A census is not a political event. It is a national reckoning with reality.
Every ten years or so, a country pauses to count itself. To ask who we are, where we live, how we are housed, how old we are, and how many of us there are. The answers to those questions shape everything that follows: how schools are built, how hospitals are funded, how roads are planned, how budgets are divided. A census is, in the most literal sense, the foundation upon which a government builds its understanding of its own people.
Which is precisely why reports that census field workers are being recruited along partisan lines should alarm every Mosotho, regardless of which party they support.
The Census Belongs to the Nation, Not the Party in Power
Let us be clear about what a census is and what it is not.
It is not a campaign. It is not a reward for loyalty. It is not an opportunity to plant supporters across the country under the cover of official employment. It is a technical exercise that demands impartiality, rigour and public trust above all else.
When field workers are selected on the basis of political affiliation rather than competence, the damage runs deeper than a few unqualified appointments. It corrupts the very process by which Lesotho understands itself.
A census worker with a political mandate, whether stated or implied, does not simply count people. They carry an agenda into the field. That agenda may influence who gets counted, how questions are asked, which communities receive thorough coverage and which are passed over. The resulting data may never reflect what actually exists on the ground.
And if the data is wrong, every decision built on top of it is wrong too.
Bad Data Has Real Consequences
This is not an abstract concern. It has direct, material consequences for ordinary Basotho.
Census data determines how government resources are allocated across districts. A community that is undercounted receives less. Less funding for clinics. Fewer teachers for schools. Inadequate infrastructure investment. The people who suffer are not politicians. They are the residents of those communities, many of whom may have no idea that their numbers were never accurately recorded.
Politicised census employment creates the conditions for exactly this kind of distortion. If workers are loyal first to a party and second to the process, the incentive to ensure accurate, complete coverage of all communities, including those that voted differently, is undermined before a single household is visited.
It Undermines the Independence of National Statistics
Beyond the data itself, partisan recruitment erodes something harder to rebuild: institutional credibility.
The Bureau of Statistics exists to produce numbers that everyone can trust. Government ministries, development partners, researchers, civil society organisations and international bodies all rely on national statistics to plan, to fund and to evaluate. That trust is not automatic. It is earned through consistent, transparent and politically independent work.
The moment a census becomes associated with partisan employment, that credibility is placed in doubt. And once doubt takes hold, it is extraordinarily difficult to dislodge. Future surveys, future censuses, future data releases will all carry the shadow of that compromised moment.
Lesotho cannot afford to be a country whose statistics are viewed with suspicion. In a development environment where donor funding, investment decisions and policy support depend on reliable data, the reputational cost of a politicised census extends far beyond our borders.
It Sets a Dangerous Precedent
There is also the question of what this normalises.
If partisan employment in the census is accepted without serious pushback, it signals that technical national institutions are available for political capture. That the party in power can extend its reach into processes that are supposed to sit above politics. That competence is secondary to loyalty when the state is hiring.
This precedent does not stay contained. It spreads. It weakens the civil service. It discourages qualified professionals who refuse to play political games. It rewards those who are willing to subordinate their professional responsibilities to partisan interests. Over time, it hollows out the capacity of the state to function independently of whoever happens to be in power.
A country that cannot conduct an impartial census has a deeper problem than bad data. It has a governance problem.
What Should Happen Instead
The standard for census employment should be straightforward: hire people who are capable of doing the job, train them properly, and hold them accountable to the process rather than to any political principal.
Field workers should be selected through transparent, merit-based criteria. Community knowledge and language skills are legitimate selection factors. Party membership is not. Civil society organisations, opposition parties and independent observers should be given meaningful oversight roles to monitor recruitment and deployment. The Bureau of Statistics must be empowered to make these decisions free from political interference, and seen to be making them.
These are not radical demands. They are the minimum conditions required for a census to mean anything.
A Country That Counts Itself Honestly
Ultimately, a census is an act of national honesty. It is a country looking at itself clearly and recording what it sees, without flattery and without distortion.
Lesotho faces real challenges: poverty, unemployment, migration, inequality and a public health burden that demands targeted, evidence-based responses. Meeting those challenges requires knowing precisely where they are most acute, who is most affected and what resources exist to address them.
None of that is possible if the census is compromised at the point of data collection.
The government must understand that a politicised census does not serve the party in power. It does not even serve the people who benefit from partisan appointments. It fails everyone, including those who engineered it, because governance built on false numbers eventually collides with a reality that data cannot hide.
Count the people. Count them all. Count them honestly.
That is not a political position. It is the only responsible one.
