The announcement of census results is always a joy for statistics nerds like me who look for stories in numbers. Numbers are not value neutral, nor are they the total of reality, but they can guide one towards some kind of truth.
The announcement of census results is always a joy for statistics nerds like me who look for stories in numbers. Numbers are not value neutral, nor are they the total of reality, but they can guide one towards some kind of truth.
One of the shocks that should not have been shocks in the latest census – and one of the headline stories in the news media – is the fact that a white household on average in 2011 had an income six times that of an average black household.
Black African-headed households had an average annual income of R60 000 in 2011 compared to white-headed households with an average income of R365 000 a year. Remember, these are averages so there can be big differences within each race group.
Whites are still doing quite well after the end of apartheid, with a real – i.e. adjusted-for-inflation – gain of 11% over 10 years.
Black people have seen some real surges in household income on average. The average income of black households has risen faster than others, with black household income 169% higher than in 2001.
The inflation rate as measured by the Consumer Price Index rose 77.5% during the period, so black household income rose by almost 92 percentage points more than inflation.
Moreover, over the past 10 years, average annual household income for all households in South Africa more than doubled to around R103 000 from the figure recorded in Census 2001, representing an inflation-adjusted increase of around 36%.
There is some reason to be glad, then, though the stubborn inequality of our economy is still reason enough for concern. It is surely not right that some of us live like Californians while others go hungry.
Yet the figures in Census 2011 do not bear out the predictions by supporters of apartheid for South Africa of economic ruin under black government.
An investigative journalist, Maud Beelman, I chanced upon online recently warns against buying into Master Narratives. This is one. The deeply held but not often openly declared false belief that it is only a matter of time before the new black rulers drag South Africa back into pre-colonial chaos is often an underlying theme of discussion of how bad things are.
Allied to this is the idea that ‘things were better under apartheid’. Not only is this deeply offensive to the black people who suffered from colonialism and apartheid, this kind of deep prejudice poisons the people who hold it, souring their outlook.
Not only white people fall prey to this way of thinking. Two years after democracy finally arrived in South Africa the Eritrean taxi driver driving me to my hotel in Washington asked me where I was from. When I replied, “South Africa” his response was, “bad, very bad”.
I explained carefully that apartheid was in the past and there was now a new, democratic government – and that South Africa was now run by black people.
“That’s what I mean,” he said. “Just look at Ethiopia. As soon as black people run things they mess everything up.”
Our own personal circumstances also contribute to how we see the economy. If you buy into the master narrative that everything is going to the dogs, everything you encounter that isn’t quite right, be it a pothole or a power outage, is evidence of approaching doom. In some ways you do create your own external environment – but not quite. The opposite of this bleak expectation is not uncritical optimism. No one is asking you to wear rose-tinted glasses. Facts can be construed in different ways but there are still facts.
True, Census 2011 presents a number of facts that cannot be of comfort to anyone living here. That they are not new is not necessarily any consolation either.
To take just one, we have only had a small increase in the number of people with higher education qualifications: from 8.4% in 2001 to 12.1% in 2011. If we are going to grow into an economy which does more than ship out unbeneficiated natural resources, and if we are going to start and run productive enterprises, we’re going to have to do better than that.
Never mind all the other benefits of higher education, such as enabling people to enrich their intellectual lives.
Yet, overall, I am encouraged by what Census 2011 reveals about the economy, if not exactly ecstatic.
For us in Grahamstown, it is of interest to know that the Eastern Cape is the second poorest province, with an average household income of around R65 000 compared to Gauteng with around R156 000.
We also have the second highest unemployment rate at 37.4%.
The good news is we’re not right at the bottom. Limpopo remains the province with the lowest average annual household income, around R56 000. And Limpopo beats us again in the unemployment stakes with a rate of 38.9%.
