I had hoped the forthcoming title And December Came: The Odyssey of Leadership —Navigating in Silence and Building Audaciously would hit the shelves in another six months, but a glimpse and preview had to come earlier. It was prompted by the unwelcome and vulgar articulations of Gerrie Fourie, the CEO of Capitec, and trade and industry minister Parks Tau, who decided to echo Fourie, and then ANC choristers were unleashed to lampoon the national numbers. Baas Fourie had spoken.
This is in respect of the employment numbers. I cannot stand it. My position as Statistician Emeritus accords me a responsibility to be one with the Statistics Act and I cannot stand quietly by when there is an attempt to undermine the fact finder of the nation. In fact, I served without any contract or documentation for 22 months from the beginning of January 2016 to the end of October 2017. I refused to sign that shameful document aimed at just using me.
I am not one to be used, especially not by politics. I sent the contract back to the sender without comment or signature. It was not worth it. I refused to engage it and on January 1 2016 I started where I left off on December 31 2015. That is where the subtitle The Odyssey of Leadership in the title And December Came emerges from. Of course, some material conditions in the environment worked in my favour. These will be detailed in the book.
The vulgar and mendacious imputations of the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) of Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) by Fourie attracted some misguided and anti-intellectual discourse at the apex of democratic societies: the legislature. It was comical, rather embarrassing and entertaining — but too serious for comedy and therefore nationally tragic because, as the saying goes, “the clowns had turned parliament into a circus”. This was too shocking and ironic to be true.
It came from ANC members in the recent portfolio committee meeting digesting the statistician-general’s report. How the article by Fourie planted itself in the discourse and Tau was attracted to support its contents remains mysterious. But it is against this background that the tone of throwing filth at the data was sparked. It was the steadfast hand of the MK Party led by Brian Molefe and a representative of the EFF that stood the moral high ground of the correct and well informed interpretation of the QLFS against the foray of Fourie who through the echoes of Tau sparked the rebellion against the QLFS.
It surprised me, but did not, as the saying goes ,“when your enemy makes mistakes, leave them”. True to form, the senior makoti, the DA which most of the time is certainly well-informed in the GNU, would not correct the howling ANC husband — they left the husband to their own devices. This was despite having earlier on, through the premier of the Western Cape in welcoming the very QLFS results, gloated that these numbers showed that unemployment in the Western Cape had dropped and the province had created four times the number of jobs than the next best province. To have embellished this result yet to shrink in parliament and fail to correct the howling husband smacks of professional betrayal. The greatest sin is when the enlightened, which includes the senior makoti in the GNU, leave the “barbarians” to lead with loud ignorance at the gates of Stats SA.
Statistics offices have been destroyed in most enlightened democracies. Margaret Thatcher destroyed the National Statistics Office in the UK, fighting for changes in the definition of unemployment. It later took colonial Australia and New Zealand together over a 15 year period to clothe the emperor. I am left with no other conclusion in the absence of anything to the contrary that this is the agenda the ANC is driving: destroy the fact finder of the nation and usher in ignorance.
In 1937 Stalin executed his chief statistician for showing the actual population numbers from the census that were much lower than the the leader's abracadabra numbers. Victims of professional integrity line the streets of South Africa and others such as Babita Deokaran have paid the ultimate price.
In February 1995 Dr Treurnicht du Toit declared me persona non grata with regards to the Central Statistical Services (CSS) functions, the predecessor of Stats SA, and blocked me from attending a meeting at CSS headquarters in Pretoria. I sat at the front of the building which housed CSS wailing in defiance like Mordecai at the gates of King Xerxes in the Haman saga covered in the Book of Esther. The minister in the Presidency responsible for the RDP and statistics, Jay Naidoo, like Xerxes was not silenced.
The DNA of Stats SA is etched in resilience, defiance against destruction of state institutions and fighting in defence for the definition of the relevant situation. This would have been impossible without the support of Stats SA staff
He advertised Du Toit's position in line with the recommendations of the summit of all RDP offices in the country that I chaired at Rooigrond, just outside Mmabatho in October 1994. I was head of the North West Province Statistics Office which mutated out of Bophuthatswana Statistics of which I was director. The theme of the session was defining the future architecture of statistics in South Africa. One of the recommendations which I had shared with Du Toit, whom I had invited to deliver a keynote address but he declined, was for advertising the position of the head of the CSS as a necessary condition for transformation.
The position was advertised and Dr Mark Orkin was appointed the head of the CSS in July 1995. I was immediately roped in as a binary leadership team with Orkin. As we dug into the transformation agenda, the CSS subsequently became Stats SA. In 1993 the South African statistician-general and I enthused by our work and its role in society and working by phone, pondered how statistics in post-apartheid South Africa should look.
The answer to that question which brewed until 1997 when I successfully recruited him into Stats SA became the unifying force of the new and consolidated body as I succeeded Orkin and became the statistician-general.
Statistical offices are now located in all nine provinces of South Africa, the staff is demographically representative, methodological weaknesses have largely been addressed, and the products offered by Stats SA have been broadened, in line with the government’s policy anchor of reducing poverty and inequality.
The DNA of professionalism, selflessness, staying the course and defending the cause no matter the circumstances is what distinguishes this mighty organisation from others. Upon assuming the position of statistician-general in 2000, my remit was to build human resources and competency in the organisation. A simultaneous four pronged approach was adopted.
The first prong was about training South Africans in Africa and to this end I sent serving staff to various institutions in Uganda, Tanzania, Cote d'Ivoire and Egypt. Stats SA had to be an African institution, building content in South African universities. To this end I supported the University of the Witwatersrand under the late Prof Jacqueline Galpin to teach official statistics.
At the University of KwaZulu-Natal under Prof Delia North I collaborated in the teaching of statistics. This was inspired by the International Conference on the Teaching of Statistics that universities in South Africa and Stats SA co-hosted in 2002. In 1998 with the University of Pennsylvania we spearheaded the African Census Analysis Project that aimed at reviving and resurrecting census data in Africa. By 2006 I headed the African Symposium for Statistical Development and for 11 years we led an in-country advocacy crusade on four programmes of statistics: population censuses, civil registration, vital and national accounts.
This catalysed major and visible content and institutional collaboration across the pan-African institutions. By 2005 I spearheaded the call for hosting the 57th Session of the International Statistical Institute (ISI), the first to be held in Africa in 2009. Alongside this I initiated the ISIbalo programme as a legacy of the ISI. In 2010 I established the Centre for Regional and Urban Innovation and Statistical Exploration (CRUISE) at the University of Stellenbosch to realise cultural economic geography as a central theme in national development planning.
Staff members went on fully paid sabbatical to focus on research based on Stats SA data and how it should influence planning in the country. Over a hundred staff members acquired MPhil degrees in the offerings of CRUISE and major innovations have followed in the institution.
By September 2015, in terms of regulations of the public service, I indicated that I would like to continue serving. The authorities went quiet, and by December 2015 I was informed that the contract would not be renewed. I said "thank you, OK". But two hours later I was told the contract would be extended by six months. Again, I said "OK, thank you". However, I refused to sign the disgraceful contract that Tshediso Matona was asked to hand to me. I sent him packing and he disappeared into thin air. I continued to serve. When the six months ended in June 2016, I made the eviction order unimplementable and I continued for another 16 months to ensure a proper transition of authority and defended Stats SA from being destroyed.
In that period of defiance, I had four tasks and completed three major operations successfully. Let me start with one I tackled in the last eight weeks before my exit. In that period, I filed a motion with the lawyers against the presentation of the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement which cut Stats SA's budget so aggressively compared with other departments. The only reason I could infer for this unfairness was that the National Treasury was simply vindictive because I refused to kowtow to them. I was not going to leave my successor with a burden of financial accountability.
To allow ignorance to run supreme should not be allowed. We need to educate against such behaviours. Impunity should be nipped in the bud and be disallowed wherever it raises its ugly head. We need to put South Africa first and that posture will always protect any committed citizen
So I filed papers against the finance minister. The reason was all parties in parliament had said Stats SA's budget proposals were valid and were supported, besides the minister in the Presidency who said the cuts would not be more than 2% and the Treasury came with 13%. I said "no, over my dead body". The Treasury was forcing Stats SA into an over-expenditure on commitments because of the cuts. The late minister Jackson Mthembu came along later to spin a lie about me on Stats SA budgets and why they did not get the money. I was not going to leave him to lie about me. I used the right of reply to disabuse him of his lies.
The second was to secure a new home for Stats SA — the ISIbalo House was completed and occupied in August 2016. It was a more than a R1.4bn operation. The books of Stats SA throughout the 24 months of construction of a 60m² lettable space were audited by the AG without any findings and this building remains an iconic commitment by the people of South Africa to Stats SA, its staff and its services.
The third and fourth tasks during my “Khoisan” occupation of the Union Buildings were getting South Africa to secure the rights to host two important international summits. One was the first UN World Data Forum that we hosted in January 2017 and the second was the International Union for the Scientific Study of the Population (IUSSP) which was hosted in October 2017. I opened the IUSSP conference and it was closed by my successor as the new statistician-general. This was held in front of 1,500 guests, two thirds of whom were foreign.
To allow ignorance to run supreme should not be allowed. We need to educate against such behaviours. Impunity should be nipped in the bud and be disallowed wherever it raises its ugly head. We need to put South Africa first and that posture will always protect any committed citizen.
The DNA of Stats SA is etched in resilience, defiance against destruction of state institutions and fighting in defence for the definition of the relevant situation. This would have been impossible without the support of Stats SA staff. This is the Stats SA we gave birth to and this is its DNA. It stands as a symbol of action, of hope and truth in the numbers — a conduit of trust and nation building. It stands unshaken through the tumult.
Working with minister Jeff Radebe, the last 22 months of my tenure was the most interesting. Throughout the tumult, our working relationship was excellent. He must have had an entertaining balancing act to play. He fully grasped the value of Stats SA and had visible presence with the organisation locally and internationally.
Whatever the game was, towards the end he summarised it elegantly. He told Risenga Maluleke and I the story of Mzala. And all three of us burst into laughter as we all understood exactly the Mzala metaphor as it applied to the three of us. What counted was Stats SA's transition was the most laudable and a living example of what it meant to fight a noble fight, focus on the mandate and in the end emerge successful.
• 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
For opinion and analysis consideration, e-mail Opinions@timeslive.co.za
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