Census 2022: A blunder that could haunt SA

Could the failure of the 2022 Census be one of the biggest administrative blunders of the post-apartheid era?

Is there any other failure which could have such potentially negative consequences for the future of this country?

We are posing those questions in the full knowledge that no-one, from either government or from Statistics SA (Stats SA), will ever admit the scale of the numbers disaster.

The DA has called for the census to be conducted again – but experts say that is not a practical solution, because it will take at least four to five years to put the planning in place.

Stats SA admitted this week that critical census data is fundamentally flawed and not good enough to be released for official or public use.

ALSO READ: ‘A travesty’: Census 2022 fundamentally flawed, Stats SA confirms poor data quality and bias

The information includes figures on income and earnings, labour and employment and mortality and fertility.

These are key data sets which all planners will use in determining the future allocation of resources. Cape Town demographer Prof Tom Moultrie uses the example of where census data shows “there are a whole lot more school children in a municipality in the country that might lead them to build another school or another clinic, but those people might not actually be there”.

Overall, using bad data will result in wastage of resources or resources not being sent where they are needed.

That, in turn, could exacerbate complaints about lack of service delivery and fan the flames of anger among communities which feel they have been neglected.

What is particularly tragic about the failure of Census 2022 is that experts like Moultrie warned Stats SA about carrying out the count during the time of Covid.

ALSO READ: ‘Census 2022 failure a national scandal’ − DA calls for a re-run

Part of the recovery process from this failure must include taking steps to ensure it never happens again.