President Cyril Ramaphosa has officially put South Africa’s Statistics Amendment Act into effect.
This new law will reshape how the country collects and manages national statistics and data.
Part of this will include a major change to how often the national census takes place.
Census laws to change in SA
The Act, first tabled in Parliament in October 2023 and signed into law in December 2024, has now been activated through a Presidential Proclamation after months of waiting.
Its implementation marks the beginning of a new era in national data governance.
Under the new legislation, South Africa’s national census will now occur once every 10 years, replacing the previous five-year legal requirement.
While this change aligns with the actual practice of Statistics South Africa (Stats SA), which has conducted censuses roughly every decade (in 2001, 2011, and 2022), it formalises what has long been an unofficial standard.
The law also paves the way for a National Strategy for Statistics and a National Statistics System, both aimed at improving coordination between data producers and users. The goal: to boost the quality, consistency, and reliability of national statistics used in government and business decision-making.
