Who Counts? The Numbers Behind South Africa's Democracy | Dr Pali Lehohla

What can numbers tell us about who we are—and where we're going?

Former Statistician-General Dr Pali Lehohla has spent much of his career trying to make South Africa visible to itself.

In this episode of Context, he joins Sebenzile Nkambule for a fascinating conversation about the relationship between data, democracy and leadership.

They begin with migration and the extraordinary claims being made about how many undocumented people live in South Africa. But the conversation quickly expands into a much bigger question: what happens when public policy becomes disconnected from evidence?

Lehohla argues that statistics have little value unless they connect to planning, political will and resources. He reflects on South Africa's abandonment of scenario planning, the relationship between unemployment and declining faith in democracy, the country's profound economic inequality and why leaders need to understand what numbers actually reveal about people's lives.

But some of the most compelling moments come when the conversation moves beyond economics.

What can data tell us about family, identity and intergenerational belonging? What are today's leaders handing to the generation coming after them? And as artificial intelligence transforms work and productivity, will technology broaden human possibility, or concentrate prosperity even further?

This is ultimately a conversation about seeing.

Because every statistic represents somebody.

And when people disappear from the data, or leaders stop understanding what the numbers mean, they can very easily disappear from public policy too.