A foreign concept: what South Africans know about international affairs

Abstract

How knowledgeable are South Africans about world affairs; and do they care? Benjamin Roberts, Steven Gordon and Jare Struwig examine new survey evidence on levels of interest and knowledge of foreign policy issues.

There exist relatively few representative studies on the public knowledge of foreign affairs in contemporary South Africa. To address this lack of evidence, the Open Society Foundation's (OSF) South African Foreign Policy Initiative funded the inclusion of a module on foreign policy in the 2013 round of the South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS). A representative sample of 2 739 respondents, aged 16 years and older and living in private homes, took part in the survey.