The President has found electioneering nuggets in Census 2022, but that papers over the cracks.
With only a cursory nod to ‘challenges that remain’, president Cyril Ramaphosa welcomed the publication by Stats SA of the 2022 Census Report by noting the progress that has been made.
(Full report in PDF; the SA at a glance summary had been retracted at the time of writing, presumably to be corrected.)
Ramaphosa said:
We encouraged (sic) by the progress in the report presented by the Statistician-General.
We note, for example, that the number of people older than 20 with no education has significantly decreased, where the number of people who now have grade 12 has more than doubled since 1996.
It is significant also that a large proportion of our children are now in early childhood development centres. We still have work to do to ensure all eligible children attend ECD centres.
The presentation shows that people’s housing circumstances have improved, with almost 90 percent of South Africans now staying in formal housing.
Despite the present challenges of load shedding, which we are urgently addressing, we should be encouraged by the almost universal access to electricity supply.
He also made an unintentionally funny observation: ‘Policy making that is not informed by accurate data can result in inefficiency in the allocation of resources, under-estimation of the needs of citizens, poorly planned programmes and poor financial management.’
As if ANC policy informed by previous censuses (in 1996, 2001 and 2011) has led to the efficient allocation of resources, sufficient services to citizens, well-planned government programmes and tip-top financial management.
Electioneering
Nominally, Ramaphosa’s claims of progress are true, and they will no doubt feature prominently in the ANC’s 2024 campaign to be re-elected as the country’s socialist kleptocrats-in-chief.
At first, I was tempted to assume Ramaphosa was taking too much credit for socio-economic improvements made during the first 15 years of democracy, under Mandela and Mbeki, while glossing over the ANC government’s under-performance in the years since Zuma took power, but the census actually suggests otherwise.
The number of people over 20 years of age with no schooling at all stood at 19.1% in 1996, 17.9% in 2001, 8.6% in 2011, and 6.9% in 2022, the census report says. That is, indeed a ‘significant decrease’.
Likewise, the number of people over 20 with a matric increased from 16.3% in 1996, to 20.4% in 2001, to 28.7% in 2011, to 37.6% in 2022, which justifies Ramaphosa’s claim that it ‘more than doubled’.
It also shows fairly continuous improvement, which persisted from the previous census to the 2022 edition.
Likewise with the share of the population in formal housing: the census reports a substantial increase from 65.1% in 1996 and 68.8% in 2001, to 77.6% in 2011 and 88.5% in 2022.
Much of the change is due to the sharp decline in traditional housing, from 18.3% of the population to 3.1%. The share of people in informal housing (i.e. shacks) halved, however, from 16.2% in 1996 to 13.6% in 2011 to 8.1% in 2022.
And this happened despite the growth in population from 40.6 million in 1996 to 62 million at last count, which also suggests real progress.
The number of people using electricity to light their homes has indeed continued to rise, from 58.2% of the population in 1996, to 69.7% in 2001, to 84.7% in 2011, and now to 94.7%.
Likewise, only 8.7% of the population has no access to piped water at all, down from 19.7% in 1996. Conversely, 59.7% of South Africans have running water in their homes, compared to 44.2% in 1996. (An oddity, however, is that only 32.3% are reported to have had running water in their homes in 2001, which seems extremely unlikely if the 1996 figure of 44.2% is correct.)
So Ramaphosa appears to have pointed to real achievements, and those improvements do not appear to have slowed significantly during the Zuma years, much to my surprise.
Caveats
However, there are caveats the 2022 census does not mention, and facts that it does not measure.
Ramaphosa mentioned early childhood development, and here, the numbers are also a little fishy.
The census does not report data on early childhood development from prior censuses, but it is contradictory about the situation in 2022.
Ramaphosa’s 7/10 and 8/10 numbers for black and white children, respectively, come from Table 4.2, which reports attendance by race at crèches, educare centres, pre-schools, nursery schools, Grade 00, Grade 000 and Grade R, as opposed to other, less formal forms of childcare.
For all races, Table 4.2 reports a total of 72% of children aged 0 to 4 as being enrolled in these early childhood development institutions.
However, Table 4.1 breaks down what is presumably the same data by province, and there, the total attending the listed institutions comes to only 43.3%.
This staggering discrepancy is not explained.
The census of 2022 also reports an undercount for both individuals and households in excess of 30%, which casts some doubt on the reliability of the numbers.
A more important caveat is that education, piped water and electrification aren’t what they used to be. One can’t simply point to increased access to these services, without taking into account their quality and price.
Education reality
Eight out of every ten children in Grade 4 cannot read for meaning. Even before the pandemic, which caused a major setback to education outcomes, South Africa’s public schools were not preparing nearly enough young people for the job market or university.
Only two out of ten schools have a laboratory. Only three out of ten have a library. Only four out of ten have computer facilities. Fewer than six out of ten have sports facilities.
According to data reported by the Centre for Risk Analysis, a division of the Institute of Race Relations, of the 1.1 million children that entered Grade 1 in 2010, only 750 000 made it to Grade 12 in 2021. Another 50 000 dropped out before writing their final exams.
Only 538 000 passed their finals, but fewer than half could find a job after completing matric.
Only 256 000 matriculated with a bachelor’s pass, permitting university admission. Fewer than 60 000 passed matric with more than 50% in mathematics.
Water reality
Water provision, to the increased number of households with access to piped water, has become unreliable, and the quality of drinking water has also become worse.
Cities and towns across South Africa have suffered severe water shortages, with outages sometimes lasting weeks or even months.
According to the 2022 Blue Drop Progress Report issued by the Department of Water and Sanitation, which assesses the state of drinking water supplies in South Africa, fewer than half of water supply systems presented a low risk to consumers.
A third presented a high or critical risk. Only forty percent of water supply systems achieved microbiological water quality compliance, and 23% have achieved chemical water quality compliance.
Part of the problem with drinking water is a direct result of the failures of wastewater processing plants. Only 23 out of 995 wastewater treatment facilities are Green Drop certified. A total of 334 (39%) of municipal wastewater systems were identified to be in a critical state in 2021, up from 248 (29%) in 2013. One hundred and two (89%) out of the 115 systems owned by the Department of Public Works were identified as in a critical state, up from 84% in 2013. (Minister Pravin Gordhan has a lot more than just Eskom to answer for.)
Most of these problems can be attributed to the unavailability of suitable skills and experience, widespread corruption, a lack of infrastructure expansion to keep pace with growing populations, especially in urban centres, and a complete lack of preventative maintenance.
All of these can be laid at the door of ANC mismanagement and cadre deployment.
Electricity reality
Electrification, too, comes with a host of problems that the President left unsaid.
Eskom loses more than R1 billion per month due to electricity theft. A lot of the households reporting they use electricity to light their homes do not pay for that electricity.
Loadshedding has reached unprecedented heights. Eskom has shed 21 642 GWh of demand so far in 2023. It is closing in on doubling the 11 839 GWh it recorded in 2022, and is at almost 10 times the level of 2021, which itself was the worst year since at least 2015.
At the start of the last decade, in 2010 and 2011, Eskom produced about 250TWh of electricity per year. In 2022, it produced 226TWh, counting both imports and independent power producers. That’s a 10% decline.
Yet it also employed more people (42 749 at last count) and paid them higher salaries.
In 2016, the World Bank ranked Eskom among the most overstaffed electricity utilities in Africa, estimating it only needs 14 244 staff. At the time it produced about 240TWh per year, it had 41 787 employees, rendering 66% of them surplus to requirements. Since Eskom’s output has been steadily declining over this period, an assessment today would find 69% of Eskom’s staff are not necessary.
This is one reason why the price of electricity has increased so sharply. In nominal terms, electricity costs 10 times what it did in 1996. Adjusted for inflation, it costs at least three times as much. Is it any wonder so many people simply steal it?
Not fit to govern
That’s not to mention the myriad other indicators of socio-economic welfare that conclusively demonstrate the ANC is not fit to govern.
These include catastrophic unemployment levels; exorbitant fuel and food price inflation; declining GDP per capita; a healthcare system in crisis; rampant crime and corruption; crumbling infrastructure; the offshore flight of skilled and experienced people, individual wealth and financial capital; deindustrialisation; failed land reforms; poor and declining service delivery; and rising xenophobic violence as parties on the left and right, including the ANC, blame innocent foreigners for all South Africa’s woes.
Lifting a few highlights out of the 2022 census might look good on election posters, but they hide the far greater social and economic crises that South Africa faces as a consequence of ANC misrule.
Despite his stirring cries of Thuma Mina, and despite promising the country a New Dawn, the administration of Cyril Ramaphosa has been either unwilling or unable (or both) to do anything substantial to stop South Africa’s slide into the abyss.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
If you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend.