Unpacking topical issues and how South Africans feel about them
CompariSure, a young South African FinTech company, today shares the data it has gathered after having had a broad range of conversations with all of South Africa. The data was generated by a constantly evolving set of unique conversation-driven interactions powered by CompariSure’s proprietary chatbot technology. Having already “chatted” to almost 250,000 South Africans from all walks of life, CompariSure is able to deliver valuable insights into the current national conversation.
What’s in the headlines?
The global coronavirus pandemic has called into question the leadership and governments of many countries, attracting criticism for how many have dealt (or failed to deal) with the crisis. While nobody was prepared to deal with a pandemic of this nature, some countries have risen to the occasion – was South African one of these?
What does South Africa have to say?
When asked about the current national lockdown, 81% of respondents stated that President Ramaphosa’s decision to extend the lockdown was the right thing to do. Reasons for this varied, however the majority reflected the “lives over livelihood” slant – a surprising result, considering that 50% of respondents stated that Financial Strain was their number one challenge during lockdown.
“While it seems fairly self-evident from general social media that there is plenty of praise for President Ramaphosa, we set out to see if we could gather conversational data to support this,” says Jonathan Elcock, CompariSure’s Founder and CEO. “Many of our conversations were with users from lower-income households, so it was interesting to see that when segmenting the data, even those from the seemingly hardest-hit communities were also supportive of the President’s decision to extend the lockdown.”
Looking on the bright side…
“While the current pandemic is undoubtedly a disaster for not only South Africa, but the world, the majority of our respondents revealed strong feelings of unity and solidarity. Despite the trials and tribulations that many are facing, our data suggests that South Africans across the board currently stand united behind our President,” concludes Elcock.