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People
Demography
One of the most striking characteristics of South Africa is its citizens' wide diversity in race, language, culture and religion. For almost five decades, under the apartheid system, South African law divided the population into four major racial categories: Africans (black), Europeans (whites), "Coloreds" (people of mixed ancestry) and Asians. While this law was removed from the statute books in 1991, many South Africans still view themselves and each other according to these categories.
Africans comprise the majority (about 77 percent) of the population and are divided into a number of different ethnic groups. Most of today's black South Africans belong to ethno-linguistic groups of the Bantu family, which can be broken into the Sotho, Nguni and Nguni-related ethno-linguistic groups.
The ancestors of today's Southern Sothos, Tswanas and Pedi migrated south from central Africa, settling in the former Transvaal region (today known as Gauteng) sometime before 500 B.C.E.
The Nguni-speakers, ancestors of today's Zulu and Xhosa, occupied most of the eastern coast by 1500.
Members of the Khoisan language groups are the oldest surviving inhabitants of the land; however, only a few are left in South Africa today, and they are located in the northwestern sections.
Other ethnic groups have migrated much more recently to the region. White South Africans comprise about 10 percent of the current population. They are primarily descendants of Dutch, French, English and German settlers who began arriving at the Cape in the late 17th century. Their first languages are Afrikaans (which evolved locally from Dutch) or English.
"Colored" South Africans are people of mixed race who have primarily descended from the earliest settlers and the indigenous peoples. They comprise about nine percent of the total population, are concentrated in the Cape Province, and speak Afrikaans as their first language.
Many Asian South Africans descended from Indian workers brought to South Africa in the mid-19th century to work on the sugar plantations in Natal and in the mines of the Transvaal. They constitute about three percent of the population and are concentrated in the Province of Kwazulu-Natal.
Ethnicity and language aside, the religions represented in South Africa include Christianity (68 percent), indigenous beliefs (28 percent), Islam (2 percent) and Hinduism (2 percent).
Society
One of the legacies of the apartheid system is the destruction of the sense of belonging and cohesion among the people of South Africa. Apartheid laws reified ethnic identity and sought to balkanize people into ethnically based political and geographical units. The system benefited whites at the expense of the other races. As a result, the post-apartheid government has focused attention on rebuilding a sense of ownership of the country for the whole of the people. It seeks to promote nation-building and racial tolerance among different groups through educational and cultural programs.
While it will take a long time to build trust among different groups, consensus holds that South Africans must together reconstruct and develop their country and become the "Rainbow Nation."
In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of racially-motivated incidents as evidenced by the increase in the number of killings of white farmers, among others. The future of the "Rainbow Nation" is in doubt following such incidents and President Mbeki's own increasingly strident statements emphasizing racial cleavages in the country. Some commentators are of the opinion that President Mbeki has deliberately moved away from the policies of reconciliation pursued by former President Mandela.
Human Development
In terms of health, welfare and human development, the life expectancy rate for the total population in South Africa is 43.27 years of age, according to recent estimates. This low life expectancy is believed to be due to the high prevalence of HIV/AIDs, which, according to recent estimates, is an astronomical rate of 21.5 percent of the total population. This is one of the highest HIV/AIDs rates in the world today. The infant mortality rate is 61.81 deaths per 1,000 live births. The literacy rate is one of the highest in Africa at 86.4 percent.
About 8.5 percent of GDP in this country is spent on health expenditures. About 5.4 percent of GDP in this country is spent on educational expenditures.
One notable indicator used to measure a country's quality of life is the Human Development Index (HDI), which is compiled annually since 1990 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The HDI is a composite of several indicators, which measure a country's achievements in three main areas of human development: longevity, knowledge and education, as well as economic standard of living. In a ranking of 169 countries, the HDI places South Africa in the medium human development category, at 110th place. Note: Although the concept of human development is complicated and cannot be properly captured by values and indices, the HDI, which is calculated and updated annually, offers a wide-ranging assessment of human development in certain countries, not based solely upon traditional economic and financial indicators.
Written by Dr. Denise Youngblood Coleman, Editor in Chief at CountryWatch.com; see Bibliography for research sources.
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