Kgalema Motlanthe

Only a few months ago, just about half of the South African voting population had never heard of Kgalema Motlanthe or indicated that they did not know enough about him to express an opinion on him.

His imminent appointment as President of the country will no doubt change this scenario as he will be far more in the public eye in the months to come.

In May 2008 Ipsos Markinor asked a representative sample of 3500 South Africans to give him and other political leaders a point out of 10. The question was: "Using a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 means you are totally against and 10 means you are totally in favour of him, please tell me how you would rate Kgalema Motlanthe?"

Personal face-to-face interviews were done in the homes and home languages of respondents and the results were filtered to reflect the views of adults, 18 years and older.

The sample error on this study is less than 2% and interviews were conducted between 14 April and 15 May 2008.

The same survey also indicated that a large proportion of South Africans of voting age were not familiar with the top six ANC leaders in the party's National Executive Committee, excluding ANC president Jacob Zuma.

Overall Motlanthe received a score of 4.4 out of 10. Amongst ANC supporters his score was 4.8 out of 10, although a large proportion of them still said they did not know enough about him to express an opinion.

Here are the scores on the same questions for Pres Thabo Mbeki, ANC leader Jacob Zuma and other top ANC leaders:

When looking at the results per province, it is clear that Motlanthe's background as a leader in the National Union of Mineworkers made him better known in the provinces more prominent in the mining sector, namely the Free State, Northern Cape and North West.

Statement issued by Ipsos-Markinor September 25 2008