Statistician-General tells of flight from Lesotho and work in SA
THE KING and founding father of the Basotho nation, King Moshoeshoe, pledged peace as his sister. He yearned for peace. So profound was his desire for peace that the Basotho use peace for greeting. We greet by saying “Khotso” which in Sesotho is peace.
Yet peace has eluded Lesotho for centuries. Ironically, Lesotho has been a sanctuary for those being persecuted from time immemorial – an enduring credit to King Moshoeshoe. I left Lesotho and ended in South Africa because of this absence of peace and I reflect on the road of becoming and being an SG as I enter a new phase of being an XG – scribbling my memoirs.
I had just arrived home in Roma from work in Maseru, when on that Friday in September 1982, Lijeng Mokose was dropped at my place by Aron Liphoto. The message was not pleasant and I had to do what I had to do. Lijeng and the Mokose family and I came a long way.
My wife and I immediately drove her to Maseru where she was reunited with her husband, Ralechate.
The next morning, before sunrise, I drove them to Ficksburg Bridge to cross the border and escape sure death. Little did I know that three weeks later I had to do the same – cross the border and escape sure death.
Thabetha Mojela tipped my wife off that it was known that I had helped the Mokose family to escape and, therefore, I was being hunted down.
As I prepared for my escape I drove back to my rural roots to inform my father of the impending escape. He was distressed but courageous. A Christian and a teacher by profession by the way. But the next morning there was a stranger at home – a sangoma to pave my way. Who was I to doubt or defy my father? Rituals were performed, instructions of never to betray the cause of justice were given. The line of march was clear and I left.
In the evening of September 30, 1982, I drove across the border too en-route to Botswana, where Basotho refugees were.
My friend Monese, who had a driver’s licence, had to drive with me into South Africa for this great escape. Monese, a graduate of Roma, was to be persecuted and he had to flee to Mmabatho too, and he remains a teacher in Hammanskraal to date.
The next time I set foot in Lesotho was in February, after the fall of the Dr Leabua Jonathan government in 1986.
Back to the journey – we arrived in Mmabtho at 4.30pm and just in front of the Surrey Hotel up popped Lucky Motlamelle, who waved the Lesotho registration car down with enthusiasm. He worked for SEBO in Bophuthatswana. I told him we were on an escape to Botswana.
We called each other homey at university and he was two years my senior. He said: No stay here, do not proceed to Botswana. After a lot of deliberations and weighing options I decided to stay. Six weeks without a job was just a torture.
On November 18, 1982, I got a job at the Statistics Office in Bophuthatswana, and my first task was to plan for the Population Census of Bophuthatswana scheduled for 1985. There was no graduate, nor capacity to talk of in the BopStats office.
So at age 25 I had to build the office from scratch, opening offices and recruiting staff in the 12 district offices. I had to mobilise for coding manuals and I recall having to call for the international standard classification of occupations (Isco) manual from the Lesotho Labour Department for coding.
By the time the census came we deployed and got the census under way as well as processed the data – a miracle was achieved – the Census 1985 of Bophuthatswana remains the blueprint for the successive censuses of South Africa.
Motale Phirwa from Diepkloof, and a Lesotho-trained graduate who joined me in 1983, was instrumental in data processing. The question on my mind was how do I empower the staff to do their work so that by the time my time is up I can confidently step off.
So by 1986 I approached the HSRC for training staff in survey methods and they did. Professor Akiiki Kahimbaara joined me in 1990 and we asked Statomet at the University of Pretoria for a structured training programme for BopStats staff. A three-year programme was designed and implemented.
As we did so we focused on post-apartheid South Africa and the role of statistics in the new dispensation. With the then director-general of North West, Professor Mokgoro, in October 1994 we convened a national meeting of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) and the role of statistics in post-apartheid South Africa. The meeting was held at Rooigrond in Mahikeng, with all RDP offices across the country involved.
That was a watershed meeting that set the ball rolling for the battle of the soul of statistics in South Africa.
Enmeshed in this discourse was what position in the state should statistics occupy. We engaged among the three of us on this subject – Kahimbaara, Geyer and I.
With Dr Benny Mokaba we concluded early in 1995 that statistics based on the RDP paper must be a constitutional entity. But we were embroiled in a fight that had too many fronts. Our documents failed to reach the drafters of the Constitution to see this dream through.
But this is how far-sighted we were in the design of the statistics system and the strategies and tactics that would inform it. In Limpopo, a solitary fight for the soul of statistics was led by another rural boy from Gyani, one Risenga Maluleke, with whom we connected in 1994 by phone in preparation for the seminal Rooigrond meeting, which he could unfortunately not attend. It took another full year to meet face to face and in October 1995 we met at the CSS.
He was working for the Limpopo Department of Economic Affairs. In 1997 I recruited him to head the Limpopo office and in 2000 I transferred him to head office to lead the transformation. We were in the shadows and invisible paths of big issues of decision making seized with the essence of decision support systems – the salt of democracy: statistics.
I am pleased that I was privileged to lead fearlessly and fiercely the three person movement of Professor Kahimbaara, Professor Geyer and I on the soul of statistics in South Africa. We worked out the detail of how the statistics system would function and challenged Dr Du Toit who was then the head of the Central Statistical Service.
What created animosity between my office in North West and the national office were the resolutions from the Rooigrond meeting. One of this was that the post of the head of CSS must be advertised. Dr Du Toit would have none of it and declared me persona non grata in the CSS.
I unflinchingly took the fight to him – he lost. The post was advertised and Mark Orkin won the competitive bid for the position in July 1995 – Howard Gabriels, who later became the chairperson of the Statistics Council, but then adviser to Minister without Portfolio Jay Naidoo embellishes a lot on this period. I then joined him immediately.
When he visited my office within a week of his appointment he found my staff each working on a PC – an unknown at the mainframe driven CSS, and the staff were versed in survey methods.
When thirty staff of the North West graduated the following year in March 1996 from Statomet at the University of Pretoria, Mark Orkin shed a tear. Human resources have remained the cornerstone of my strategy and North West staff unsurprisingly filled the ranks of authority in Stats SA.
Another area that aggravated my relationship with Dr Du Toit was the position I held on conducting the very first post-apartheid census and I had the 1985 and the 1991 censuses of Bophuthatswana that I effectively led to prove my point. The 1995 mission to South Africa by the UN led by Sam Sorhartu from the UN Statistics Division on the census of South Africa supported my position. For my sins the sword fell on me. I had the punishment and privilege of running all post-apartheid censuses starting with Census 1996.
Fast forward, Dr Orkin left Stats SA at the end of July 2000 after five years and in November 2000 I ascended the throne as the Statistician-General of South Africa. Looking back at the 34 years, 17 of which I have been at the helm, Stats SA is totally different and transformed, it boasts several PhDs, many Masters Degrees and undergraduates – men and women committed to serving in the systems of evidence without fear or favour, they are and they can be trusted as the true custodians of a conduit of trust – statistics.
They make an accident of bad politics 34 years ago a virtue – an outcome of a journey of building a formidable institution. As we currently work on legislative reform, the deferred dream of statistics as a constitutional entity perhaps will finally eventuate.