Population: 42,834,520 (July 1998 est.)
note: South Africa took a census 10 October 1996 which showed a total of 37,859,000 (after a 6.8% adjustment for underenumeration based on a post-enumeration survey); this figure is still about 10% below projections from earlier censuses; since the full results of the census have not been released for analysis, the numbers shown for South Africa do not take into consideration the results of this 1996 census.
Age structure:
0-14 years: 35% (male 7,502,396; female 7,366,144)
15-64 years: 61% (male 12,947,521; female 13,079,892)
65 years and over: 4% (male 778,767; female 1,159,800) (July 1998 est.)
Population growth rate: 1.42% (1998 est.)
Birth rate: 26.43 births/1,000 population (1998 est.)
Death rate: 12.28 deaths/1,000 population (1998 est.)
Net migration rate: 0.08 migrant(s)/1,000 population (1998 est.)
Sex ratio:
at birth: 1.03 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.01 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 0.98 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.67 male(s)/female (1998 est.)
Infant mortality rate: 52.04 deaths/1,000 live births (1998 est.)
Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 55.65 years
male: 53.56 years
female: 57.8 years (1998 est.)
Total fertility rate: 3.16 children born/woman (1998 est.)
Nationality:
noun: South African(s)
adjective: South African
Ethnic groups: black 75.2%, white 13.6%, Colored 8.6%, Indian 2.6%
Religions: Christian 68% (includes most whites and Coloreds, about 60% of blacks and about 40% of Indians), Muslim 2%, Hindu 1.5% (60% of Indians), traditional and animistic 28.5%
Languages: 11 official languages, including Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Pedi, Sotho, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu
Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 81.8%
male: 81.9%
female: 81.7% (1995 est.)
People
Until 1991, South African law divided the population into four major
racial categories: Africans (black), whites, coloreds, and Asians. Although
this law has been abolished, many South Africans still view themselves
and each other according to these categories. Africans comprise about
75% of the population and are divided into a number of different ethnic
groups. Whites comprise about 14% 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.
Coloreds are mixed race people, primarily descending from the earliest
settlers and the indigenous peoples. They comprise about 9% of the total
population. Asians descend from Indian workers brought to South Africa
in the mid-19th century to work on the sugar estates in Natal. They
constitute about 2% of the population and are concentrated in the Kwazulu-Natal
Province. 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 which offers
the same standards of education to all people.