also the highest in Limpopo (2.2 out of 10), with the Free State and North West tying for the lowest score (1).
Most survey responders (68.1%) believed that the African National Congress should recall Zuma over his handling of the economy.
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