Enumerators will go from house to house spending about 40 minutes at each  household asking about 75 questions contained in the Census 2011 questionnaire.

A census determinesdemographic data, the statistics on number, the distribution, and characteristics of people living within the borders of South Africa.

Census 2011 comes 10 years after Census 2001 and the data collected will  track how far South Africa progressed in terms of service delivery.

For instance whilst in 1996 access to electricity was 58% by 2001 70% of South African

households had access to electricity .

Census 1996 put South Africa’s population size at 40.5 million and by 2001 this number had risen to 44.8 million people living within our borders.

“So Census 2011 will present us with another opportunity to understand how far we have gone and what challenges including new ones need to be attended to. The Millennium Development Goals  (MDGs) report is four years away and Census 2011 should inform us how we are marching on this road in comparison with other countries, “said Statistician-General Pali Lehohla.

Statistics South Africa has been hard at work recruiting, training and deploying thousands of employees into the field for purposes of executing the census.

Five and a half thousand field work supervisors have been deployed and currently thirty thousand supervisors are being trained.  In the next two weeks another wave of 120 000 enumerators will be trained in preparation for the 10th of October.

A lot of preparation has gone into this task and we call on all residents of South Africa to get ready for the 10th of October 2011 when the great counting starts.