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What the 2022 Census Disaster Means for NMB Residents

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Dear Editor

The horrifically flawed undercount in South Africa’s Census 2022, compiled by StatsSA, will have dire consequences for Nelson Mandela Bay’s already cash strapped ratepayers, as the municipality is set to lose an estimated R1 billion in grant funding over the next three years.

This disastrous undercount will lead to Nelson Mandela Bay receiving a 20-30% reduction in equitable share and other grant funding from National Treasury.

Both municipalities and provinces receive grants from the Treasury that are largely based on household population numbers and poverty levels.

According to Census 2022, NMB has seen a decline of more than 16 000 households from Census 2011 and a whopping decline of 61 000 households from the previous 2016 household estimates which Treasury utilised. Census 2022, if credible, would have meant that the city has lost almost a fifth of its population over the last eight years. This stands in stark contrast with the increasing demands for housing and municipal services in Nelson Mandela Bay.

The Metro will, therefore, lose up to R300 million per year in equitable share allocation when the new census results are used in the 2025/26 budget for the first time. This could equate to a 10% rate increase on top of any other planned CPI increases for the ratepayers of the Metro.

Statistician-General, Risenga Maluleke, has come under fire for the 31% undercount of the 2022 Census which has brought the credibility of the data compiled into question. In developed countries an acceptable undercount is in the region of 2%.

Any reduction in equitable share and other grant funding will have a significant impact on all residents of the Bay. Not only will it mean significantly less funding for building municipal infrastructure, but it will also lead to less money to subsidize poor households, and no doubt force the municipality to run to ratepayers to make ends meet.

Given the fact that there are just 110 000 rate paying households which are already buckling under one of the heaviest rates paying burdens in the country, there is absolutely no way in which anyone can expect NMB rate payers to carry the burden of additional taxes and service charges.

That is why it is so important that NMB does not get shortchanged because of the inability of census officials to count nearly a third of the metro.

Sadly, the current coalition under Executive Mayor, Gary van Niekerk, has done nothing to address this massive risk area for the metro. Instead, under this watch, the metro achieved the lowest grant funding expenditure in its history – which resulted in the metro forfeiting hundreds of millions of rands.

The DA has made it clear in the past that it is totally immoral to increase tariffs when hundreds of millions of rands are lost because of incompetence and mismanagement. Now, the ineptitude of StatsSA will compound this problem.

The DA will urgently interact with the Director-General of StatsSA, CoGTA and the Fiscal and Finance Commission (FFC) in a bid to intervene immediately and either make use of historical data or commence with a process that will see a recount of Census 2022 in NMB.

The DA remains in your corner, fighting for you. Together we can get NMB working again.

Regards

Retief Odendaal MPL
Shadow MEC for COGTA

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