If not people what else makes a population?
What you need to know:
What other animal (or plant) species does the ministry of statistics concern itself with whenever it takes a census every 10 years?
The point is that the word population and the word people mean exactly the same thing. Population is the number of people who live in a given area.
Therefore, the one can be determined by the other, or vice versa, just as little as “freedom” can be determined by “liberty”.
According to a newspaper report, “Kenya’s population is presently 40 million people”. The figure 40 is probably as “bloated” as the Cabinet and may remind the reader of the long fingers of Ali Baba’s men. But, clearly, the language of it is equally extravagant.
The adverb “presently” is not what detains our attention. Let me merely mention that — as here — it is totally misused by our reporters, news analysts and commentators.
For it does not mean “at present” or “now”. It means something else, which we shall discuss in another instalment.
What the reporter is saying, surely, is that Kenya’s population is composed of people! What nonsense! What else can it be composed of? What other animal (or plant) species does the ministry of statistics concern itself with whenever it takes a census every 10 years?
The point is that the word population and the word people mean exactly the same thing. Population is the number of people who live in a given area. Therefore, the one can be determined by the other, or vice versa, just as little as “freedom” can be determined by “liberty”.
Yet the latter twaddle is common in liberal chatter. When he was master of New York City’s self-styled Freedom House, Leonard Sussman once made the following remarkable statement: “The general political rights and civil liberties guaranteed to a people determine the level of freedom in that country.
“No matter how technically advanced or how affluent a country may be, the level of its political rights and civil liberties determine [sic!] how free is the individual citizen … I unequivocally regard freedom of the Press in all its forms as the highest standard to which to aspire.”
Such sonorous but completely meaningless phrases are juggled every day in the process of mass deception. In a society whose intellectuals ordain — and ceaselessly preach — that the level of “liberties” determines the level of “freedom”, tautology has become the hallmark of wisdom.
Similar logical fatuity was expressed in this statement (in a newspaper some time in February): “The percentage of those who voted … was 40 per cent”. The words “per cent” at the end of the sentence are totally unnecessary because they have been taken care of by the word “percentage” at the beginning.
Similarly, the word “people” at the end of the sentence at the peg of our story is completely superfluous because its significance has already been expressed by the word “population” at the beginning. That is the inanity of Sussman’s statement.
“Liberty” cannot define “freedom” because “liberty” is just another word for “freedom”. No, the percentage of those who voted in December was not “40 per cent”, but simply “40”. Likewise, Kenya’s population is not “40 million people”, but simply “40 million”.
For both population and people come from the Latin populus and the Greek populos — ordinary folk, the common herd of human beings. This is what gives us such terms as popular (adjective) and populist (noun), both implying ordinariness, boorishness and vulgarity.
But, of course, as a figure of speech, we recognise the “hippo population” in the Maasai Mara and can say that Nairobi’s Uhuru Park is “peopled” with trees.
Mr Ochieng is a veteran journalist.
