A responsible leader pursues peaceful and productive alliances, accommodates stakeholders and uses new instruments of power to create intergenerational value, says Morena Mohlomi, the sage of Ngolile at Khalong la Mantsopa.
Given that people live up to a hundred years implies that tools of foresight should not only match the life expectancy of citizens, but should go well beyond that horizon. Such capability is made possible by what the numbers of the nation diligently reflect and hopefully a prudent response to those who plan and deliver for impact.
In relation to the numbers that inform the nation, the persecution and prosecution of official statistics is not unknown. The most dramatic was the execution of the chief statistician of Russia by Stalin for returning a smaller number of the population than anticipated. In modern times the chief statistician of Greece has injuries to show from the Greek authorities that could not stand the economic suffering. The chief statistician became the culprit of abuse. This at times sets the context for the call for a statistician-general to step down. It is not new. In fact, it is a game of statistical politics and political statistics that in 2012 I addressed at the high-level seminar of the UN Statistical Commission.
Under such an environment the future is unfathomable, undefinable and is an impossible phenomenon to contextualise at the present to plan its path of the future.
On two occasions the call for a statistician-general to step down in South Africa has been made on the grave concerns about the numbers. In both instances the charge was led by the DA. About two decades ago, such a call was made while I was the statistician-general. This was based on an uninformed media announcement and assessment on the results of the 2006 Community Survey that I released in October 2006. This call made on January 8 2008, ahead of the January 8 statement, also carried a political innuendo by the Communist Party that the release of the numbers was a platform to stage the race for Polokwane. In that regard the numbers were manipulated, so argued the Communist Party, to favour the re-election of President Thabo Mbeki. A few days ago, a similar call to step down was made on Risenga Maluleke, my successor, regarding the Census 2022. So there is nothing new in such calls.
What is common among them is that they suffer infantile political disorder. They smack of political opportunism. Let me not confine myself to idioms but expand on the root causes of these calls. Fundamental to these is the overbearing indulgence in thinking physically. The avoidance and abhorrence of strategic foresight has confined the country to the physical present. Under such an environment the future is unfathomable, undefinable and is an impossible phenomenon to contextualise at the present to plan its path of the future. Evidence to this effect abounds.
That the National Development Plan, despite ringing hollow just under six years from 2030, and the concept of a developmental state remains in the dictionary reveals the intellectual incapacity and deficiency of the South African government to lead in the area of strategic foresight as well as major incapacity to master strategic foresight in the context of the here and now of the physical as a system. Complexity cannot be simplified. It can only be decomposed. This is a central law of cybernetics and anchors the art and science of strategic foresight. The UN Committee of Experts on Public Administration locates strategic foresight among the most invaluable capabilities that states should possess.
It is no secret that the South African government for some unexplainable reason abandoned not only the concept but the practice of scenarios from about 2009 to the present. This was after having adopted this approach from 2002. Those scenarios of the Memories of the Future and the Future we Chose capture the pathways South Africans are walking through today. The Future we Chose scenarios postulated in fine details how the country would be towards 2025 under the Muvhango Scenario. This very bad outcome scenario won the title among the three scenarios. What remained to be in the schema were names and faces of those who would be on the table during the last dinner that collapsed South Africans' livelihoods and lives.
Into the vacuous space that the government left, entered the Indlulamithi Scenarios 2030 in 2016. As tools of foresight, the Indlulamithi Scenarios distinguish themselves through strategic foresight. The science of this is modelling the future through systems thinking and system design that quantify. In the field of government such quantification is anchored in interpreting and intervening in the real laws of motion of economics in a pro-development impact for citizens and not markets. Thus, through econometric modelling and the use of the barometer the Indlulamithi Scenarios demonstrate that scenarios are not about the words that go well on the tongue, but they are about analysis and quantification of policies that describe and present the scenarios as distinct choices that deliver distinct outcomes and impacts.
When a nation is faced with perilous moments, political opportunism goes for scapegoats. So Maluleke has been turned into one.
Their Gwara-Gwara Scenario of South Africa that was manifest by 2018 guaranteed an early arrival of Jesus’s second coming because the country had decided to go on a path of neoliberal policies as reflected in the econometric quantification of the scenarios, and the barometer showed a deepening Gwara-Gwara known as Gwara-Gwara Plus by November 2023. This national character arrived much earlier than 2030, which was the date stamp of this first vintage of these scenarios. And because of the shifty and precipitous events leading to an uncertain outcome of the election of 2024, Indlulamithi Scenario 2035 came up. There is a worst-case scenario in this formulation. This worst-case scenario builds on Muvhango as projected in 2006 and a deepening Gwara-Gwara of 2030. It has a name — the Vulture Nation projection in the Indlulamithi 2035 scenarios. New econometric and barometer quantifications will be undertaken on these scenarios to build on the previous ones. But the nationwide open rent seeking and blackmailing conduct is characteristic of the Vulture Nation. Like Gwara-Gwara, the third coming of Jesus has been early.
When a nation is faced with perilous moments, political opportunism goes for scapegoats. So Maluleke has been turned into one. The root cause of this myopia is physical thinking. There is no doubt that the undercount in the census is the highest and that it happened is regrettable. But to impute that parts of the nation will be disadvantaged because of the undercount reflects the physical thinking that deprives South Africa of any prospects of strategic foresight that engage a future that stretches a horizon of a hundred years. Maluleke, like I when I was in service, has an arsenal of tools at his disposal to measure the undercount, add it back to the population by area to come to an announced population of 62-million. In that way he has compensated for those he missed in the census. But physical thinking works on the basis that if you are missed in the count, your allocation of physical resources will go to someone else. Thus you forfeit your share.
The DA thus argued: “The flawed Census 2022 data is already affecting the equitable share allocations for national government, provincial governments and municipalities. Treasury’s reliance on this disputed data to calculate these allocations poses a serious risk to fair and just distribution of resources. The DA will continue to hold Stats SA accountable and will not allow unreliable data to jeopardise the future of South Africa’s budgetary allocations and governance.” In specific steps it is inconceivable what the DA will do. The statistician-general has done his work and has allocated and compensated the undercount proportionately — finish and klaar.
On the occasion of the call for my head, in early 2007, the then-MP Sarel Marais of the DA called on finance minister Trevor Manuel to sack the statistician general, Pali Lehohla. Honourable Marais like the leadership of the Communist Party was deceived by Karyn Maughan, who on January 8 published a misguided and uninformed sensational article on the adequacy of the results of the Community Survey. Just as the council in its execution of fiducial duties pointed to areas of concern in the 2022 Census of Maluleke, they had done so in the 2006 Community Survey.
Maughan went for the brownies and the jugular but missed big time, misleading the Communist Party choristers who were focused on Polokwane. The outcome of Polokwane is well known, but central to it was the act of abandoning scenarios as tools of foresight.
Today we still grope in that dark whereby the government does not have tools of strategic foresight. Perhaps the critic should start addressing matters that matter. Stats SA long dealt with matters that matter for the nation, and what remains is for government to embed statistics as a strategic asset for planning, not something to marvel at and be just too happy to have had the luck of escaping a label of recession by 0.4% growth when NDP aspiration is 6%. While cabinet religiously releases a statement after its meetings is responsible and responsive act towards citizens, its judgment leaves a lot to be desired. On the occasion of the release of the GDP, the appreciation of release of data by Stats SA is correct, but their judgment does not correspond with what the numbers suggest.
The cabinet statement read thus “cabinet welcomed positive economic indicators as per the data released by Stats SA”. A 0.4% growth against an NDP 6% is not a positive economic indicator. It does not reflect an appreciation of cabinet on the magnitude of the problems the country faces.
Competence in strategic foresight would have yielded a totally different opinion on the performance of the economy. The problem the country faces is that it is led by people confined to physical thinking and not driven by strategic foresight where integrated reporting that Mohlomi introduced at the turn of the 18th century in Lesotho is not only desirable, but it is undergirded by new instruments of power that are focused on creation of intergenerational value. A three-decade average economic growth of under 1% cannot and shall not yield generational value, less so a 0.4% percent growth.
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 SA.
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