ANC policies out of step with what its own supporters want – IRR polling results

ANC government policies are out of step with the preferences of notable majorities – 65% to 79% − of self-identified ANC supporters.

This is one of the key findings to emerge from the most recent polling by the Institute of Race Relations (IRR).

Polling results focusing on what South Africans believe would be the most effective approaches to empowerment, economic growth, and service delivery are contained in the second of three reports on the survey, Policy Preferences of Registered Voters, published in a webinar today.

The findings are drawn from a demographically representative national survey conducted between 27 March and 3 April 2025.

Strikingly, among ANC supporters:

• 73% favour merit-based appointments to all jobs over race-based targets or quotas;
• 65% favour public procurement based on value-for-money considerations over racial targets;
• 79% oppose the Expropriation Act – which is higher than the national average;
• 78% favour a government focus on job creation over expanded welfare support and grants; and
• 77% believe tax-funded voucher-based systems for housing, education, and health care would be more effective empowerment policies than current affirmative action and employment equity policies.

Key overall findings are:

• Job creation remains top national priority: Reinforcing a multi-year pattern in IRR polling, unemployment and job creation rank highest as the preferred national priority;
• Merit trumps race: A large majority of 84% support merit-based appointments to all jobs. This figure combines those who favour merit-only appointments (30.5%) and those who favour merit-based appointments with special training for people from previously disadvantaged groups (53.5%);
• Value-for-money trumps race-based procurement targets: A large majority of 81.7% want the state to buy from the best-priced supplier. This figure combines those who favour purely value-for-money procurement with no racial considerations (54.1%) and those who support value-for-money procurement with racial considerations acting merely as tiebreakers where two companies offer equal value for money (27.6%);
• Property rights trump expropriation without compensation: A substantive majority of 68.1% oppose the Expropriation Act signed into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa in early 2025;
• Work trumps welfare: A large majority of 77.8% favour a government focus on job creation over expanded welfare support and grants, and
• Choice trumps state-controlled empowerment policies: A large majority of 76.3% believe tax-funded voucher-based systems for housing, education, and health care would be more effective empowerment policies than current affirmative action and employment equity policies.

The report notes: “South Africans could hardly speak more clearly: they want policies and politics that unlock job creation, reward merit, hunt for every cent of value, safeguard what people own, and put real choices on such vital issues as education, housing, and health care directly into their hands. Across race, age, income and party lines this consensus is overwhelming. Parties, policymakers, businesses, and citizens now face a straightforward choice: realign around that centre of gravity or persist with projects voters regard as wasteful, unfair, or threatening.”

The report adds: “For the ANC the warning lights flash red. Its signature platforms of race-based quotas, procurement, expropriation without compensation, and, increasingly floated over recent years, a permanent Basic Income Grant, are opposed by most South Africans and, more worryingly for the ANC, by roughly three quarters of its own diminished supporters.

“Unless the party rewrites its economic script around large-scale job creation, clean and competitive tendering, secure property rights and choice-based citizen-level empowerment, it risks turning a 2024 electoral defeat into a 2026/7 rejection followed by a wholesale 2029 rout.”

The report concludes: “South Africa … stands at a hinge moment. A broad electoral mandate is now convincingly in political play for a pro-growth, merit-driven, choice-oriented policy settlement – and its electoral benefit. Parties and policymakers who embrace it are likely to find public goodwill, private-sector buy in, investment, and civil-society partnerships lining up behind them. Those who cling to a command-and-quota paradigm risk not only prolonged economic stagnation but a decisive and calamitous electoral reckoning.”

To view today’s webinar – at which author of the report and IRR Head of Strategic Communications Hermann Pretorius presented the findings – go to: https://irr.org.za/reports/irr-polling/pro-growth-or-pro-poverty-findings-of-irr-polling-2025-report-2-policy-preferences-of-registered-voters

Media contact: Hermann Pretorius IRR Head of Strategic Communications Tel: 079 875 4290 Email: hermann@irr.org.za

Media enquiries: Michael Morris Tel: 066 302 1968 Email: michael@irr.org.za