Nightmare after payments’ glitch for Census 1996

ACENSUS of the population – the biggest mobilisation in times of peace – is not often as peaceful, especially when it comes to payments of multitudes of staff. In 1985, I ran the population census of Bophuthatswana where we exclusively deployed teachers as supervisors and a good number of them were also enumerators.

Times were easy and payments could be processed through a government cheque. How long it took depended on how fast the bureaucracy took.

After a minimum of six weeks post the enumeration phase a cheque could be expected. It was peaceful and easy then. However, even then we had to be an observer in a court case for a teacher who lost an eye while, as he put it, he was undertaking his task.

In court papers and leading evidence, our teacher enumerator was found to have taken alcohol and provoked an ordinary citizen who was on a weekend home from the Rustenburg mines. While the teacher lost the case and an eye, the miner also lost his job because of detention in custody for a while. In 1991, that was my second census still in Bophuthatswana.

The complexion of enumerators had changed dramatically and there were almost no teachers in the landscape as I took up younger people. Levels of agitation were rearing their head as the demand for jobs was beginning to show.

Fast forward to the first census under democracy – Census 1996. I transferred to head office in July, 1995. This was two weeks after Dr Mark Orkin took up office at the Central Statistical Services (CSS). My task was to lead and execute Census 1996 preparations, while Mark had to focus on the rest of the organisation.

The first task I had was to bring society together across different race groups, but importantly, to use the census as a tool for transforming the composition of the CSS, which was white. No doubt this was a task won with flying colours.

It is October 31, 1996 and the census returns in boxes are fast moving to the district offices to be shipped to the nine provincial offices where data processing will take place for Census 1996.

An innovation of immense proportions, but not without its problems. We have started preparations for printing cheques that will be dispatched to 96 different destinations across the country and then further to 10 000 supervisor units who would deliver them to 10 enumerators each.

This was a mammoth task. In fact a moral dilemma we confronted earlier on was the choice of enumerators or people who would go house to house to ask questions. Would it be teachers or largely the unemployed? In the end it was the unemployed who necessarily would need their pay upon completing the task of enumeration.

Systems not geared But our systems were not geared for this challenge. It is the end of November, the first run of cheques were completed and about to be dispatched. I am keen to see just how they look and feel the texture before dispatching them.

Suddenly, I note amounts that do not accord. I call for more samples and I realise that there is a R100 and R200 overpayment on the 100 000 cheques we were issuing. I do the sums and I realise that R20 million in overpayment is in the making and recall all of them. That Friday, I call the programmers to draw their attention to the problem, they correct the glitch. At midnight on Sunday, I am at Bureau Beta and check the cheques before they are printed. The right amount is on and I instructed the print run.

On Monday morning the cheques are delivered. However, some places cannot be serviced, because on the ground many changes occurred and documents never reached head office on time for processing of payments. We hit the skids and everything is now slippery.

Hand cheques have to be written. I have spent a night in Garankuwa where the enumerators camped demanding their payments. I have explained, but the explanation fails to deliver the cheques.

By 9am numbers trickle into Stats SA, another two hours have gone and the numbers increase. I approach Mark and say we need to pay handwritten cheques. He provides a rational answer of how those not in Pretoria cannot get cheques.

I sound a warning that this is going to be a public relations’ nightmare that will engulf the country. We need a practical solution for all, staged and directed by the ensuing crisis.

He resists. By 3pm all roads lead to Steyns Building, head office of the Central Statistics Service and a sit-in is staged. Mark sees the danger, we kick in infrastructure for handwritten cheques. By 4am I hand over the last handwritten cheque to Mr Lucas Ngobeni, and drive him to his home in Soshanguve. He became a councillor in ward 89 following the 2011 local government elections.

Another day starts with more problems.

Sit-in staged Pietersburg in Limpopo is staging a sit-in and it is now 7pm. A call comes in and I answer. The voice says, “We are not leaving this office until we get paid. In fact, we are driving to Pretoria.” I calm them down and advise against driving at night as we have lost one too many on the roads already.

They do not relent and we go on for 30 minutes. I promise to call back in an hour. I call two hours later. The voices are many, the pitch is higher, the people are impatient and one of our employees, the late Nelson Nyagah, is held hostage.

They demand their money. I promise finally that I will fax the cheque and the voices of excitement can be heard. I ask Alfons for a government cheque and he says the obvious – it is in the safe – I ask him to bring it. Oh, the safe is locked and he does not have the keys. I ask who has the keys. It is Hester Lombard and I instruct that she be called.

Oh no, we do not know her number and she does not have a cellphone and neither do we know where she stays. Oh, no! Now what about my promise to fax the cheque. I cannot renege on it. I say to Alfons by the way, my bank usually sends me my cashed cheques, I suppose the government receives that too?

He confirms this. I say I trust those are not in the safe, but must be in folders on the shelves. He says yes and I say well get one of them. Photocopy it. Typex out the amounts on the photocopy. Write the amounts expected at the other end. R1 850 000. All now written and ready to be faxed. As I send it through, I call and the copy is received with jubilation and Nyagah is released.

Back to Alfons. I say to him, please get the real cheque through to Standard Bank in Pietersburg first thing in the morning with all the appropriate instructions. Hester Lombard had a cellphone by the next morning.

Next issue of Inside Statistics will be payments of the Censuses 2001, 2011 and 2016 each with a different set of challenges.

Dr Pali Lehohla is the statistician-general of South Africa and head of Statistics South Africa