Dear Portfolio Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs,

We acknowledge and appreciate Statistics South Africa’s phased release of the Census 2022 results, from provincial level through to district council, municipal, and most recently ward-level data (approximately 4,468 wards).

However, as you are aware, Census 2022 was affected by a significant undercount of the population. In light of this, and noting that results will not be released at sub-place level (approximately 22,000 areas), we undertook an independent interrogation of the available ward-level census data, supplemented by registered voter data from the IEC.

We are particularly concerned that these anomalies may have material implications for spatial planning, infrastructure provision, service delivery modelling, and future policy decisions. Please take this extremely seriously.

Today, I hear about SALGA's meetings. For many years, we have had underperforming municipalities and to fix this, we will require training at ground level. the IDP's are a cut and past job for many and municipalities are simply using the incorrect population data because querying it has yielded no response. Treasury must be involved.