The People of South Africa

The People of South Africa

South Africa is also called The Rainbow Nation. This signifies the diverse types of people in South Africa.

Of the 51.7 million South Africans, over 41 million are black, 4.5 million are white, 4.6 million are coloured and about 1.3 million Indian or Asian.

The blacks are the indigenous people of South Africa Zulu and Xhosa the predominant languages spoken amongst themselves.

English is the most widely spoken language and spoken by almost everyone. The whites can be loosely divided into two main groups. These are the Afrikaaners, (60%) descendants of the fist Dutch settlers. And the others are a mix of British descendants and a mix of foreign immigrants (40%). The Jews of South Africa fall under this category. The Jews mainly immigrated in from around 1880-1920 and came mainly from Lithuania.

The Coloureds are a mix race, descendants of inter relations between the early settles and the local inhabitants and slaves. They now comprise of a significant chunk of the population.