PALI LEHOHLA | Hop on the time machine. Destination? Miseducation

The post-school education pot of black Africans and coloureds is cooking them like frogs. By the time they wake up, if ever, they will discover to their horror that the four censuses — 1996, 2001, 2011 and 2022 — say they have had the raw end of the stick. This is what they have to contend with.

They reveal a sordid story of post-school education performance for black Africans and coloureds and a totally different story for Indians and whites. A census is a time machine, Griffith Feeny, a former professor of demography at the East-West Centre in Hawaii, told me. I invited Feeney to South Africa in 2012 as one of the experts who evaluated Census 2011. I first met him in 2010 when we both were on a UN Census mission in Kabul, Afghanistan.

In 2012, I invited Feeny as one of four foreign experts to be part of the independent team that would evaluate Census 2011. The other three were Susan Linacre, retired first assistant statistician methodology division, Dr Jerry Banda, retired chief of demography at the UN statistics division in New York, and Dr David Beckles, an independent software professional from the UK.

The four censuses reflect that 90% of the population consisting of African blacks and coloureds has seriously stagnated and their pace forward is going nowhere slowly while their living conditions are fast deteriorating.

The time-plot technique revealed a lot. Not only in the consistency of the census but the significant progress South Africa achieved in opening the doors of learning at basic-education levels. I have recently applied the same technique to all censuses and the conclusion, as far as higher education, reveals a worrying trend. But first let us remind ourselves of the share of this overwhelmingly preponderant population.

They constitute 90% of the population while the approximately 10% remainder is 2.6% Indian and 7.2% white. The sheer size of the remainder is so small relative to the entire population, but in such a racially contoured and fossilised society the prospect for diffusion of interracial generational value is zero.

There are simply no pathways to compacting across race lines because even the last gasp seeking pathways for one voice, which was Fees Must Fall, was mutilated and scavenged into political camps and then into embarkment of affordability. Thus the nation building ethos that our constitution places a prime value on and students proclaimed was destroyed by pennywise, pound-foolish cash masters. Now the Afrikaners are building post-school Afrikaner community institutions. Will the blacks, coloureds and Indians follow suit? It is clear that the nation-building exercise is at heightened risk.

The four censuses reflect that the 90% of the population consisting of African blacks and coloureds has seriously stagnated and their pace forward is going nowhere slowly, while their living conditions are fast deteriorating.

In the 1996 Census, the rates of completion of a degree by race at age 25-29 were 3.5% for black Africans, 6.1% for coloureds, 10% for Indians and 22% for whites. In the 2001 Census the rates were 4.2% for black Africans, 3.8% for coloureds (the decline for the coloured population is surprising), 13% for Indians and 22% for whites.

In the 2011 Census the figures of completion were 5% for blacks, 5.1% for coloureds, 21% for Indians and 35% for whites. The last Census 2022 shows that black Africans are 6.8%, coloureds are 8.0%, Indians are 23% and whites are at 52%.

A significant change in fortunes is reflected among whites who pivoted their fortunes 40 years ago when the younger generation emulated the older generation successfully and remained better for each generation thereafter. Similarly Indians pivoted 20 years later where they sustained the growth in knowledge accumulation. Among black Africans and coloureds, their forebears remain ahead.

There is no generational accumulation of the stock of knowledge, but there is depletion with each successive generation. Pivoting and sustained knowledge accumulation that we have witnessed among Indians and whites is yet to pay coloureds and black Africans a visit and stay. But even a momentary false visit is yet to be witnessed and we are holding our breath for such a culmination.

Generational value for 90% of the population is stubbornly refusing to eventuate. It can only do so through policy instruments and the longer these instruments are unresponsive, the surer South Africa will plunge into an abyss and the 90% will carry the 10% down with it.

• 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