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Languages of South Africa
The Black African population isheterogeneous, falling mainly into four linguistic categories. The largest is theNguni, including various peoples who speak Swati (primarily theSwazi peoples) as well as those who speak languages that take their names from the peoples by whom they are primarily spoken—theNdebele,Xhosa, andZulu (see alsoXhosa language;Zulu language). Theyconstitute more than half the Black population of thecountry and form the majority in many eastern and coastal regions as well as in the industrialGauteng province. The second largest is Sotho-Tswana, again including various peoples whose language names are derived from the names of peoples who primarily speak them—theSotho,Pedi, andTswana. Speakers of Sotho-Tswana languages constitute a majority in many Highveld areas. The other two primary linguistic groups are the Tsonga (orShangaan) speakers (primarily theTsonga peoples), concentrated inLimpopo andMpumalanga provinces, and theVenda speakers (primarily theVenda peoples), located largely in Limpopo province.
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White South Africans form two main language groups. More than half of them areAfrikaans speakers, thedescendants of mostly Dutch, French, and German settlers. The remainder consists largely ofEnglish speakers who are descended mainly from British colonists, though there are a sizable minority of Portuguese and smaller groups of Italians and others. Most of the population formerly classified asColoured speaks Afrikaans or, to a lesser extent, English.
Twelve languages (Afrikaans, English,Ndebele, Pedi, Sotho, South African Sign Language, Swati, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, and Zulu) hold official status under the 1996 constitution (since amended), and an additional 11 (Arabic, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Portuguese, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telegu, and Urdu) are to be promoted and developed; all languages are spoken to varying degrees in different regions. In some rural areas most residents speak neither Afrikaans nor English, but those two languages allow for communication in most parts of the country. English appears to predominate to an increasing extent in official, educational, and formal business spheres, which reflects a shift away from Afrikaans as the predominant language of government.
Religion
The majority of South Africans areChristians. The largest established Christian denominations directly rooted in European settlement but now drawing members from all ethnic groups are the Methodist, Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Dutch Reformed churches. A large number of people follow independent African Christian churches, which vary in size from a few to millions of members. These faiths differ widely in their degree of theological orthodoxy or heterodoxy from traditional Christian beliefs, but they tend to be more open to aspects ofindigenousculture and religion and to emphasize physical and spiritual healing. There is a sizable minority that adheres to traditional beliefs. Other religions areHinduism, among the majority of Indians;Islam, among many Indians and Malays; andJudaism, among a minority of the white population.
Settlement patterns
More than nine-tenths of the inhabitants live in the eastern half of the country and in the southern coastal regions. In contrast, the western region, except for the area aroundCape Town in the extreme southwest, is sparsely populated. Urban areas contain about two-thirds of the population; many of these consist of huge informal or squatter settlements that lack the basicinfrastructure for transportation, water, sanitation, or electricity.
A large part of the Black population is concentrated in the former “homeland” (Bantustan) areas, scattered territories in the northern and eastern parts of the country that were left to Blacks after the 19th-century wars of white conquest and dispossession. Underapartheid, millions of nonwhites were forcibly relocated from cities and white-owned farms into the Bantustans. Boundary changes also placed many large informal settlements under Bantustan jurisdiction, so that some of these areas came to exhibit urban, rather than rural, population densities.
Rural settlement
Whites own the majority of rural land, although Blacks originally settled most of it. Traditional Black settlements consisted offarming homesteads or villages. The land belonged to thecommunity, and the chief or headman granted each household the right to build a home andcultivate an area of land. Pastoral land around the area was used communally. Conquest and the establishment of white authority and private ownership of land made these settlement patterns subordinate to others. In places where Blacks retained their access to land, however, elements of these patterns survived and may still be found in the more-remote parts of certain reserve areas. Where sharecropping and labor tenancy have provided Blacks with access to farmland, a local architecture using industrial as well as more-traditional materials has developed. About one-sixth of the Black population lives on farmland owned by whites.
Rural patterns created by white settlement from the late 17th century onward were centered on privately owned farmsteads, usually considerable distances apart, each having its associatedcluster of sharecropper,tenant, or employee housing. As the frontier of white settlement expanded in the 18th and 19th centuries, each farmer claimed land, often several thousand acres, and this gave rise to a settlement pattern of widely dispersed homesteads. Smaller farms and more-intensive cultivation, however, always existed in some areas, such as the grape-growing areas of the southwest. As the urban demand for food and other agricultural produce grew rapidly from the late 19th century, many farms closer to towns or in more-favorable ecological zones were subdivided, and a denser pattern emerged. More recently the general tendency has been for farm sizes to increase and the number of landowners to decline. The population of farmworker residents has also decreased as mechanized production methods andcorporate farm ownership have become more widespread.