In 1988 I attended a conference of linguists in Swaziland. Many were surprised that a statistician would take an interest in a matter reserved for linguists. I have taken a keen interest in place names as carriers of hope and development or lack thereof. My career as a statistician-general was more of regional science and its role in development theory than a number cruncher. Unsurprisingly, in 2018 I was invited to a summit of publishers in Nairobi. The esteemed author and publisher Ngugi wa Thiong’o was there. I wondered why I was invited. A thought came that perhaps being a weekly columnist in the Business Report and Times Daily qualifies me to be among the luminaries. I discovered there was a hidden agenda. I qualified because of my past. Having been a statistician-general placed me on the crucifix of authors.
You see in the field of official statistics, there is a language that defines measurement. But this measurement is a complex potpourri of politics, activists and adjudication by the statistician-general or the national bean counter, as directed by the United Nations Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics and the United Nations Statistical Commission. Countries then enact statistical laws that enable the process of measurement. There are often, as one would expect in the practice, intentional ignorance and legalised errors. Intentional ignorance are omissions by commission and relate to acts of government where necessary data is not collected for political and or financing reasons. Legalised errors are compromises of classification where measurement excludes some. For instance, the expectation of those who work should be aged between 15-64, and a person younger than 15 reporting an economic activity will be excluded. These are some of the impurities that govern statistical operations.
Reduced to just printing, the visibility of the virtues of thinking and writing are lost. In similar cases musicians fall under the same fate, as their intellect is reduced to the manufacture of CDs and LPs.
The methodological underpinnings have to distinguish what is measured through the lens of statistical units and data items of these statistical units observed over time so that a time series — the essence of statistical observations — is produced. To arrive at this a painstaking compilation of classifications is undertaken for each product and how it is produced. This compilation is called International Standard Industry Classification (ISIC). There used to be nine such classifications for a long time under ISIC version three, and this consisted of classification 1 as agriculture, forestry and fisheries, classification 2 was mining, classification 3 was manufacturing including printing and publishing, classification 4 was water, gas and electricity, classification 6 was retail and wholesale, classification 7 was transport, storage, and communications, classification 8 was government services, and classification 9 was elsewhere classified. More recent developments have emerged with version 4 and version 5 already under way.
SA was stuck at version three for a long time, and by the time I left office we had not moved to revision 4 because the government could not finance a census of economic activities that would make such a revision possible. So we committed an intentional omission by commission error. My invitation to the meeting placed me in a rather awkward position when the agenda unfolded.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o from Kenya and Boubacar Boris Diop from Senegal — novelists and essayists, whose best-known books are respectively Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986), and Murambi, le livre des ossements (2000), about the genocide perpetrated in 1994 against the Tutsis in Rwanda — penned a letter to President Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye on language and literature. And I found their advice very relevant and consistent with Wa Thiong’o’s intervention at the publisher’s summit in Kenya six years ago. They put me on the spot of why they as creative artists are not recognised for their work and that this does not appear in the gross national product of the country. You see version three placed publishing under manufacturing as a process of printing. The value add in printing deals with pulp and ink and not the challenging intellectual masturbation of the thought processes. Reduced to just printing, the visibility of the virtues of thinking and writing are lost. In similar cases musicians fall under the same fate, as their intellect is reduced to the manufacture of CDs and LPs.
The letter to the newly elected president of Senegal elevates the intellectual value and contribution of thinking and culture, especially language. Their call is central to the decolonial agenda that the #FEESMUSTFALL movement called for. But unfortunately that noble call was destroyed by divisive political parties. These elders and holders of our heritage are saying, “But the most important thing to emphasise with regard to the motivations behind this open letter is that we have not exclusively published works in English and French — the languages of the former colonisers — but also novels — including Matigari (1986) and Bàmmeelu Kocc Barma (2017) — in our mother tongues, Kikuyu and Wolof.”
By so saying these elders confirm that a different agenda has to be pursued to liberate Africa from a neoliberal neocolonial agenda when they say: “Up to now, except for a few leaders like Kwame Nkrumah, the African leadership has betrayed African people. They have simply normalised the abnormalities of colonialism and neocolonialism, which is simply the Africanisation of the colonial system. Our resources have continued to develop Europe and the West.” One can only think of the contradictory policy position of South Africa on coal in favour of the environment. Yet the practice is coal is dead, long live coal, as characterised by the mad rush of exports of coal to Europe to fire power stations. Morena Mohlomi and the Basotho, like all other nations of the world say, “Metse ho cha mabapi” — infernos raze neighbourhoods. So not using coal in South Africa and exporting it elsewhere in this global village does not reduce dangers of emissions in South Africa.
The arguments the elders make are anchored in science and should compel us to desist from omission by commission in intentional ignorance and legalised errors.
The refrain of these elders on the matter of publishing and ensuring that this becomes part of the remit of economic measurement is very crucial in the context of the District Development Model in South Africa, which in its current form and conception is devoid of culture and empty on language. Any economic policy that is devoid of culture and geography is a wholesale surrender to neocolonialism.
The elders advisedly argue: “As we only look up to the West, one wonders where our inventors are? Our engineers? Our space explorers? Africa longs for a leadership that can fire the imagination of the continent’s youth. But we cannot do that when our leadership simply mimics, always imitating the West, with no belief in ourselves, in our people.” This advice is directly to us in South Africa , where we have to interrogate our economic policies that have failed Morena Mohlomi’s test of intergenerational value as the ultimate goal and definition of development. My recent analysis reflects this defect in The thirty years — Dr Pali Lehohla | The Changing Face of South Africa.
The elders say: “You are in a position to steer Senegal onto a new and different path towards a collective self-confidence, relating to the world on the basis of equal give and take. But if you choose that path, you will create enemies in the West. The West wants an Africa that always gives to Europe and the West. Don't accept an inequity, which will be at the expense of your people. And if they demonise you for that, just don't care, don't accept any other judge than the Senegalese people.”
To this end the ethos of measurement should remain the companion of Africans and in particular our indigenous intellectuals who argue for the use and execution of material life through the use of African languages. A telling tale I provided is how the Venda language has provided incontestable evidence that because of its position in the Bantu languages it has bestowed the breaking of barriers for Venda speakers as it pierces into the intellectual secrets of all the Bantu languages. The arguments the elders make are anchored in science and should compel us to desist from omission by commission in intentional ignorance and legalised errors.
The leaders shared their thoughts thus: “Let us now share a few thoughts. We've chosen to focus on the language problem, because as writers we're familiar with it, but also because, in our humble opinion, the resolution of the language problem is a prerequisite for any economic, political, social and cultural revolution, and therefore for the wellbeing of your compatriots.”
This is what the 30 years’ reflection of South Africa should be about, and the 2024 elections should look forward to the assignment that Ngugi Wa Thiong'o and Boubacar Boris Diop are advising so that we can achieve Mohlomi’s agenda taught at the Ngolile Academy of leadership three centuries ago — that “a responsible leader pursues peaceful and productive alliances, accommodates stakeholders, and uses new instruments of power to create intergenerational value”.
Dr Pali Lehohla is a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg, a research associate at Oxford University, a board member of Institute for Economic Justice at Wits and a distinguished alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former statistician-general of South Africa.
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