According to franciscogardening, the population of South Africa is made up of 79.8% Bantu Africans, 8.7% whites, 8.9% colored and 2.6% Asians. Africans, in significant increase compared to other ethnic groups, belong to two large ethnic-linguistic families: the Khoisan (Bushmen, Hottentots, bergdamara) and the Bantu. The former are the heirs of the original residents of the country, nomadic hunters and gatherers, who were progressively pushed back to the desert areas of the Kalahari first by the Bantu, who arrived in several waves from the N and from the NE, then by the whites, whose colonization of the South Africa began from the Bay of the Table, where Cape Town was founded in 1652, and whose territorial conquest turned mainly to the N and to the E. The Bantu are in turn divided into numerous ethnic groups, of which the largest are the Nguli, the Sotho and the Tswana. Among all the Zulus are rightly famous for being able to organize in the century. XIX a powerful kingdom that not only imposed itself on much of south-eastern Africa, but which fought bravely against the whites. The whites are for the most part the descendants of the first colonizers and immigrants from the Netherlands (Afrikaners) and English, then of Germans and other immigrants from various European countries. The increase of the white population, today almost entirely due to the natural demographic dynamics, was in the century. XIX and in the first decades of the century. XX largely determined by immigration: in the ancient province of Transvaal in the period 1890-1911 the number of Europeans, attracted here above all by the discovery of the rich deposits of gold and diamonds, rose from 119,000 to 421,000 residents Immigration has now ceased and the higher natural rate of increase of the Bantu determines a progressive increase in the African population compared to the white one. A certain weight has the percentage of colors, which are mainly located in the Western Cape province; they constitute a racially heterogeneous group, mostly born from ancient crosses between whites and Hottentot slaves; among the mestizos are also included the so-called Malays of the Cape, descendants of slaves introduced in the last century from various Asian regions, but who constitute a well-defined group by religion, being all Muslims. The mestizos are increasing significantly both by natural increase and by the continuous contribution of other elements born from new mixed marriages: they were approx. 770,000 in 1936, exceeded 3 million in 1990. Asians are also relatively numerous: apart from small groups of Chinese, they are descendants of the Indians brought to KwaZulu-Natal (where they are still concentrated) to be used for sugar cane plantation work. When immigration was banned in 1913, to avoid further worsening of the racial problem, they totaled approx. 143,000, sixfold in less than eighty years. The demographic dynamics of South Africa are lively; the death rate is one of the lowest in the world for the white population, but also quite low for Africans and Africans. coloureds. The population has a rather low average density (43 residents / km²) and a very irregular distribution: it is concentrated in the eastern regions that offer the most advantageous agricultural and industrial opportunities, especially along the coasts of KwaZulu-Natal, the richest agricultural province. In the past, Africans concentrated mainly in the numerous reserves of the region in this area; the reserves (called Bantustans), which were fragmented on the edge of the lands occupied by the whites (obviously the best), accommodated approx. half of the African population, respecting ethnic ties; the various groups carried out the traditional agricultural and livestock activities there and lived in villages of circular huts, developed around the cattle enclosure, the kraal. Of the nine current provinces into which the country is divided, the most inhabited one is KwaZulu-Natal, followed by Gauteng and the Eastern Cape; the Northern Cape, on the other hand, despite being the province with the largest land area, has a population of just around 1 million units. Values between over five million in Limpopo and 2.9 million in the free state are recorded, however, in the other five provinces of the country. The ethnic composition of the population also varies from province to province: whites, for example, represent 30% of the residents of Gauteng and 25% of those of the Western Cape, while they constitute only a small minority in Limpopo, in that of the Cape. Eastern and in KwaZulu-Natal. In the latter province, although the Zulus predominate, they are on the other hand almost all the descendants of those Indians are concentrated here in the nineteenth century from work on sugar cane plantations. The urban population is, in percentage terms, among the highest in Africa: in 2012 it was 62.4%. Even after the abolition of the regime apartheid and with more than half the country’s population living in cities, however, are mainly whites, Asians EEI coloreds to reside in urban centers; blacks, when they do not live in rural villages, working in plantations, remain confined to the ghetto neighborhoods on the outskirts of the cities (think of the case of Soweto, near Johannesburg, often the scene of bitter protests).
