HOW TO LIE AND MANIPULATE WITH STATS?
By: Kaizer Mohau Naturally many of us will agree that elections and election times are indeed exciting times in the history of every nation especially democratic nations like ours. Besides the excitement that comes with political parties’ campaigning and the very interesting noise they make in the media – others making no sense at all – yet that noise in a democracy deserves to be listened to. We have always debated political parties, their manifestos, programs and policies as they continue making promises to the electorates. It is rare to find political parties not making promises, but certain that they will deliver on what they say they will do. In many instances these are parties which have already won elections and led governments for more one term – such a party in South Africa is the African National Congress. The character and nature of the ANC is such that making promises is a bit impossible. The ANC has never declared itself to be a political party in the orthodox or traditional meaning of the word. Due to its mass base and liberation movement character – the ANC is the only political party that is rooted within the masses. Only the ANC was not established by politicians – the ANC was formed by activists, religious, cultural, political, human rights etc. this on its own makes the ANC the only unique party in the body politic of our country. Let me therefore deal with the aim of this article which is to debunk the myth that statistics are the only genuine barometer to measure information that will assist us to see as to how things and events will unfold - . What are statistics? Statistics are a process of collecting data around a particular theme – in South Africa we have since especially 1994 – used statistics to understand how things are developing- education, crime, employment, economic development, social development etc. In exception of the government commissioned stats – those collecting data on important issues have always been about using the information to question on behalf of the opposition the ability, capacity and performance of our current government. We have recently seen a situation were in which the opposition wanted to pressurize the government to release statistics around crime in the country – as if the release of statistics will curb crime in the themselves – the response by the Minister of Safety and Security, as correct as it was, it was viewed as runaway attempt from telling the country that crime has become a crisis – a view only shared by the DA and other opposition parties. The Minister correctly argued that as we all know that he has just been deployed to minister the department of safety and security – he is not familiar with the processes especially the methodologies applied to acquire these stats. For instance, stasticians will tell us that they spoke to about 1000 people, with ages ranging from 18 – 40 – that one thousands people spoken to majority says they will not vote for the ANC. The information get disseminated to the public through the media – the media typical of the Anti ANC mainstream media they will sensationalise one thousand voices as if they represent the entire country. According to statistics the future of our country can be determine by less ¼ of the South African populace – In South Africa we have mas or menos – 23 million people who have registered to vote on the 22 April 2009 – this is nearly half of the entire population of the country and yet we are told that 1000 people contacted through the internet could reflect the final outcome of the elections – this is not only sickening but it equally indicates that people can manipulate the public view on almost everything. During the rape trial of the ANC President, the media had a tendency to tell us that majority of ANC members were convinced that Cde Jacob Zuma is guilty – in the eyes of the media the number of people who were attending the case in solidarity with Cde Jacob Zuma – everyday was dwindling – Alas! Because ours was never about counting heads – on the final day of the trial and few days before, the number tripled to more than 80 000 – where were the statisticians? Every time when we are to have elections, statistics will tell different and conflicting messages depending in the main on how information is collected. The ANC likewise, have volunteers and its cadres going door to door to campaign – in the process the ANC collects information which goes beyond the elections – as such it is only the true and genuine reflection of how elections will be concluded. The ANC does not rely on the internet as the only method of collecting information – not that new media is not useful but it cannot be the only method we apply or even the most important – the most important method according to the activist’s methodologies of collecting data is the person to person interaction – with a broad scope in approach. For example, the Mail Guardian reported on Thursday, April 16, 2009 – that according to surveys conducted by the Markinor and the Democratic Alliance, it is indicated that the Congress of the People will receive between 6 and 8% of the votes come Wednesday, 22 April 2009 – they attribute their conclusion on a number of factors including lack of public visibility on the part of COPE as reasons for their failure to get more. But this 6 – 8% votes that COPE will get seems in my view to be based on thumb sucking imagination. Because apart from reasons given we are not told as to how were these surveys conducted – who they spoke to, what race, were in the country and what they used. In many by-elections in the country COPE got less than 2% of voter turnout thus it is not possible that they will get the claimed percentages. In conclusions, we should urge our people not to rely on information provided by people who normally reflect the ANC in negative manner – that is those who think that few individuals could tell conclusively how we will vote and who we will vote for. By: Kaizer Mohau Potchefstroom North West Province Mobile: 072 080 2824 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
