Navigating unemployment data: a response to Minister Meth's critique of StatsSA

MARGARET Thatcher, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom entered the realm of statistics and ultimately destroyed the Office of the National Statistics (ONS) of the United Kingdom.

- Dr Pali Lehohla

Felix Romer in a 2022 Journal article titled Poverty, Inequality Statistics and Knowledge Politics Under Thatcher demonstrates thus "Academic experts such as Townsend criticised the government for delays and omissions in official reports and for misleading statistical definitions that deliberately lowered the poverty count." It took fifteen years of hard work from its former colonies to rebuild the UK ONS by Bill McClennan of Australia and Len Cooke of New Zealand who had to cross seas and continents to go and fix ONS.

We do not need that history repeating itself in South Africa.

It needs to be nipped in the bud.

And that is what I am going to relentlessly do as statistician emeritus.

The Honourable Tau, Meth, Sekwati and their cohorts are dancing on Thatcher's template, but in StatsSA and its current and previous staff they have a match and South Africa can be assured that a Thatcherite debacle will not fly.

As the unemployment debate rages, another day another political missile.

This time around Minister Nomakhosazana Meth leads with yet uninformed discourse talking through all corners of the mouth under an article titled "Capitec CEO isn't wrong: Unemployment data needs work." She takes the reader through a meandering journey of scholarly papers, and for that she should be given credit. However, where she gets it totally wrong in her ventilatory voyage, she fails to go into the foundational methodological documents from StatsSA.

Two such lay the foundation. In addition, each release of StatsSA liberates any doubting Thomas, which Meth has become one of the most illustrious.

Each would be missile she sends in the direction of StatsSA’s methodology which she has not taken time to acquaint herself, finds a mosquito repellent that buries her missives in the deep burrows, so that she never misinforms again.