Statement Dismissing the So-Called “SA Mayors Report” as Misleading and Detached from Reality

03 Nov 2025

The so-called South African Mayors Report (2025) being circulated online is a deeply flawed and misleading exercise that fails to reflect the realities and sentiments of ordinary South Africans on the ground. Rather than engaging citizens directly, the report relies almost entirely on social media mentions — mainly from Twitter (X), Facebook, and online press — as the basis for its “public opinion” conclusions.

By its own admission, the report analysed 707,723 social media mentions, drawing its findings from a sample of 39,165 posts. These posts were not verified through any on-the-ground surveys, interviews, or community engagement. In essence, this is not a reflection of citizen sentiment — it is a reflection of social media noise, often dominated by bots, political trolls, and echo chambers with little link to the lived realities of ordinary residents.

Furthermore, the methodology lacks objectivity and decorum. It treats online negativity as a measure of performance without context or verification. Leaders who are actively delivering on service delivery — often under challenging circumstances — are unfairly painted with broad strokes of “corruption” and “incompetence” simply because of social media chatter.

The report openly concedes that posts from official city or mayoral accounts were excluded from sentiment analysis, meaning that positive updates, achievements, and factual communication were deliberately ignored. This alone disqualifies the report from being taken seriously as a measure of governance or leadership performance.

It is, therefore, disingenuous to present this biased, incomplete, and superficial assessment as “public opinion.” The true pulse of the people lies not in filtered hashtags or online arguments but in communities, wards, and local engagements — where residents witness tangible improvements in infrastructure, safety, and service delivery.

This report represents the height of selective analysis — a digital popularity contest masquerading as data science. South Africans deserve better than lazy analytics dressed up as credible research. We dismiss this report in its entirety and urge media platforms and commentators to rely on authentic, community-based feedback rather than algorithmic guesswork

By Centre For Alternative information RSA 

Sibusiso Mazibuko