Who thought Zuma should be president in Soweto, 2006: Teasing the social bases of a politician' s following from a quantitative data set

Abstract

How do we explain the rapid rise in popularity of Jacob Zuma, the former deputy president of the country, who was fired by president Thabo Mbeki after he was charged with accepting kick-backs from arms manufacturers and who subsequently won the presidency of the African National Congress? This poper analyses data collected by the Centre for Sociological Research in Soweto in June and July 2006 to gauge the extent of sympathy for Zuma in Soweto and produce a social sketch of those who supported Zuma. The data questions the common sense views that Zuma' s support is exclusively rural, male and crudely sexist, but confirms that Zuma' s support has some Zulu basis and some trade union base. However, the data additionally shows that poverty, a sense of deprivation and recent involvement in strikes were also factors associated with support for Zuma in Soweto. Further, since none of the factors associated with support for Zuma provides an overarching explanation, it becomes apparent that there is no single typical Zuma supporter, but rather that Zuma represents a range of different things to a range of different people. The second half of the paper refines the analysis by considering the ‘non-typical’ categories of Zuma support — the non-poor. non-Zulu, non-trade union member. Finally, the paper situates these findings within studies about leadership and protest. While social circumstance was important in explaining sympathy for Zuma, political leadership must also enter the picture.