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Last week’s announcement by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) that certain data from the 2022 South African census would not be released re-energised public debate around the fitness-for-purpose of the census.

While it is good that this debate is happening (because the census does matter), much of the commentary and suggestions from journalists, politicians and others has tended to muddy the waters somewhat, and risks losing some of the more serious concerns we raised.

It is important, therefore, to state upfront where we disagree with much of the commentariat’s views on the 2022 Census.

First, we emphatically reject suggestions that the census should be withdrawn or rerun. While we have many serious concerns about the data, and lament that data on fertility and mortality (as well as employment and income) are seemingly to not be made available even to expert evaluation, the suggestion that the census should be rerun is naïve. As we noted in the South African Medical Research Council technical report, the census is the most logistically complex undertaking of a national government in peacetime. Planning for a census takes four to five years (at least), and before this could start there would need to be an analysis of all that went wrong with the current census.

Second, much of the commentary from the general public falls into the category of "I and my friends and neighbours, too, were not counted!". That does not mean, per se, that the census is an underestimate. Stats SA adjusted for an undercount of 31% overall. However, what sets the 2022 South African census apart is the extent of the reported undercount

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