Stuart Hess
SOUTH AFRICA’S first census since the establishment of a fully democratic government looks like it will be a success, say census organisers. An undercount of only 2% is foreseen.
With the counting of the nation nearing completion, the preliminary results are expected late in January.
The census has not, however, always gone smoothly and major problems were experienced, especially in farming communities where farmers in areas such as Mpumalanga and the North-West refused to let their labourers take part.
According to Walter Ndlovu,a census representative for Mpumalanga, some farmers blocked enumerators from entering their farms. “The reason is purely political – many of them are racist,” he said.
In the North-West, farmers claimed to be busy ploughing and thus unable to allow enumerators on to farms. Census officials in the region believed this was only an excuse to deny them access: “Farmers don’t want to let people know under what trying conditions labourers work,” one official said.
The enumeration period ended on October 31 but regional offices contacted this week said they needed more time to get to inaccessible areas. They expected to complete the count by the end of November. Most provinces said they had already counted more than 90% of their people.
In the Western Cape more than 92% of the population has been counted. “The slowest area so far is the Boland due to the huge distances between farms and all the rain,” said Shahieda Hendricks, a Cape census representative.
Hendricks said people in Khayalitsha had refused to fill in the Xhosa questionnaire because it was badly translated. “We then had to get more English questionnaires, which they were happy to answer.”
Counting has been especially slow in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. In Gauteng, there were too few enumerators. Difficulties were also experienced gaining access to property with security fences and aggressive dogs.
A random sample shows, too, that census officials have not always been quick to collect completed forms. A resident of Parkview, Johannesburg, said his form had not been collected despite numerous calls to the local census office. “I was told to leave it in the letter box after I had filled it in,” he said. When the form was still not collected a census official told him: “We are not here to sort out problems of collection.”
Enumerators in KwaZulu-Natal said fighting had created difficulties. “In many areas where there was faction-fighting we were accompanied by the police. We had to count the people and once we were finished they could continue fighting,” said KwaZulu-Natal census representative Agrippa Ngcobo.