Census: 62 million people ‘stretch coffers’ – Expert warns of economic pressure

The Census 2022 results record a 1.8% growth rate with 62 million South Africans versus 51.7 million South Africans recorded in the last census survey in 2011.

Economist Dawie Roodt said SA had big problems looking at the stats and the population. Roodt said the country had too many people living off too little tax money.

Census 2022

“The taxpayer can’t keep up with the pressure, plus the economy is under pressure, the state is incompetent and corrupt. Sadly this adds to the lack of economic growth which has been stagnant for a long time,” he said.

Roodt said the stats show SA was “on the road to big trouble unless we get rid of the ANC”.

Statistician-general Risenga Maluleke yesterday released the fourth census post-apartheid with the previous census counts held in 1996, 2001 and 2011.

READ: Census 2022: 62 million people now live in SA

Census postponed

Due to the lockdown restrictions in 2021, the census count was postponed from October 2021 to 2 February, 2022 and ran until May 2022.

Census 2022 was further affected by riots, ongoing lockdowns and climate change issues, such as flooding in some parts of the country.

President Cyril Ramaphosa said the growth of the population was a phenomenal achievement that all South Africans should be proud of.

“But we still have work to do,” he said.

Demographics

According to the results, 56% of the country’s population lived in the three major provinces, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape.

The Western Cape also grew from being the fifth-largest province in terms of population in 2011 to the third-biggest population recorded in 2022.

Black Africans remained the dominant population group in the country with 81.4 %, followed by coloureds at 8.2%, whites at 7.3% and Indians/Asians representing 2.7%.

The white population has declined from 11% in 1996 to 7.3% in 2022.

Children

About three million children aged up to four years participated in early childhood development (EDC) programmes, with the highest percentage of children attending ECD in Western Cape with 69.5% of children and 66% of children in Gauteng.

There was only a three percent increase of children/persons between the ages of five and 24 years attending educational institutions from 70.1% in 1996 to 73.4% in 2022.

Households

About 17.8 million households were recorded during Census 2022 compared to the 14 million households recorded in 2011, with the most households recorded in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.

The number of households residing in small holdings decreased from 13.6% in 2011 to 8.1% in 2022, while households residing in formal dwelling units increased from 65.1% in 1996 to 88.5% in 2022.

Gender and language

The distribution of population by province and sex indicated that Gauteng had the most females and males, while in 1996, 21 062 685 females were recorded and increased to 31 948 745 in 2022, while the male populations grew from 19 520 887 recorded in 1996 to 30 078 757 last year.

IsiZulu remained the most spoken language in the country at 24.4%, followed by isiXhosa at 16.3 and Afrikaans at 10.6%.

The results also showed a decline in Afrikaans-speaking people from 14.5% in 1996 to 10.6% in 2022.

Immigrants

The survey indicated that the top five countries where immigrants came from were Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Lesotho, Malawi and the United Kingdom.

The survey, however, doesn’t indicate how many of these immigrants were in the country legally or illegally.

Education

Ramaphosa was pleased with the stats of the school-going pupils, which doubled compared to the 1996 census and said that “education determined the future of our children who are our future”.

He also said the statistics of people having access to electricity and water compared to 1996 also showed a great deal of progress made by the country.

READ: Census 2022: 37.6% of population completed matric