Chairperson, hon Minister of Finance, Deputy Minister of Finance in absentia, heads of departments, officials, sanibonani, dumelang, avuxeni. [Good afternoon.] The 52nd national conference of the ANC which was held in Polokwane, looked at the extremes of an emergent nation, and I quote:
From the earliest manifestations of intellectual activity; the settlements of pastoral communities characterised by foundries, artisanship and trade across oceans; colonisation by Europeans; the slave trade and indentured labour - South Africa has emerged as one of the most diverse nations across the globe.
With that in mind, irrespective of what the country is facing, we will cross the bridge because we are a nation and that is what the ANC believes in.
Statistics SA is a national government department regulated in terms of the Statistics Act; as a result of that it then distances itself from political interference.
The period immediately following 1994 was characterised by internal transformation within Statistics SA. During that time we then saw the appointment of the Statistician-General for the first time in South Africa. The department then underwent transformation and restructuring which led to the new vision of the department.
The Statistician-General and his team presented a work programme to the Standing Committee on Finance, and thanks for that effort. The programme that was presented to the committee was divided into two priorities - the internal and the external.
I am not going to bore members with the details of that. But amongst those key priorities there were two important areas of concern which were raised by the department: the preparation for Census 2011 and the undercounting.
The ANC acknowledges and appreciates the positive contributions made by the Statistics SA department towards improvements and looking at or honestly evaluating their weaknesses. However, the Statistician-General and the hon Minister for Planning in the Presidency still need to seek solutions to serious outstanding issues regarding official statistics.
There are various challenges that are facing the department. The public trust needs to be restored with regards to the official database of statistics.
We also looked at the statistics skills within the country and saw that those skills were quite scarce and the department needs to look at how it can deepen the skills base whilst engaging in a process of realistically determining the work that could be undertaken.
We also looked at the language that is being used. Because of what the system has done to our people, the majority of the people fail to understand the language that is being used. We made suggestions, unlike our friends in the opposition, who only look at the problems and don't provide solutions to the problems.
We suggested that the language must be simple for the media and the general public and that there should be an interaction between Statistics SA and the other relevant departments. Here we are referring to departments like Home Affairs and the others.
Yes, the ANC does agree with the DA when it comes to the challenges of undercounting. However, as I said, the ANC is different from the other parties in that it gives solutions.
We propose that what the department needs to do, hon Minister, is to look at rural development and come up with a better system. If one looks at rural development, one finds that there are no physical addresses and the majority of South Africans are, in fact, living in rural areas. So there must be a better system in the preparation for Census 2011 for the collection of data.
We also suggested that within the piloting programme there must be public awareness. Let the people understand what statistics is. Hon members, as we are sitting here very few of us understand the correlations, the histograms and the other things that are being used by statisticians. How about our own constituencies that are sitting there and not understanding a thing? So we then thought the awareness programme towards the upcoming Census 2011 will be much better.
Having said that, as the ANC we thought we cannot actually bombard the department with all the proposals because of the capacity that they have. We then said capacity-building and the filling of vacant posts within the department need to be done.
Hon Minister and Deputy Minister, the ANC realises that it is true that undercounting has caused serious problems and its consequences have somehow affected service delivery in the provinces. This is because of the allocations based on the numbers given to the department. As a result, if we improve the collections then there would be some improvement.
We also proposed that tertiary education and Fet colleges must be well funded so as to ensure human capacity development. Within the co-ordination of the departments the Minister of Planning in the Presidency also needs to look at the project or hold discussions with the Minister of Higher Education and Training regarding the curriculum as to how they could fit in other projects like census at schools which focus ... [Interjections.]