To understand development challenges and address them decisively, you need a table of related numbers or a spreadsheet, a graph or chart that represents the relative distribution of the numbers pictorially.
You will also need a map that depicts how the phenomena manifests itself geographically in space and time.
The Community Survey (CS) of 2016 provides such information.
To elaborate on the relevance of CS 2016, let me digress slightly and share with you views of great philosophers and what they understood development to mean and how it could be addressed.
Progress, wellbeing, inequality, poverty and meeting aspirations of society are matters that continue to elude philosophers, politicians, scholars and citizens at large.
Adam Smith propagated the idea of an invisible hand that is at play in determining demand and supply and allocation of goods and services. Thomas Malthus opined that population begets and grows whilst land is finite and therefore predicted a world that is overpopulated and cannot sustain its development.
His classic proposition was that population grows geometrically whilst resources only grow arithmetically, so population was poised to outstrip resources and this would lead to world misery.
Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin argued that every mode of production as a foundational determinant of social relations has a corresponding material wellbeing of population. Thus a capitalist mode of production can only turn society into the haves and the have-nots. Amartya Sen propagates an argument that says development is freedom.
He captures this in arguing that every citizen irrespective of status in society must express their views without feeling ashamed because of their status.
In Sen is captured the notion of active citizenry. Against this backdrop of philosophical leadership, including the practice on solving inequality, has emerged a global consensus that identified phenomena that corrode sustainable development.
In this way the emergent discourse has paved a human development enhancing path. The question to be asked is this: How do nations, societies and communities achieve development?
We have understood that the Integrated Development Programmes (IDPs) at a ward and municipality level give expression to the desires of communities and these have to be embraced in the National Development Plan (NDP).
To get insights on what keeps communities awake at night, Stats SA through, the CS of 2016 asked 1.4million households questions on what the key challenges in their municipalities are. The survey was conducted in March 2016. The findings are discussed against a backdrop of #FeesMustFall.
A campaign that has seen an unprecedented turmoil in institutions of higher learning in our land. I elaborate on the findings below. South Africans say their topmost challenges are lack of safe and reliable water, unemployment and the cost of electricity.
The local government elections were dominated by campaign promises on these priority areas which also included housing and sanitation. Education is priority 18 in terms of this ranking. Not surprising, education was not a subject of the campaign.
So why are the students fighting over what society has relegated to priority 18, and what was not advocated and canvassed politically during the local government elections?
One has to therefore ask the question of what is really wrong with these students?
The ranking schema points to a result that places years of schooling as a second most crucial driver of poverty after unemployment.
Unemployment is the first priority. In this regard the quest for exposure to a maximum of unhindered and uninterrupted years of schooling by students finds resonance in this analysis.
This finding is not in the immediacy of the psyche of society.
The evidence therefore suggests that the relegation of education to priority 18 by society is uninformed. The finding says the obvious - namely that when years of schooling increase, poverty recedes and when these years recede, poverty increases. So barriers to entry into higher and high quality education is at the service of causing and sustaining poverty.
The CS 2016 results have provided a spreadsheet, a graph, a map and, in addition, I have provided a narrative. The democratic process of political campaign and promises which ultimately mandates, is one that justifies resource allocations through the IDPs.
But in the light of the evidence of multidimensional poverty analysis versus tabular societal wants, can such a process be an adequate arbiter of resources?
Herein lie the seeds of conflict between the demands of students and the rest of society.
Politics is about numbers, statistics is about evidence and bridging this is the important task of planning. We need deep and serious planning at all levels to interrogate the validity of our priorities and choices.
Lehohla is South Africa's statistician-general and head of Statistics South Africa
To decrease poverty increase schooling
To understand development challenges and address them decisively, you need a table of related numbers or a spreadsheet, a graph or chart that represents the relative distribution of the numbers pictorially.
You will also need a map that depicts how the phenomena manifests itself geographically in space and time.
The Community Survey (CS) of 2016 provides such information.
To elaborate on the relevance of CS 2016, let me digress slightly and share with you views of great philosophers and what they understood development to mean and how it could be addressed.
Progress, wellbeing, inequality, poverty and meeting aspirations of society are matters that continue to elude philosophers, politicians, scholars and citizens at large.
Adam Smith propagated the idea of an invisible hand that is at play in determining demand and supply and allocation of goods and services. Thomas Malthus opined that population begets and grows whilst land is finite and therefore predicted a world that is overpopulated and cannot sustain its development.
His classic proposition was that population grows geometrically whilst resources only grow arithmetically, so population was poised to outstrip resources and this would lead to world misery.
Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin argued that every mode of production as a foundational determinant of social relations has a corresponding material wellbeing of population. Thus a capitalist mode of production can only turn society into the haves and the have-nots. Amartya Sen propagates an argument that says development is freedom.
He captures this in arguing that every citizen irrespective of status in society must express their views without feeling ashamed because of their status.
In Sen is captured the notion of active citizenry. Against this backdrop of philosophical leadership, including the practice on solving inequality, has emerged a global consensus that identified phenomena that corrode sustainable development.
In this way the emergent discourse has paved a human development enhancing path. The question to be asked is this: How do nations, societies and communities achieve development?
We have understood that the Integrated Development Programmes (IDPs) at a ward and municipality level give expression to the desires of communities and these have to be embraced in the National Development Plan (NDP).
To get insights on what keeps communities awake at night, Stats SA through, the CS of 2016 asked 1.4million households questions on what the key challenges in their municipalities are. The survey was conducted in March 2016. The findings are discussed against a backdrop of #FeesMustFall.
A campaign that has seen an unprecedented turmoil in institutions of higher learning in our land. I elaborate on the findings below. South Africans say their topmost challenges are lack of safe and reliable water, unemployment and the cost of electricity.
The local government elections were dominated by campaign promises on these priority areas which also included housing and sanitation. Education is priority 18 in terms of this ranking. Not surprising, education was not a subject of the campaign.
So why are the students fighting over what society has relegated to priority 18, and what was not advocated and canvassed politically during the local government elections?
One has to therefore ask the question of what is really wrong with these students?
The ranking schema points to a result that places years of schooling as a second most crucial driver of poverty after unemployment.
Unemployment is the first priority. In this regard the quest for exposure to a maximum of unhindered and uninterrupted years of schooling by students finds resonance in this analysis.
This finding is not in the immediacy of the psyche of society.
The evidence therefore suggests that the relegation of education to priority 18 by society is uninformed. The finding says the obvious - namely that when years of schooling increase, poverty recedes and when these years recede, poverty increases. So barriers to entry into higher and high quality education is at the service of causing and sustaining poverty.
The CS 2016 results have provided a spreadsheet, a graph, a map and, in addition, I have provided a narrative. The democratic process of political campaign and promises which ultimately mandates, is one that justifies resource allocations through the IDPs.
But in the light of the evidence of multidimensional poverty analysis versus tabular societal wants, can such a process be an adequate arbiter of resources?
Herein lie the seeds of conflict between the demands of students and the rest of society.
Politics is about numbers, statistics is about evidence and bridging this is the important task of planning. We need deep and serious planning at all levels to interrogate the validity of our priorities and choices.
Lehohla is South Africa's statistician-general and head of Statistics South Africa
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