Stand up and be counted
2011-10-27 09:32
I was counted last week. A friendly census taker and his sidekick came along and politely ran through the questions, apologising for those that have now been revealed to be sensitive and helping me to fill out the form because I was holding a small and niggly baby.
I found the whole experience to be very friendly and efficient, although invariably, I took issue with a couple of the questions. There is no “head” in my household - my husband and I are equal partners and earners. My children can’t read or even work out street signs. This is not an indication of some mental incapacity or lack of education, as they’re both not yet three; there should be a “too young to read” option for that question.
However, the two questions that didn’t bother me in any way were the ones that asked about my income and my possessions.
The furore around the income question is particularly baffling to me. The government is not some impertinent distant cousin asking for your income at the family dinner table; they’re the government. Unless you’ve been lying to them every year in your tax return, they already know how much you earn. And if you’ve already been lying to them, there’s no reason to stop when confronted with a census form.
The next thing that seems to get people more anxious than a mouse in a snake’s terrarium is the question about what household appliances they own. The underlying problem here is that people seem to believe that the census form will become some kind of a shopping list for marauding burglars, who will apparently break our doors down and check each item off the census list as they load them onto their bakkies, murdering us on their way out.
Come on, okes! Think this through. I don’t think that in this day and age, it should come as a surprise to anyone that an average city household has a fridge. Even televisions have become ubiquitous. If burglars were to lay their hands on your census form, they wouldn’t really have much more information than they’d have if they stood outside your house and looked at it. It’s not as if you’ve ticked a box that says “I have R100 000 worth of jewellery hidden in the safe in the second cupboard from the left” or given them the blueprints to the air-conditioning ducts in your apartment.
Government needs information about its citizens to formulate policies for the future. I know that our current government has given us a lot to be suspicious about - I’m not their biggest fan at the moment - but it is important for us, as citizens to participate in the processes that will make government work. A census is one of these.
- Georgina Guedes is a freelance writer. You can follow @georginaguedes on Twitter.
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