Public Sector appointments

Who is new in government

Risenga Maluleke has been appointed Statistician-General and Head of Statistics South Africa (Stats SA).

Maluleke's journey to becoming the leading number cruncher in the country started 25 years ago when he was appointed as a statistician in in the Statistics Division in Giyani by the then government of Gazankulu.

He later became Head of the Limpopo government's Statistics Division which would later fall under Central Statistical Services.

It was during this time that Maluleke was among those instrumental in ensuring that the mandate of provincial statistical offices was extended beyond data collection to include storage, analysis and dissemination.

Maluleke was part of the team that delivered the first democratic census in 1996, Census 2001 as well as the last census in 2011.

His appointment comes at a time when Stats SA is putting plans together to conduct the country's fourth population count since the dawn of democracy, Census 2021, which is one of the biggest undertakings by a statistical agency that produces official data.

Maluleke's qualifications include a BSc (Mathematical Statistics) from the University of Limpopo and MPhil (Urban and Regional Science) from Stellenbosch University. He has also completed Senior Executive Programmes with Wits and Harvard Business Schools.