Demographics of South Africa

Until 1991, South African law divided the population into four major racial categories: blacks (African), whites, coloureds, and Asians. Although this law has been abolished, many South Africans still view themselves and each other according to these categories. Black Africans comprise about 77% of the population and are divided into a number of different ethnic groups. Whites comprise about 11% of the population. They are primarily descendants of Dutch, French, English, and German settlers who began arriving at the Cape in the late 17th century. There is a Portuguese minority — first group includes the descendants of the first European explorers, and second, the descendants of slaves the Dutch brought from Indonesia. Coloureds are mixed-race people primarily descended from the earliest settlers, their slaves, and the indigenous peoples. They comprise about 9% of the total population. Most Asians descend from Indian workers brought to South Africa in the mid-19th century to work on the sugar estates in Natal. The rest are descendants of Indian traders who migrated to South Africa at around the same time. They constitute about 3% of the population and are concentrated in the KwaZulu-Natal Province. Oddly, the tiny Japanese minority in South Africa was classified as white, rather than as Asian, under Apartheid.

Education is in a state of flux. Under the apartheid system schools were segregated, and the quantity and quality of education varied significantly across racial groups. Although the laws governing this segregation have been abolished, the long and arduous process of restructuring the country's educational system is just beginning. The challenge is to create a single nondiscriminatory, nonracial system that offers the same standards of education to all people.

Population: 43,647,658
note: South Africa took a census October 1996 which showed a population of 40,583,611 (after an official adjustment for a 6.8% underenumeration based on a post-enumeration survey); estimates for this country explicitly take into account the effects of excess mortality due to AIDS; this can result in lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality and death rates, lower population and growth rates, and changes in the distribution of population by age and sex than would otherwise be expected (July 2002 est.)

Age structure:
0-14 years: 31.6% (male 6,943,761; female 6,849,745)
15-64 years: 63.4% (male 13,377,011; female 14,300,850)
65 years and over: 65 years and over: 5% (male 816,222; female 1,360,069) (2002 est.)

Population growth rate: 0.02% (2002 est.)

Birth rate: 20.63 births/1,000 population (2002 est.)

Death rate: 18.68 deaths/1,000 population (2002 est.)

Net migration rate: -1.56 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2002 est.)

Sex ratio:
at birth: 1.02 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.01 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 0.94 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.6 male(s)/female
total population: 0.94 male(s)/female (2000 est.)

Infant mortality rate: 61.78 deaths/1,000 live births (2000 est.)

Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 45.43 years
male: 45.19 years
female: 45.68 years (2000 est.)

Total fertility rate: 2.38 children born/woman (2002 est.)

Nationality:
noun: South African(s)
adjective: South African

Ethnic groups: black 75.2%, white 13.6%, Coloured 8.6%, Indian 2.6%

Religions: Christian 68% (includes most whites and Coloureds, about 60% of blacks), Muslim 2%, Hindu 1.5% (60% of Indians), indigenous beliefs and animist 28.5%

Languages: 11 official languages, including Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu. Other spoken languages include San dialects, Portuguese, German, Telugu and Gujarati.

Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 85%
male: 86%
female: 85% (2000 est.)