NEVA MAKGETLA: Save democracy by saving the Quarterly Labour Force Survey
Stats SA’s indispensable instrument for policy-making is a casualty of budget cuts
The brutal invasion of Ukraine underscores the importance of building and defending democratic institutions. Consider Stats SA, an unassuming bureaucracy now tucked away in the presidency. Its work is of key importance for democracy, since shifting from a discourse of power to a discourse of reason ultimately depends on dispassionate evidence.
In the decades since apartheid, Stats SA transformed from an instrument of systematic exclusion (before 1994, official statistics, even the census, left out most of the African population) to a critical tool for understanding our collective needs and challenges. But its capacity is now under threat, not from political turmoil but from swingeing budget cuts, with a 30% decline in noncensus resourcing (in constant rand) over the past decade...
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