South Africa has made remarkable progress in the few years of our democracy. The programmes that we have put in place are undoubtedly successful. Madam Speaker, I am glad to announce to this House today that Census 2001 has been a success and that in their report to me, the Statistics Council, a body that has statutory responsibility for oversight of the statistics system, has asked me to accept the results and promote their utilization. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to say to this House: Here are the results, please use them.
You will remember about two years ago when I addressed this House, I announced that the enumerators would soon be making their way across the country, across the rolling hills of Kwa-Zulu Natal, up the highlands of the Eastern Cape, through the flatlands of the Northern Cape and through the security-tight suburbs of Sandton to count us in, then this House agreed that we needed a census. Today I am here to bring you the results â¯ The population of the Republic stood at 44.
40.5 million people in 1996. Our population has grown by 10% in that fiveyear period, and this gives us an average growth rate of 2% per annum.
We can sketch with passion the census undertaking in our new democracy. Faced with the urgency to end minority rule that had dominated our country for 350 years, we conducted elections in 1994. Census ´96, the first census in which all people were counted as equal citizens told us how many people there were in our country at the time, some people; particularly those living in the former "homelands", in informal settlements and on commercial farms, had not been empirically counted since 1970. After the 1996 undertaking, we needed another census to confirm the findings of Census '96 and to measure changes that had taken place over the time period. Legislation that we introduced in 1999 tells us that the Statistician-General has to cause a census to happen every five years. Madam Speaker, South Africa needed Census 2001, and this is the second anchor by which we can reflect on our first decade of democracy.
Firstly, Census 2001 tells us how the national picture has changed from 1996, in terms of population size, population distribution, population density, age and gender. We know that about 21% of our country's population is in KwaZulu-Natal, that isiZulu continues to be the most frequently spoken home language in the land, that between 1996 and 2001, the share of Eastern Cape and Limpopo as a proportion of the total population declined from 15.5 % to 14.3% and from 12.1% to 11.7% respectively, that the population of Gauteng has witnessed the highest population growth with 1.5 million people added to the province over the five year period. The population of Gauteng has grown by 20%, whilst that of the Western Cape grew by 14%. For these two provinces, their annual population growth rate over the five years has been 4% for Gauteng and 3% for Western Cape. Northern Cape has had a population decline of about 18 000 over the same period. The other provinces have stabilized around a growth rate of close to 2%. We further know that the population of males is 21.4 million as against 23.4 million of females. There are 2 million more females than there are males. Whilst the growth rate of the population has been 10%, the number of households has increased by 23%, with the average household size declining from 4.2 to 3.8 persons in the inter-censal period. Households living in formal housing, has increased from 57.5% to 63.8% of all households, whilst those households living in informal housing has remained relatively unchanged at around 16.0% over the five years.
According to work conducted by Stats SA on the relative concentration of economic activity, for 1996 and 2002, there were approximately 400 centres identified, and ranked. The results show that Johannesburg continued to dominate our economic space over this period, Cape Town has come in at 93% of what the level of economic concentration in Johannesburg is, with Durban scoring 57%, Pretoria 48%, followed by Port Elizabeth at 19%, and Pinetown, Germiston and Bloemfontein coming at about 10% each. Only seventy of these identified economic spaces are at least more than 1% of what Johannesburg is, with six such centers ranking at 10% or more. The remainder of the centers 330 or so, contribute less than 1%. We also know from Census 2001 that there is a relatively large percentage of people who have moved out of provinces such as the Eastern Cape and Limpopo to provinces like the Western Cape and Gauteng. In the context of the census results and this study, we have instruments that enable us to understand the population growth rates of the Provinces of Gauteng and Cape Town and pose questions about the long-term implications of this trend not only for the receiving areas, but from the sending areas as well.
Some of the questions that can be asked in relation to the findings of Census 2001 are the following: What could be the main reasons for the high population growth rates in these two provinces and where the growth in population numbers in specific terms has occurred in the said provinces What is the probable impact of the rapid growth in some provinces and declines in others How do these changes inform policy interventions such as the Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Programme, Urban Renewal Programme and the Growth and Development Summit accord This, of course Madam Speaker, requires serious attention to issues of access to land and agricultural production, sustainable rural development, including subsistence farming and food security, accelerated economic growth through local investment and foreign direct investment, skills development, job creation, etc?
Secondly, South Africa needs Census 2001 because it gives us an opportunity to measure progress made by our democratic government in changing the lives of our people for the better. For instance in 1996, there were 63.5% of households in Limpopo that were using wood as the main energy source for cooking, and that had declined to 59.5% in 2001. As regards electricity for lighting, access to this facility increased from 57.6% to 69.7% in the five-year period from 1996-2001. The percentage of households with access to a telephone, either a landline and/or cellular one increased from 28.8% in 1996 to 42.4% in 2001. Access to piped water now stood at 85% and such access within 200 meters of the dwelling stood at 72%.
The questions that we may ask is what still needs to be done and how do we begin to do it. Some of the answers lie in the fact that this census provides us information not only about the province, but about your local authority, metro, village, and suburb. In fact there is a "my constituency" product which Stats SA is due to release in October, making the census more relevant in the area of your specific jurisdiction. Stats SA has this product already for Census '96.
Thirdly, Census 2001 helps us identify those specific areas of development where we need to focus with regard to implementation of government programmes. We now know that the percentage of households without toilet facilities has increased between the two censuses from 12.4% to 13.6%. The Eastern Cape ranks highest in terms of need for toilet facilities. The increase here was from 29.1% in 1996 to 30.8% in 2001. This finding calls for intervention in the area of public health, where we need to curb the spread of water-borne diseases such as cholera and other related diseases.
In the area of education, compared to Census '96, Census 2001 informs us that the proportion of people without education has declined from 19.
17.9 % whilst the proportion with tertiary education has increased from 6.2% to 8.4 %.
Lastly, Census 2001 provides our citizens, including researchers, those in government and in non-governmental organizations and the private sector an opportunity to engage in advanced analysis of both Census ´96 and Census 2001. A detailed and thorough analysis will tell us much more about the relationships between the variables and how these have changed over time â¯ because we need to know this Madam Speaker. We are a country that has a great appetite for information, that we cannot avoid detailed inspection of our most valuable tool for planning, our statistics. Statistics is too important to be left to statisticians says Moser, the former head of the National Statistics Office of the UK.
Census 2001 results come in a variety of different products, both in printed copies and electronic media. Printed products include census in brief, Key findings and how the count was done. Some of these printed products have been reproduced on the CDs. Stats SA has already made its website available to the public to be able to customize and download census data from both 1996 and 2001 according to their different data needs. Amongst the electronic products are the primary tables: national and provincial, community profiles at the level of cities, local authorities as well at levels of suburbs and villages including wards.
Turning to our role in SADC, I mentioned in this house then that 2001 marked a celebration for the bean counters, as many parts of the world were in the census-taking mood. In SADC, South Africa has been assigned the role of being a co-ordinator and focal point for the SADC censuses, in this regard, I am pleased Madam Speaker to announce that Zambia and Mauritius conducted their censuses in 2000, South Africa, Botswana and Namibia conducted theirs in 2001 and finally Tanzania and Zimbabwe ran their censuses in 2002. We expect Angola and the DRC to run theirs before 2005 whilst Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique and Swaziland will conduct theirs in the second half of the decade as per schedule and in terms of legislation South Africa is scheduled for 2006 as well. This gives the SADC region and the founding protocols of SADC a relatively stable source of information because the region collaborated and adopted common approaches to the census including common questions. We have empowered ourselves as a region. More recently, in July and August, joint training workshops on analysis of census data were held in Lesotho and Mozambique and we used expertise from the SADC offices. This week Botswana is hosting a dissemination workshop for users on their census and SADC member states are participating.
In doing what the Statistics Council statutorily asked me to do, Madam Chair, I would like to highlight some of the points that the Statistics Council makes in terms of the Act.
Council recommends to the Minister that he support the release of the results of Census 2001. The statement by Council is in the Census packs and I would like members to read the statement.
Like any other developing country, South Africa is searching for its position in the information age. As we do so, need to deal with issues of cost and benefit. Do we want to spend R1 billion every five years collecting census data, what are the benefits of doing so, what are the risks of failing to do All these questions need to be answered by our society. Stats SA is just implementing the mandate that we have entrusted in them by an Act of Parliament. A consultative process has started with regard to whether Census 2006 should be conducted or not, and the Statistics Council will advise the Statistician General and myself after October 02, 2003. We are one of the few countries that take five-yearly censuses in the world, and the only one in Africa?
Stats SA has done it again. Madam Speaker, I would like this House to join me in congratulating the Statistician-General, Mr Pali Lehohla, and entire Stats SA management for the good work done. I would also want to extend gratitude to the Statistics Council whose members have had to put hours and hours of work to make Census 2001 a reality. Finally, Madam Speaker, I would like to thank this House for affording Stats SA an opportunity to bring the Census results to the National Assembly.