Dr Niel Barnard, the former head of intelligence in the apartheid bureaucracy and a key apartheid bureaucrat who played a groundbreaking role in the transition of South Africa from apartheid to democracy, is no more.
In an hour he determined the cause and course of statistics in South Africa by cutting through the noise and hitting the bull’s eye in February of 1995 at a DG’s meeting held in Cape Town, where I led the charge from the North West. He was the chair of the equivalent of the Forum of South African Directors-General (FOSAD) under Nelson Mandela’s administration for the duration of the government of national unity.
He played a critical role in the acrimoniously contested terrain regarding the role and position of national statistics. A tactical position was necessary to deploy given the intransigent posture of Dr Treinach du Toit as the then head of the Central Statistical Service (CSS) of SA. I was heading the national statistics office of Bophuthatswana (BopStats). With the dissolution of Bophuthatswana and all other homelands and unification of SA, legislation and administrative procedures of doing so were to be concluded, including that of the institutions in that service. However, I had sworn that over my dead body should such a process be undertaken under the leadership of Dr Du Toit.
When the constitution was being discussed, Prof John Kahimbaara, who was my technical adviser, and I were preparing to make the case for statistics to be a constitutional entity. Meanwhile, there were other fires to put out that included the mandate for geography in the statistics system.
Minutes after dispatching the fax, I got a message that when Dr Du Toit read the rundown of the proceedings, he could not take his coffee. In fact it spilt as he raged with anger, saying 'magtig, magtig!'
Du Toit and I thought alike as far as the location of statistics in the rubric of government went. That it was under home affairs was a serious misnomer, and its stature that was headed by a chief director was yet another huge misnomer.
Where we differed with Dr Du Toit was fundamentally about what transformative agenda and therefore structure, content and form the post-apartheid statistics system will take. Because of the devil in the detail, I asked the DG of the North West, Prof Job Mokgoro, to call an RDP systems meeting in Bophuthatswana at Rooigrond in October 1994, a mere five months after the 1994 elections. The theme of the meeting was the post-apartheid statistics system. I invited Dr Du Toit to deliver a keynote address on his vision for a post-apartheid statistics system in SA. He declined my invitation and instead said such a summit should not be called. I wrote back, 'I invited you to be a keynote speaker on your vision and not as an adviser or arbiter of whether the national RDP summit for statistics be called or not.' I promised him he would get the report on the proceedings.
The agenda on the role of statistics in post-apartheid SA came up with resolutions on the fundamentals of the national statistics system and the role of provinces within such a system and the RDP context. At the level of detail of leadership and management, the summit resolved that the position of the head of the CSS be advertised. As I promised Dr Du Toit the resolutions, I duly sent these promptly three days later. Minutes after dispatching the fax, I got a message that when Dr Du Toit read the rundown of the proceedings, he could not take his coffee. In fact it spilt as he raged with anger, saying 'magtig, magtig!'
So three months later he sent his emissary Francois Massyn to Bophuthatswana to disestablish the statistics office. We had long anticipated his move, which was strategically legitimate but tactically destabilising for the long-term goal of remaking statistics in the new SA. So instead of answering Massyn’s questions we gave him the draft legislation for establishing the North West statistics system that the North West was considering and said this is what he should share with Du Toit. Our tactical move, though legitimate because the constitution, was silent on the division of powers in statistics — it was simply meant to disrupt Du Toit’s intransigence because he wanted to cling to the apartheid geography of statistics, which would have been a fundamental strategic flaw if it were to manifest.
Then we started lobbying provinces on the thin line of argument mindful of the strategic import of Du Toit’s argument, but his faulty entrenchment of the statistical service as a polarising agent. We knew the risks that if we shared the North West position with KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape, then federalism of this key national resource would become a rapid reality. So the strategy was deliberately canvassed across all other six provinces that would harbour no ambitions for federating the statistics system. So for Du Toit we showed him a federation if he does not comply with our demands. The incentive ran its course, and Dr Du Toit declared me persona non grata in matters statistics in SA. However, he did not know I was not his staff member but one of North West statistics, which was in the making, and I had a legitimate status to represent the province in all matters statistics at all levels.
Back to Dr Niel Barnard. Prof John Kahimbaara, Prof Hermanus Geyer of Potchefstroom University and I had been so immersed in the North West Transitional Local Government (TLG) and in particular the principles of statistics in delimitation and demarcation of municipalities and Integrated Development Plans, which was a major agenda item at the Rooigrond Statistics and RDP Summit of October 1994. The local government elections were nearing fast and the North West was quite advanced because of the engagement of statistical office’s advice on principles of cultural economic geography in the making of politics. The scientific basis of space as an artefact of cultural economic geography was thoroughly canvassed and incorporated in the draft bill of the North West statistics system. But more importantly, the contribution of the Bophuthatswana censuses of 1985 and 1991 over which I presided came in handy in addressing the conditions for the TLG.
Our demonstrable competence and being vocal about it saw us being invited in the portfolio committee that was chaired by Max Sisulu to make the case for statistics as a national asset. In no time we found ourselves in the crosshairs of Norman du Plessis of the IEC and Du Toit. That entanglement became a major catalyst for rapid change.
From these series of meetings, we were invited in the DGs’ committee meeting that was chaired by Dr Niel Barnard, and Dr Du Toit was summoned to the same meeting. Du Plessis, whom we had met in Pretoria the previous day — oops — was in the same meeting in Cape Town. He could not greet us and deliberately appeared to have never seen Kahimbaara, Geyer and Lehohla. Of course, the previous day we had told him about our assessment of the CSS and that Du Toit was not fit to lead it anyway.
Over the six months from Rooigrond in October 1994 to March 1995, we had done our homework and continued to execute with precision. Seven of the provinces had understood the role of statistics and its national character and positioning in the provinces. North West statistics had acquitted itself in terms of competence and not only leading transformation but confronting issues head on.
Du Toit committed a fatal error, but perhaps the writing was already on the wall. He attended a UN Statistical Commission meeting and sent his deputy, John Lynch, to the meeting of DGs in Cape Town. But worse still, he had sent a letter to North West DG Prof Mokgoro declaring me persona non grata in matters national statistics. Dr Ben Marengwa represented Prof Mokgoro at the DGs’ meeting in Cape Town. He was livid and I did not understand why. He just kept saying: “Leburu le ho thoeng ke Du Toit lea tella [This Boer, Du Toit, is disrespectful].” I was totally unaware of the letter.
The meeting started and Lynch was called to present the case for the CSS. Within five minutes, Barnard said, 'We have heard you, let us hear Mr Lehohla.' I took the stage and for 20 minutes the forum ate from the palm of my hand. By the time we left, it was clear our Rooigrond proceedings set the path and pace for the practice of statistics in SA and the leadership and management at CSS were woefully inadequate.
Without the razor-sharp mind of Barnard, the strategic position would have been lost and perhaps and perhaps statistics would have followed the infrastructure ruin that has so predominantly visited us in our latter half of democracy
A week later, a session on the census was called in Pretoria by Dr Du Toit. Knowing I was persona non grata, I knew what Du Toit was going to do. Kahimbaara, Geyer, Benny Mokaba and I agreed that I arrive a day earlier and be at the office by six o’clock in anticipation that Du Toit would block me. Du Toit did exactly that. So every member of the committee was personally informed by me as I set, like Mordecai the Jew at the gates of King Xerxes, wailing that Du Toit stopped me from participating.
It worked. The committee refused to sit unless I was in the meeting, and Howard Gabriels, the adviser to the minister, informed Jay Naidoo, then-minister of RDP and responsible for statistics. Du Toit was instructed to open for Mordecai to enter the palace. The post of head of statistics was advertised a week after, I applied, interviews were held by April, and by July 1 Dr Mark Orkin was appointed. I joined him within a week at the CSS in Pretoria as his deputy.
Barnard had sounded the death knell of the CSS of Du Toit in March. Change ran so fast. Orkin introduced the Statistics Act of 1999, which elevated the post of statistician-general and introduced the concept of the National Statistical System (NSS). When I ascended to office in 2000, I would work on the introduction of implementation of the NSS, but importantly started a revolution on geography as a strategic asset of development planning to complete the triad of cultural economic geography. I also acted on technology not only as an enabler but an integral part of the statistics. My successor, Risenga Maluleke, has successfully embedded geography and institutionalisation of the NSS in the law that parliament passed last week and waiting for assent by the president.
Without the razor-sharp mind of Barnard, the strategic position would have been lost and perhaps statistics would have followed the infrastructure ruin that has so often visited us in our latter half of democracy.
The provincial DGs of the time got the message right and set the statistics system on the right path. We were able to deploy the tactical to camouflage the strategic and end up with the strategic, which is the NSS anchored in geography. This is now in law, and my successor succeeded in executing continuity of change. It was a long and continues to be a beneficial journey.
Barnard made a groundbreaking decision in February 2005. But the decision would have faltered in the absence of a detailed strategic and tactical plan that engaged and mobilised stakeholders.
Nelson Mandela, in a letter to Adelaide Tambo written from prison, wrote: “Significant progress is always possible if we ourselves plan every detail and allow intervention of fate only on our own terms. Preparing a master plan and applying it are two different things.”
We tried the magic, and it works after all.
• 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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