Community+Household+Survey+2007




 * SACP Media Release, 8 January 2008**

=Community Household Survey 2007=

The South African Communist Party has noted with regret current media reports regarding the unreliability and incorrectness of data generated through Stats SA, mainly on the living conditions of the poor in our country.

If this is true, as seemingly confirmed by Stats South Africa itself, this is indeed a disgrace, and pose a serious threat to the pursuance of our developmental agenda to create jobs and eradicate poverty. We need highly reliable information and statistics if we are to address the developmental priorities in our country, especially for the workers and the poor.

We have always maintained as the SACP that in our interaction with working class and poor communities through our Red October Campaign, our Know Your Neighbourhood Campaign, and of late our public health campaign, that indeed the poverty levels and inequality continue to grow and widen amongst our people. In particular we have noted the widening inequalities within the black communities.

When the SACP, COSATU and others begun to question some of the findings of Stats SA community survey, all manner of insults were thrown at us, especially by senior government office-bearers. Many of the concerns that the SACP has raised on the failure of the current growth path and macro-economic policies have often been dismissed using this blatantly unreliable date. Sometimes even the race has been opportunistically used against us, to try and defend some of these statistics and also to justify the maintenance of the current colonial type growth path in our economy; thus prioritising the capitalist market over the needs of the overwhelming majority of our people. Attempts were even made in the run up to the ANC’s Limpopo Conference to persuade delegates through this unreliable information to not only adopt certain (conservative) economic policy positions but also elect a certain type of leadership.

Unreliable statistics are tantamount to lying to our people and failing them in their justified aspirations. What is more worrying is that this is for the second time that data generated by Stats SA has been questioned. At no stage should an impression be created that state institutions responsible for statistics are being manipulated to give a false picture to the country in order to justify clearly unworkable policies.

The SACP calls upon for urgent corrective action by government to ensure that reliable statistics are timeously generated.


 * Issued by the SACP.**


 * Contact:**
 * Malesela Maleka, SACP Spokesperson**

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