Minister in the Presidency Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma was reported to have said when tabling her budget vote for Statistics SA that "credible statistics are necessary to ensure a better life for all South Africans" because "policy makers and implementers use the data produced to inform decisions, [and] without good statistics the policy development, planning and decision-making process is a blind one. We cannot learn from our mistakes and the public cannot hold us accountable. Statistics allow us to understand and learn from the past." I agree, but in the absence of definitions we still won’t know what we are talking about. For example, the government constantly raises the challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment. Statistics SA tells us that 55% of the population is defined as living in poverty, that we have the worst Gini coefficient in the world, and that 26% of our working population is "officially" unemployed. The Economist defines poverty "as a short, brutish and wretched...
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