Petronella Jonck
Abstract
Service delivery within the South African context is a debated topic, followed by the prevalence of corruption and the erosion of political trust undermining democracy. The purpose of the study was to investigate the nexus between political trust, service delivery satisfaction and corruption victimisation. Secondary quantitative data obtained from Statistics South Africa were utilised in the reported research. The Governance, Public Safety and Justice Survey was implemented as a measuring instrument, yielding a final sample of 21 190 participants. By means of correlation analysis and structural equation modelling, the nexus between the mentioned constructs was investigated.
The results indicated that 45.6% of the variance in service delivery satisfaction could be attributed to political trust, while corruption victimisation reverted a statistically significant positive correlation with service delivery satisfaction. This might suggest that corruption victimisation has become socially accepted behaviour. The theoretical contribution of the research centres on addressing an identified lacuna in the corpus of knowledge, notably the influence of political trust and corruption victimisation within the South African context. Practically, service delivery protests could be attributed to a lack of political trust. Future research endeavours should investigate the nexus in greater detail and possibly expand the study.