There is major confusion over the country's mortality rates, as the departments of home affairs and health insisted on Monday that their figure of 756 000 deaths recorded in 2008 was correct, while Aids researchers and actuaries questioned them.
President Jacob Zuma was the first to quote the shocking figure - representing a staggering 30 percent spike in deaths between 2007 and 2008 - when he addressed the National Council of Provinces two weeks ago.
Last week, health minister Aaron Motsoaledi quoted the same figure. But researchers on Monday said they were "puzzled" and wanted to know where the figures came from, as they didn't "make any sense".
Author and journalist Rian Malan wrote a letter published on Politicsweb flagging the figures as "dumfounding" because they showed that over 180 000 more deaths occurred in 2008 alone.
He rebuked scientists for not publicly questioning the figures, which he said showed that "the Aids equivalent of an atom bomb has detonated among our people".
Malan was not convinced that the figures had in fact surged.
"They all knew, like I did, that Zuma's number was bulls***, but they were perfectly happy to let it stand, (because) big Aids numbers are good for business, innit?"
He wrote that after failing to get a response from Statistics South Africa, he got hold of Medical Research Council (MRC) head Dr Debbie Bradshaw, who told him: "I don't know where the problem lies, but Zuma somehow got the numbers wrong. The minister of health too.
"Somebody transposed two digits. Somebody must be dyslexic. We will forward a memo on the subject to the health minister."
Motsoaledi had told journalists at Parliament that the overall number of deaths in 2007 was 573 408 and that by the end of 2008, the figure had surged to 756 062 - the same figures cited by Zuma - but experts were not convinced.
Stats SA spokesman Trevor Oosterwyk said that while they did not yet have 2008 mortality figures, "there was a sense that there may have been an error in the way the statistics may have been used".
He said Stats SA did "not have a clue" where Motsoaledi had got his figures from, but insisted that Stats SA's report - which puts the total deaths in SA in 2007 at 601 133 - had the right numbers.
But Department of Home Affairs spokeswoman Siobhan McCarthy insisted that their figure of 756 062 was correct and blamed the "discrepancies" on the late registrations of deaths, which may have occurred before 2008.
"There are a number of discrepancies. The first is that we have the late registration of deaths. Somebody will die and be buried, and the family will not notify home affairs until much later.
"The second is that home affairs issues handwritten (death) certificates to people who do not have IDs. The majority of those people will be foreign nationals who have died here.
"There are some South Africans in rural areas who never had IDs. they are also issued with handwritten death certificates, or somebody who is homeless and nobody knows who they are."
McCarthy said that in some cases, death certificates were issued but death registration forms were never completed.
"That happens in cases where people were fraudulently trying to pretend that they are dead so that they can try and claim life insurance policies. For whatever reason, home affairs counts all of them as a death, whereas Stats SA and the MRC would only count those South Africans as per the population register.
"That is why our numbers are slightly higher than the MRC numbers," said McCarthy.
However, Professor Rob Dorrington, head of the Centre for Actuarial Research at the University of Cape Town, said the department's explanation was puzzling.
"I find that extraordinary as a means of explanation. We work with the MRC and we get data from Home Affairs on a monthly basis. The numbers we get don't show any ballooning at all.
Motsoaledi's spokesman, Fidel Hadebe, said: "We use various sources of data. We take data from home affairs, Stats SA, the MRC, the HSRC etc."