But the census is also important for economic planning, and it does more than count the population. It collects information on their ages, educational level, marital status, access to health services and a lot of other factors that government needs to take into account to produce relevant policies. Our present situation forces us to focus first of all on the voters’ roll, which only requires us to know the number and ages of people in the country.
Even those simple figures have been obscured in recent years. The country has held a national census every 10 years since 1982, but the figures floated around by Zanu (PF) and anyone, like the World Bank, who takes figures from sources they control, simply ignore the 2002 census.
In fact, the preliminary figure announced in 2002 gave a total population of 11,376,676. A later, revised, definitive figure was produced, stating that the population was about 11,800,000. That is a spectacular change from the high population growth we experienced up to the 1980s, because a half-way “intercensal demographic survey” in 1997 showed that the population in that year was 11,789,274. That means the increase between 1997 and 2002 was only 0.09% (0.018%/year) using the most optimistic estimate.
This is not surprising because growth had slowed: over the years 1982-92 the rate averaged 3.19%/year, but for 1992-7 it averaged 2.51%/year. Three factors contribute to the drop: family planning, which lowered the birth rate, HIV/AIDS, which increased the death rate, and emigration, which became really significant in the economic meltdown after 1997.
Timothy Stamps, then Minister of Health, stated late in 2001 that the death rate had overtaken the birth rate. That means that, even without considering emigration, the population was decreasing by 2002. Most people accept that there are 3-4 million Zimbabweans living outside the country. That represents a massive emigration rate, so ZimStats will have to produce very convincing figures, supported by solid evidence that we can all understand, if they want me to believe there are more than 10 million people living in Zimbabwe today.
Nobody has produced any evidence against the 2002 figures. They were just filed away and forgotten. They tell us that population growth was effectively zero for 1997-2002. Since growth was already decreasing before that, it is most likely that it was still greater than zero in 1998 and was negative (i.e. population decreasing) by 2001. Stamps’ statement supports this. If we keep these figures in mind, we may get census figures which allow the voters who died 2008-2012 to be squeezed off the roll as well as those who had died before 2008.
But once the elections are over, we will want assurances that economic and social plans are made on the basis of accurate figures. The IMF and World Bank don’t have census enumerators on the ground, so they take what governments give them. They have been given some very strange figures, which don’t worry them. I worry more when I see in a recent book from ZCTU and the Labour & Economic Development Research Institute, a table of population figures which claims, incredibly, that population growth, down to 1.79%/yr for 1990-5, surged to 2.45%/yr in 1995-2000. If the economists can’t get such simple figures right, free elections will be only the first problem facing us in the coming years.
Post published in: Opinions & Analysis