PEOPLE
PEOPLE
South
Africa’s population is about 42 million. There are also an estimated three to
eight million illegal immigrants from other African countries, living in South
Africa. Approximately 75% of the people are black, 13% are white, 9% are
coloured and 3% are Asian, mostly Indian.
Black people can roughly be devided into nine different groups and within
these groups there are a number of smaller groups.
White settlement began in 1652 with the arrival of the Dutch, who
gradually spread into the interior as farmers. They lived isolated lives,
developed their own language, Afrikaans. French Huguenot and German settlers
were later absorbed into this group, known as Afrikaners.
The Afrikaner, descendants of 17th-century European settlers, makes up
three fifths of the white population. The remaining whites are mostly
Englsih-speakers, descendants of the British who arrived in the Cape region in
the early 19th-century and afterwards. The coloureds are descendants of the
indigenous Khoi, mixed races and slaves brought to the Cape from Malaysia and
Indonesia in the 17th century. Most of the coloureds live in the Western Cape.
There is a small population of Indians, largly descendants of the 19th-century
immigrants and indentured labourers – today the Indians live mostly in and
around Durban.