No census is ever exact: as academics Tom Moultrie and Rob Dorrington at the University of Cape Town have noted previously:
a census is not, in reality, a full and accurate count of the number of people in a country; rather, it is itself an estimate of the size of the population at a moment in time.
South Africa has announced the results of its fourth census as a democracy – Census 2022. I have been involved in the process for the last four years as chair of South Africa’s National Statistics Council. As outgoing chair, my last task was to take part in the release of Census 2022.
