About 62 million people live in South Africa with Blacks making up 80% of the country's population.They belong to different ethnic groups and speak different languages. The largest tribes, the Zulu and Xhosa, have been in South Africa for the longest time. About half of them live in cities and the other half on small farms in the countryside. A majority live below the poverty line working in poorly paid jobs.

Coloured people make up 10% of the population . They are people of mixed race with ancestors  from southern African tribes, white settlers as well as slaves brought to the region by Europeans.   

White South Africans  make up about 7% of the population. Descendants from Dutch, German and English-speaking settlers call themselves Afrikaners. Most of them live in the large cities and or have farms in the countryside.

Asians, which make up about 3% of the population, are the fourth largest group. Most of them are descendants of settlers who came from India to work on large farms and plantations in the last part of the 19th century.    

95 percent of all South Africans live in the eastern half of the country and along the southern coast. Both the northern and western regions of South Africa  are very sparsely populated because it is too dry.  

The majority of the population are Protestants or Roman Catholics, but there are also Hindus and Muslims in the country and some of the tribes in the countryside follow traditional religions. 


population density in South Africa

Densely populated areas in South Africa
Image:"the user acknowledges Stats SA as the source of the basic data wherever they process, apply, utilise, publish or distribute the data, and also that they specify that the relevant application and analysis (where applicable) result from their own processing of the data" [1], Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 



Words

  • Afrikaner = a white South African who is related to the Dutch people who came to the country in the 1600s 
  • ancestor = a person from your family who lived a long time ago
  • century = a period of a hundred years
  • coast = where land meets the sea
  • descendant = a person of someone’s family who lived a long time ago
  • ethnic, ethnic group = people that belong to a certain tribe, race or country and have their own traditions and language 
  • majority = the largest group of people in a country, opposite of minority 
  • plantation = large area of land, where crops like sugar, wheat or cotton are grown
  • poorly paid = to get little money for the work you do
  • poverty line = the income below which a person or a family is thought to be very poor and in need of help
  • race = group of people who have the same skin colour
  • settler= a person who goes to live in a place where not very many people have gone before
  • slave = someone who is owned by another person and works for them for no money
  • sparsely populated = not many people live on an area of land
  • tribe = a group of people belonging to the same race, with the same customs and language