Fifty-one (51) per cent of Zimbabweans still trust President Emmerson Mnangagwa to lead the country despite expressing unhappiness about the ailing economy, an Afrobarometer round 9 survey has established.
This was revealed during a Mass Public Opinion Institute (MPOI) meeting in Bulawayo on Tuesday.
The survey principal Stephen Ndoma said he used a sample size of 1 200 citizens, adding that his study had an error rate of +/-3 percentage points at a 95% confidence level. Said Ndoma:
The majority (64%) being those with primary or no formal education followed by 58% of those of no or low lived poverty and the least is those living in high poverty who constitute 40% said they trust the President, but 42% of those living in the urban areas say they do not trust the President.
The findings of the survey were carried out from 2017 to 2022.
Ndoma said 94% of people in Harare and 82% in Bulawayo, Matabeleland North and South were not happy with the state of the economy.
They said the Government was performing “fairly bad” or “very bad” on key economic issues.
87% of the respondents said the government was failing to keep prices stable, 86% said the Government was failing to create jobs while 79% said authorities had failed to narrow the gap between the rich and poor.
Almost three-quarters (72%) of citizens said the country was going in the wrong direction, according to the survey. Said Ndoma:
Nearly eight in 10 citizens (78%) say the country’s economic condition is either ‘fairly bad’ or ‘very bad’, while 64% describe their living conditions in the same way.