Census workers, sometimes braving overflowing rivers and violent protests, managed to reach more than 80% of 17.4-million targeted households, statistician-general Risenga Maluleke said as the national count ended on Thursday.
The big urban provinces, such as the Western Cape which had fewer than a third of households counted by March 20, are now the focus of the mop-up phase to reach more areas.
Statistician-generals all over the world can extend the deadline until sufficient numbers have been counted, Maluleke said.
Limpopo, Mpumalanga and the Free State were among those with the highest levels of responses. More than 14-million out of 17.4-million households have been enumerated during the 2022 count.
Maluleke said: “We went back to areas that were not covered sufficiently. We did not want to leave anyone behind.”
A Daily Maverick survey of 458 people released on Thursday found, however, that barely a third (32%) if its respondents had been contacted by Census 2022 workers, reporting major problems in data collection.
The Census 2022 has run into obstacles — including safety in the field, access to gated communities, challenges with recruits and payments, and technology, said Maluleke.
“The floods in Gauteng and in KwaZulu-Natal have put the lives of fieldworkers at risk. They could be swept away or taken by crocs crossing rivers,” he said. In some cases, tractors were deployed to retrieve vehicles that got stuck in the mud and to access households.
Another threat to the safety of fieldworkers has been Operation Dudula, in which people have targeted and attacked immigrants in communities, causing chaos and claiming at least one life.
Maluleke said: “People who are not from SA were not willing to be enumerated because of Operation Dudula but it is our job to count everyone in our borders. We want to count everyone in informal settlements even if they may not be documented.”
Criminals have sabotaged the census too by accosting fieldworkers to steal their gadgets. This meant fieldworkers had to go out in groups to areas identified as unsafe.
Maluleke expressed his condolences to the family of one enumerator who died after he was stabbed, and another who was killed in a head-on car crash.
People who are not from SA were not willing to be enumerated because of Operation Dudula but it is our job to count everyone in our borders.
— Statistician-general Risenga Maluleke
People living in access-controlled settings, such as estates, complexes and farms, have proved difficult to reach, prompting Stats SA to make a special appeal to the gatekeepers to enable all households in their community to access and complete a questionnaire online.
The online census option has had a low uptake of under half a million, said the statistician-general.
He said that the recruitment and payment of fieldworkers has proved difficult, listing a number of reasons why their payments were delayed, including problems with bank accounts and changes to surnames and so on.
“Everyone who was owed money will be paid,” he promised.
A post-enumeration survey across the country will assess how comprehensive the census has been and only then will the results be confirmed.
“Before the census we flew across the whole country using geographical maps to make sure we didn’t skip any area,” said Maluleke.
Doing the census under the pandemic has also been demanding, yet some enumerators got offered royal treatment on the job. In Magoebaskloof, for instance, former finance minister Tito Mboweni offered to braai fish for them at his place, though they had to decline because of time constraints.
The statistician-general got the opposite treatment when he arrived at an informal settlement in the Free State known Phomolong, in Mangaung and was scolded by a homeowner for arriving late to shovel her gravel.
“She took me for one of the guys shovelling gravel in her yard,” said Maluleke, who struggled to get a word in and pitched in.
“I have seen what the fieldworkers are going through. I will not rest until the count is done,” he said. “Only then I will sleep.”
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