AYABONGA CAWE: Analysing the story behind the latest statistics

Often the estimates, research questions and tables one finds in the national census or most statistical releases overlook and undercount what is most important. For instance, the census on agriculture administered by Stats SA, while analytically valuable, does not count non-VAT paying agricultural undertakings.

In effect, this means not counting those with a turnover below R1m unless they volunteer to register in cases where their turnover is more than R50,000. The implication? Many of those who respond in the General Household Survey that they undertake household-level agricultural activities that are not their main income or food sources, would not be counted in the agricultural census.

This criticism notwithstanding, the recent release of the 2022 national census last week was a significant milestone. The statistical agency deserves all the praise showered on it for delivering the census in trying conditions, using multimodal, computer-aided collection approaches. So, what does the periodic national tally tell us?

The census highlights the dramatic spatial shifts and in-country migration since the end of influx control in 1986. What it reveals is self-evident if we care to look around us and observe the mushrooming informal settlements on the margins of the cities, malls springing up in small towns and the nascent densification of erstwhile rural provinces.

Post-apartheid urbanisation has reproduced the direction of the urban migration experienced in the past, subject to only limited change. The population of Gauteng, a territorially small but economically significant province, has grown by 7-million people since the 1996 census. KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape, as key economic nodes, each saw their populations grow by more than 3-million since 1996.

There’s a slight complication to this well-known population surge in the relatively urban economic nodes. Take the example of Mpumalanga. Often seen as a rural province, it has 2.36-million more people now than in 1996. While there is often a widespread acceptance of the outflow from rural provinces, the Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga and Limpopo have actually seen some growth in their populations, exceeding 1-million in the case ofMpumalanga and Limpopo.

The census also revealed that a notable decline in the proportion of citizens between the ages of birth to 35, from more than two-thirds (70.1%) of the population in 1996 to 61.2% in 2022, with the median age rising by six years compared with 1996, from 22 to 28 years. 

Agricultural employment remained flat at about 800,000 jobs, employment halved in electricity, gas and water supply and mining employment fell from about 541,000 jobs to just more than 400,000 jobs in the second quarter of 2023.

While employment in domestic work and manufacturing remained flat, considerable gains have been seen in retail, tourism, construction and civil service work since 1996, where employment doubled. Most significant is the tripling of employment in the financial intermediation, insurance and real estate sector, reflecting the deepening of the financialisation of the SA economy.

Concerningly, in some of the sectors where deep job losses were seen state-owned firms are the “lead firms”. At Transnet employment dropped from 113,034 roles in 1996 to just more than 46,000 in 2022. The SABC saw its permanent headcount fall from 3,726 in 1996 to 2,270 by 2022. Interestingly, Eskom saw a slight rise in headcount from 39,857 in 1996 to 42,749 by 2021.

The story behind the numbers released by the president and statistician-general last week show us that beneath all the tables and graphs is a society undergoing significant change, challenging our assumptions about what we know about this change and reinforcing our concern about some of the more ominous features of these shifts.

• Cawe is chief commissioner at the International Trade Administration Commission. He writes in his personal capacity.