Message from the Statistician-General

It gives me great pleasure to present to you a campaign that in so many ways for us represents the small but significant role we too can play in the democracy of South Africa, given the lessons of transition in South Africa and its system of official statistics.

The maths4stats campaign is a building block towards making real a vision I have always held in my tenure as Statistician-General for building capacity in a nation that for decades was deliberately denied human rights to a meaningful education.

When the old Central Statistical Services became Statistics South Africa, the challenge South Africa faced was building capacity in mathematics and statistics. Our work programme for 2006/7–08/09 realises that human capacity is a major challenge, which needs us to address the development of an education and training programme at Stats SA specifically, and in South Africa generally.

In collaboration with the South African Statistical Association (SASA) and the Association for Mathematics Education in South Africa (AMESA), Statistics South Africa has embarked on a series of activities to enhance statistical development in the country. The maths4stats campaign aims to encourage the development of mathematics education as an important bedrock for statistics.

But, given the unique challenges that South Africa faces in light of its unsavoury history that affected the education of many South Africans, the climate of appreciation alluded to earlier has to be maintained through rigorous concerted cooperation between Statistics South Africa as the lead agency in this initiative, the Department of Education, the South African Statistical Association (SASA), and the Association of Mathematics Education in South Africa (AMESA).

I have constituted a core team to roll out the campaign in the endeavour to work cooperatively towards improving and enhancing statistics education in South Africa. The core team comprises its majority from Statistics South Africa, reflecting the diverse but nevertheless critical mass of expertise in teaching in mathematics and statistics education that we have in the organisation.

This campaign requires a collective effort and I am looking forward to working with all partners towards undoing a legacy that will have far-reaching implications for the people of South Africa.