Statistics South Africa has embarked on its once-a-decade process to count all people in the country - including non-citizens. Census 2022 is arguably the most important in the country since the first post-apartheid census in 1996
That census was the first time since the end of apartheid in 1994 that all South Africans were counted. Under apartheid, fictitious “homelands” excluded millions of people from the count. Excluding them allowed the apartheid government to deny their rights, and responsibility for meeting their needs - by not counting them, the apartheid government ensured that they did not count, for anything.
