SAfm, Friday morning

The 50s and people born in the 40s, these generations tend to share similar opinions. They tend to see growing levels of disillusionment with democracy, although in general they have a certain attachment to voting and a certain attachment to democratic principles. But we see with Gen Z, the new generation coming forward, many of Gen Z people are.

In their 20s now. These people are very critical of the status quo. And the existing foundations of that status quo, democracy, electoral participation, just don't seem to have the same values for them as it did for their older counterparts. While we don't see a lot of generational difference in much of our public opinion research, Gen Z is turning out to be somewhat different and that they do seem to

Have different attitudes and different ideas than their forebears. We must remember: this is a generation who's been through a lot in South Africa. They lived through the stay catch-up here. They were just coming of age. And as soon as they wanted to finish school and enter the job market, they were struck by the COVID-19 pandemic and the very difficult, economically rocky post-pandemic recovery period. And you can understand.

How these very damaging political, economic, and social events would make them disillusioned with the status quo in South Africa? I must ask you, Dr. Gordon, how we understand what they're telling us, right? How do we respond to their desire that they've shared with us? And I understand this is not all the respondents, but a percentage of the respondents are telling us across age groups that they would rather live in an autocracy or a dictatorship of some kind.

Than living in the current situation in which we do. Do we turn around and say, no, actually, we could overhaul the system and make this democracy work? Because this democracy is simply the sign of a democracy where implementation has not occurred properly? Or do we say we should look at reforming the system to answer their desire to live in an autocracy, for example? So, what the data suggests is that people are disillusioned with the status quo because they do not see.

The status quo has delivered for them economically in terms of decent work and from a security perspective in creating safe communities. And they fear that the future, say the next five to ten years, things will get worse and not better. So this is a fundamental issue around a loss of faith in the governance class and how South African