Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille. Picture: SUNDAY TIMES
Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille. Picture: SUNDAY TIMES

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THE Democratic Alliance’s (DA) election campaign has received a last minute boost after the latest South African Customer Satisfaction Index rated the DA-led City of Cape Town as the top performing municipality in terms of consumer satisfaction.

The results of the consumer satisfaction survey came on the same day that the latest jobs numbers from Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) were released. The jobs numbers showed that the DA-run Western Cape province has created 146,000 jobs in the past year — more than double the number created in Gauteng.

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The DA has been using its track record governing the Western Cape and the City of Cape Town to drive its election campaign. The party looks set to retain the Western Cape-if pollsters are to be believed and it has high hopes of winning Gauteng-South Africa’s economic heartland.

Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille said on Monday that the city’s score in the Consumer Satisfaction Index of 71.6 out of 100 was 17.8% higher than the municipal average and the highest score achieved by any municipality. The Index measures the level of satisfaction that consumers of municipal services experience. It uses customer interviews as input to a multi-equation econometric model developed by the American Customer Satisfaction Index at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.

Consumers of municipal services across eight of the largest South African metropolitan municipalities have given them an overall satisfaction rating of 60.6 out of 100.

"As with numerous other independent surveys in recent years, the City of Cape Town has been found to be head and shoulders above other municipalities in South Africa," Ms de Lille said.

According to Professor Adré Schreuder, founder and chair of the Consumer Satisfaction Index, "municipalities should be concerned that even with low expectations, 47% of residents rate the quality of the municipal services as well below their expectations, with the exception of the City of Cape Town".

Ms de Lille said the survey highlights the fact that, while there is work to be done, the City of Cape Town "makes a real and fundamental difference to people’s lives with service delivery, including basic infrastructure to ensure that the roads are fixed, the lights are on and the water is running for our residents".

DA leader Helen Zille said on Monday that where the DA governs "we manage the economy properly and cut corruption, so that thousands of new jobs are created".

"That is why where the DA governs, unemployment is the lowest in South Africa. It’s also why a report of the LED Network recently found that the DA-governed City of Cape Town is the most inclusive economy in the whole of South Africa," Ms Zille said. She said that Stats SA figures also showed that the DA government had reduced unemployment by the most of all the provinces.

"Where the DA governs, unemployment has decreased significantly — by 2.2% — in the last year, while unemployment nationally has increased marginally by 0.2%. In Gauteng, unemployment has increased by 0.6%," Ms Zille said.

Meanwhile, shack-dwellers’ movement Abahlali Basemjondolo on Monday publicly endorsed the DA in the Western Cape. This endorsement comes a week after the DA in KwaZulu-Natal was also publicly endorsed by the movement.

Abahlali is the biggest and most influential shack dwellers’ movement in the country whose campaigns are largely geared towards improving the living conditions of the poor especially in informal settlements. The movement boasts a national membership of over 27,000 people.

"The DA continues to show growth amongst traditional ANC supporters who have been let down by Jacob Zuma’s corrupt ANC," said DA Western Cape leader Ivan Meyer. "Voters are coming to the DA because we have a plan to stop corruption, create jobs and improve service delivery".

Abahlali have said that the ANC’s "hostile" attitude towards shack dwellers had led to the organisation to seek for an alternative political ally.