South Africans voting with their feet - DA
2012-10-30 18:21
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Cape Town - The Census 2011 results released on Tuesday show South Africans are "voting with their feet", the Democratic Alliance said.
The DA welcomed the release of the results, which showed improvements in a number of key areas, DA spokesperson Mmusi Maimane said in a statement.
The census deserved to be studied in some detail by all South Africans with an interest in the state of the nation, he said.
"What is immediately clear is that South Africans are voting with their feet.
"Hundreds of thousands of South Africans are migrating away from areas where service delivery is poor and job prospects are few."
In the past 10 years, 278 261 and 152 857 people left the Eastern Cape and Limpopo respectively.
There had been some commendable improvements since the last census in 2001.
Average annual household income had increased and there were fewer people who had never been to school.
"These are welcome developments. But there are still millions of poor South Africans who remain without access to piped water, flush toilets, electricity, and refuse removal," he said.
Many of them still lived in areas where government was dysfunctional and service delivery non-existent.
Where it was in government, the DA was working hard to improve service delivery step-by-step.
"We will continue doing whatever it takes to deliver the better life our people were promised over a decade ago," Maimane said.
Congress of the People spokesperson Nick Koornhof congratulated Statistics SA on completing what appeared to be a successful census.
"However, it is picturing a very challenging time ahead. This census shows the implementation of the National Development Plan (NDP) becomes vital if we want to rescue a majority of South Africans from poverty traps," he said.
The fact that only 28% of all South Africans were completing matric, and that almost 9% had no schooling, showed the education system was in serious trouble and failing South Africans.
"A highlight is that we are seeing a growing black middle class and black South African income has surged 169%, but unfortunately the overall census shows that the progress to narrow the gap between the poor and wealthy is not emerging fast enough," he said.
- SAPA
