There were howls of disbelief when
the Independent Electoral Commission announced on March 4 that it had
reached its target of 70 per cent voter registration by dint of a
reduction in the number of South Africans aged 18 and over eligible to
vote. Originally the IEC had talked of there being 26.3 million
potential voters and had even mentioned figures of up to 26.9 million,
though this was later said to have included 16 and 17-year-olds who
would be too young to vote on June 2. But on March 2 the IEC’s chief
executive officer, Mandla Mchunu, revised the potential electorate down
to 25.5 million. Then following the meeting on March 4 between the
representatives of the IEC, the department of home affairs and
Statistics South Africa (the renamed Central Statistical Services,
responsible for the census) it was announced that there were only 24.6
million South Africans aged 18 and older on February 28 who were
entitled to vote.
This reduction of 900,000 from the figure Mchunu had given only two
days before, let alone from the higher figures issued before that, was
not explained. The meeting then cut the figures by a further 2.2
million by excluding permanent residents who are not citizens
(581,000), those abroad on a permanent basis (97,000), convicted and
awaiting trial prisoners (150,000) and those without a bar-coded ID
(1,358,000). This produced a figure of 22.4 million — to which were
then added the 400,000 17-year-olds who would turn 18 before June 2,
giving a final total of 22.8 million.
This was a curious result for when, in the run up to the 1995 local
elections, local authorities were asked to submit figures for the
maximum number of potential voters in their areas, this produced a
total of 26,496,796 voters. The CSS said this was too high and insisted
instead on a figure of 23,363,205. Now four years later, Statistics
South Africa (SSA) has agreed on a figure over half a million lower
than that — although SSA estimates that South Africa’s population is
growing at over 850,000 a year.
It is not the first time that these figures have been massaged. As
Graeme Gotz showed in his report on the 1995 local elections,
Buying in, Staying Out, (Centre for Policy Studies 1995), as
those elections approached and registration stayed disappointingly low,
great pressure was exerted on municipal authorities to reduce their
estimates yet again. “Second-guessing the original estimates”, wrote
Gotz, “opened the door to projected potential voters being used
indiscriminately as a fine-tuning variable to achieve an acceptable
picture of registration. In the process the suposedly correct CSS
figures were in turn second-guessed and discarded where
inconvenient.”
Last November, Mchunu unwisely committed himself to the view that a
registration of less than 80 per cent would mean that democracy was
“limping”. As it became clear that registration was going slowly, the
embarrassing possibility loomed that the inevitable ANC victory would
appear flawed by a low turnout on a low register. The ANC’s opponents
would be able to claim that despite winning the election, the
government had suffered a humiliating drop in popular confidence and
consent. This would be a most inauspicious start for Thabo Mbeki’s
presidency and a situation that he would want to avoid at all
costs.
To those IEC-watchers who noted some time ago the commission’s great
sensitivity to what might embarrass Mbeki, it came as no surprise that
there should have been a sudden rush to reduce the size of the eligible
electorate, thus exaggerating the rate of registration and, ultimately,
the levels of political consent and confidence in a Mbeki government.
Nor did the sight of census officials taking part in a meeting which
somehow bargained the size of the electorate down by 2.7 million from
the figure given by the IEC’s chief executive only two days before do
much to enhance the image of Statistics South Africa (SSA). However,
those who had observed the curious census of 1996 were not entirely
surprised.
This was to be the first “democratic census”, a stark contrast to the
1991 apartheid census, vilified because it had excluded the homelands
and used sample surveys and aerial photography to count areas regarded
as inaccessible. Typically these were squatter camps. Particularly
abhorrent was the idea that squatters should be counted in just the
same way that conservationists establish a herd count — flying over
them in light planes and applying a multiple (of just under 5.5 people
per shack). In fact the evidence suggested that this was not an
inaccurate means of estimation. Its final figure, including an
estimated 6.8 million for the homelands, was 37.8 million. The
Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), which carried out its own
population estimating process, concurred almost exactly, with a figure
of 37.6 million for 1991.
The 1996 census was a heavily ideological exercise of a different
kind. Originally it was announced that there would be no classification
by race, sex or class. On second thoughts SSA said that such
classifications would be used, but only in order the better to track
inequalities and to chart the demise of racism and sexism. There would
be no aerial photography and not only would the census questionnaire be
printed in all 11 official languages but, theoretically at least, every
household involved could choose which of the 11 languages it would like
to be interviewed in. The enumerators — some 100,000 of them — were
almost all African and were hastily trained in what was clearly an
employment-creation exercise. This notion achieved sufficient currency
for enumerators to meet considerable intimidation from groups of
unemployed who had wanted jobs as enumerators. Questionnaires were
burnt, two enumerators were raped, six more died in car accidents, five
had their cars hijacked, one had his car shot at and another his car
set alight. Despite all this — and a failure to meet the census
deadline — the census was celebrated as “the great counting” with a big
handing-over ceremony to President Mandela.
Anyone with experience of such matters quailed at the thought of what
100,000 barely trained enumerators might achieve. When SSA came out a
year later with a total count of only 37.9 million there was a roar of
disbelief, despite SSA’s assurance that this figure already included an
upward “adjustment” for undercounting. The DBSA had already estimated
the 1996 population at 44.4 million and other estimates had been in the
same ballpark. In rapid succession critics showed that the SSA figure
was inconsistent with the 1994 election result, with the school
population and with the typical sex ratio of middle-income developing
countries. The Congress of South African Trade Unions, convinced that
black workers were being seriously undercounted, sent a delegation to
present its grievances to SSA, which obligingly revised its estimate up
by 2.7 million to 40.6 million. Most informed critics continued to
believe that this was still at least one or two million too low.
The 1991 census put the white population of South Africa plus the
non-independent homelands at 5,068,110. With an expected growth rate of
0.8 per cent (DBSA) or 0.67 per cent (SSA) the Institute or Futures
Research estimated the 1996 white population at around 5.2 million and
the DBSA at 5.35 million. SSA, on the other hand, came up with a figure
of only 4.4 million. This was by far the most dramatic figure in the
census. Either whites had been undercounted by up to a million (nearly
20 per cent) or else the 1991-96 period had seen white emigration of up
to 200,000 a year (nearly 600 a day), figures way beyond the reckoning
of even the most pessimistic observers at that point. Without much
doubt inexperienced black enumerators had simply not counted large
numbers of whites. SSA said that not enough whites had come forward to
act as enumerators, ignoring the fact that it had clearly signalled
that such jobs were part of a new South Africa empowerment exercise
and, as such, were not for whites. This apparently large underestimate
of the white population meant that the census was useless in
determining the extent of the mainly white braindrain of professional
and managerial talent.
Despite the promise of a “great counting” in the end SSA’s figures
owed a great deal to continuous adjustments: the first to get to the
37.9 million figure, the second as a response to trade union and other
criticism and most recently in March to help the IEC reach a
politically desirable reduction in the potential electorate. Other
problems have continued to surface. It is still unclear how the
original census could find an excess of 1.5 million females over males
in the population, particularly given the heavily male migration from
neighbouring African countries. The minister of agriculture, Derek
Hanekom, pointed out that SSA’s figures suggested a shrinkage in the
agricultural workforce that was far too rapid and large scale to be
believable.
Disquiet also grew over the accuracy of some of the economic data
provided by SSA, for example over the national balance of payments. In
late 1998 the auditor-general issued a report critical of the way SSA
collected and disseminated various other types of economic data,
suggesting that its methods for calculating such basic figures as gross
domestic product and the consumer price index were flawed and could
have misleading results. SSA indignantly insisted that the
auditor-general’s report was based on the 1996 situation and that these
shortcomings had since been remedied — but even this rebuttal turned
out to be wrong, for the report had been based on an audit carried out
in 1997.
It took the gyrations in the figures for the electorate, however, for
many to realise that there was a worrying fluidity to even the most
fundamental official figures. Subsequent developments have hardly
restored confidence. Mchunu announced that 18.34 million people had
registered to vote, taking the registration figure up to a triumphant
80.55 per cent. This final increase had occurred because an extra
400,000 names had been “discovered in the system” and added to the
previously released figures. However, 296,266 names were to be struck
off the register — 31,327 because they had died, 39,498 because they
did not have bar-coded IDs, 109,441 more because they were not South
African citizens or were not on the population register, and another
116,000 for unspecified reasons. Quite how all these people had been
registered in the first place is not clear. Meanwhile, several dozen of
the “dead” have indignantly come forward and had their identities
confirmed. Some 36,000 of those struck off the register have been
reinstated on appeal, adding to the sense of chaos.
Even the resulting figure of 18.08 million registered was not final,
because last month the Constitutional Court ruled that denying the vote
to prisoners was unconstitutional. Inevitably, angry comparisons were
drawn at the notion that convicted rapists and murderers should have
the vote while, for example, the 581,000 permanent residents should
not. Even more remarkable was the disenfranchisement of South Africans
travelling abroad — businessmen on foreign trips, students acquiring
degrees and skills abroad, both to the country’s ultimate benefit, or
even touring sportsmen such as the national cricket team, actually
representing South Africa abroad. For the Constitutional Court decision
meant that assassins such as Clive Derby-Lewis and Janus Walusz were to
be allowed to vote while national heroes like Hansie Cronje and Jonty
Rhodes were not. This contrast was so unsustainable that further
concessions to allow at least some South Africans who are abroad on
June 2 to vote became inevitable.
The sheer fluidity of the baseline figures provided by SSA, the
department of home affairs and the IEC, as well as the occasional
contradictions between them, mean that it is never possible to say
beyond all doubt that any particular figure is right or wrong. Indeed,
while much of the criticism of the IEC has suggested that its figures
for the size of the potential electorate are too low, the opposite may
be the case. After all, the IEC’s final figure of 22.8 million
potential voters allowed for only 1,358,000 disenfranchised through
lack of a bar coded ID. But there is strong survey evidence to back up
the claim by the DP and the NNP that the real figure for those
disenfranchised is around 4 million.
In this case the IEC should have
reduced the figure for the potential electorate to 20,128,000 — but
then increased it by 150,000 to allow for the prisoners enfranchised by
the Constitutional Court. If one leaves permanent residents and South
Africans abroad out of account (though some of the latter, at least,
are certain to be added to the electorate), then one arrives at the
conclusion that the IEC has registered 18,158,000 voters out of a
potential electorate of 20,278,000 — a staggering 89.54 per cent
registration rate. Perhaps the IEC should not resist such a conclusion
for it would mean that it has succeeded beyond even Mchunu’s wildest
dreams.