The Statistician-General in the twenty first century paper presented in Ramallah, Palestine to commemorate the 20th  Anniversary of Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics

23-September-2013

I have been invited to discuss the topic on the role of, depending on the nomenclature in countries, the statistician-general, or the chief  statistician or the

president or the chairperson of official statistics office or authority in the 21st Century.

I was appointed on the 23 of November 2000.  I am South Africa’s first Statistician-General, and for that matter the first black to head  the statistics office since its establi

I am pleased that Ms Ola Awad, IAOS President Elect for 2015-2017, is in charge since 2011 to present, after Dr Luay Shabeneh who was president of the office from 2005-2010 following on Dr Hasan Abu Libdeh who headed the office from 1993 to 2005.  Dr Libdeh was  scheduled to be at the UNSC in 2006 March where the case of Palestine was scheduled to be discussed, but he was denied visa to enter   the United States and no one could table the matter.  Nonetheless the Statistics Bureau of Palestine is in good hands and its succession is working well since it was established. Succession is what I am thinking about now as I am at that number of years that Dr Libdeh was when he handed over and I can see it in action from your side.  You now have a new building, it is something that only begins to be a reality in South Africa when we turn the sod in September and we will occupy our building in three years time.  You are now celebrating twenty years, it is something I shall do next year.  So there is a lot of learning I have to do.  So thank you for inviting me Ms Awad to share in your luminous success.  As I saw the wall and the high fence, security with guns I thought of home, South Africa, twenty years ago, I could relate the existence of this to  limits to freedom in this part of the world.  Having secured freedom back home in South Africa we however have a different form of threat to freedom. It is crime and violent crime in part emanating from the triple challenge of poverty, unemployment and inequality.nt on the 7th of July 1914.  Next year in 2014, the statistics office shall be a  hundred years, eighty of these years will be under apartheid and twenty will be statistical practice under democracy.shment by parliame

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