In an encounter with non-prudent journalism, statistics and trust is apparent
STATISTICS – a conduit of trust – its custodians should appreciate the burden of trust. The year is 2008 and it is midnight of January 7 in New York and six o’clock on January 8 in South Africa and I am in the Millennium Hotel, where I had just finished packing my bags before going to bed.
I am scheduled to fly out on Lufthansa Airline in the morning to Khartoum via Frankfurt for a session with the Sudanese Monitoring and Observance Committee (MOC) in preparation of their population census.
Sudan has not had up to then a census of the population in more than four decades.
They also have not had peace in as long a period. The only trusted census of the population is the one held in 1955.
The census is crucial as it is a constitutional requirement for the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) for Sudan.
I have been asked to attend the first meeting of the MOC, and little did I know that I was also going to be tasked as the Chief Adviser to the MOC by the end of the proceedings held in Omdurman, Khartoum. But back to the Millennium Hotel in New York.
My phone rings and a call, especially from a private number at six o’clock, could come from one and only one person.
I now know that my plan for sleeping has just evaporated. I answer, and the voice is one that is familiar – it includes an ice breaker – a calmer one before tearing into the issues. In January as I came to learn, media goes to sleep and there is no flurry of sensation.
But this January The Star newspaper opens with a headline “Validity of R600 million survey called into question” by Karyn Maughan.
The paper reads – A R600-million statefunded survey – which President Thabo Mbeki has used to show that the government was winning the fight against poverty – has been exposed as “unreliable” and ridden with “errors”.
Now Statistics SA, the government department responsible for the “Community Survey 2007” report, has itself warned potential users of the data to “be more cautious” when using the study. The call is about this headline.
Four months back at the beginning of September 2007, the Boks are readying themselves for the Rugby World Cup in France.
The growth numbers are higher and unemployment, while still high is hovering around 22 percent, the lowest it ever became.
In his State of the Nation Address of 2006, Mbeki quoted prophet Isaiah: You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.
I have just finished presenting the Community Survey results then and the Boks join in at cabinet where they have a send-off to France for the World Cup and everyone is draped in signature scuffs of the flag of the country. The mood was very jolly and positive. In October at the end of the tournament, President Mbeki was hoisted high in Paris by the Boks as the boys bring the trophy home. Back to the telephone call of January 8 at six o’clock in the morning.
It is Minister Trevor Manuel at the other end of the phone, greeting and easing me into the discussions by posing the unexpected question that was wrapped in a midnight joke – I will spare you the detail as this will be in the memoirs.
Then he tears into the question. Have you seen the headline?
Me – Oh minister not yet. He continues – of course you are in New York you would not have seen the headline. So he gives me the heads up.
I am fuming at this misinformation from The Star, which makes it appear as though there was anything new in the report that was published four months before January and worse still, Maughan even added that the report was revised.
My sleep was all gone, as I prepare a response to the newspaper.
Many subsequently pick on the mendacious narrative that Maughan propagated. The euphoria towards Polokwane is palpable and taken up by the Communist Party, Cosatu and many a commentator.
It is one that says the statistics were cooked and released to prepare for Polokwane and place Mbeki in a favourable light for a re-election as ANC president.
However, says Maughan, the numbers have now been revised.
So in that stroke of a pen the statistics agency operating independently is thrown at the centre of the discourse as a patron for a specific political leaning. How wrong and unfortunate could it be? As the Statistician-General I took the battle on and defended the methods, the timing of results, the integrity of the institution, the professionalism of its staff and its commitment to serve without fear or favour. A matter inscribed in law. Included in this was taking the matter to the press ombudsman, who ruled in favour of the Statistician-General and against The Star newspaper.
At 8am on the 9th I am in Frankfurt on transit to Khartoum where I arrive by late afternoon. The next morning I am taken to Omdurman where the meeting of the MOC was held.
As I stepped in I see a room full of men in turbans and their issue is how can they run a census of the population that will meet the stringent constitutional requirements for a Comprehensive Peace Agreement in the Sudan.
At the end of this inaugural meeting in which I presented on South Africa’s censuses, including the Community Survey, which Maughan had rubbished a day before I am appointed as the chief adviser to the Monitoring and Observance Committee of the Sudanese Census.
For the following three years I was in and out of Khartoum and Juba, working and advising on the Sudanese Census. I was honoured to issue the results, which were accepted by both the north and the south.
But this was not without a lot of hard work on explicating the integrity of methods and executing the task without fear or favour. The results first and foremost informed the local government elections and the referendum for the split between what became Sudan and South Sudan.
A big regret I harbour though is the ongoing tragedy in South Sudan.
I had shared with the Sudanese and wherever I go that our motto when I led
The results first and foremost informed the local government elections and the referendum for the split between what became Sudan and South Sudan.
Census ‘96 of South Africa was “if the national elections of 1994 and local government elections that followed were the bricks, the census was the mortar that held the home of democracy together”.
This is the essence of statistics – a conduit of trust. It is the essence that the Cambodians understood and shared when I was deployed there in 1998 to advise on their census after their three decades of war, which included the genocide by Pol Pot.
It was the same advice which hitherto has not materialised when I was deployed in Kabul in 2008 and in Baghdad in 2009 for their intended censuses.
With those words I thought – Sudan, whatever future form it would assume, would be peaceful – but it has not been.
Ten years on from when I released the 2007 Community Survey, I released the poverty trends report a week before last. And, alas, what do I observe? With comfort the South African society and its political systems have come to appreciate the integrity and utility of numbers.
There is potentially no media to take to the ombudsman for distorting the facts. Perhaps Maughan, who, to her credit, has become one of the most respected journalists in our country, learnt from the experience that statistics is a conduit of trust.
And more importantly from her admirable position I cannot but conclude that since then she understood that this conduit of trust underpins the practice of prudent journalism.