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World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples - South Africa : Overview

Updated May 2008

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Environment

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Covering the southern tip of the African Continent where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet, South Africa borders six countries, including Lesotho, which it entirely surrounds. South Africa features tremendous diversity of climate and topography, and has considerable natural resources.

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Peoples

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Main languages: English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa, Northern Sotho, Southern Sotho, Tswana, Shangaan, Ndebele, Swazi, Venda (All eleven of these languages are official.)

Main religions: Christianity, indigenous beliefs, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism

Population groups include blacks 36 million (79.5%), whites 4.1 million (9.2%), Coloureds 4 million (8.9%), Indians 1.1 million (2.5%), Zulus 11 million (25%), Afrikaners 2.5 million (5.5%), San 5,700 and African immigrants 5 million. (data: 2001 census)

Black South Africans, defined as those whose mother tongue is an African language, comprise three-quarters of the population of the country and share the common experience of the gross disruptions and abuses of white domination and apartheid – notably their wholesale incorporation into a migrant labour system combined with banishment for most to overcrowded and unproductive 'homelands'. Linguistic and tribal divisions have been of less significance.

The first settlers, from the mid-seventeenth century onwards, were primarily from Holland and France, later followed by British, Eastern European Jews, southern Europeans, as well as whites arriving from Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Afrikaners, defined as those considering themselves white and speaking Afrikaans, a derivative of Dutch, still comprise the majority of the white population.

Perhaps five to ten million immigrants – estimates vary greatly – are currently living illegally in South Africa. The great majority are from other African countries, particularly Democratic Republic of Congo and Zimbabwe but increasingly from all parts of the continent.

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History

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Khoisan hunter-gatherers were the first human inhabitants of today's South Africa, but were largely displaced by Bantu peoples migrating south in the fourth or fifth centuries. Some Khoisan descendents remained, some mixing with Bantu peoples, notably the Xhosa, whose language retains the influence.

The progressive dispossession of the black people of South Africa dates from the earliest years of European settlement in the seventeenth century, and had been achieved to a far greater extent than anywhere else on the continent long before the Union of South Africa was established in 1910.

Afrikaners

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries European settlers in South Africa were predominantly Dutch-speaking. British take-over of the Cape Colony in 1806 led to an influx of English-speaking colonists. European migration increased greatly following the discovery of diamonds (1867) and gold (1886), notably including Jews from Eastern Europe. Conflicts between Afrikaner farmers who colonized the interior of South Africa, establishing the republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, and British imperial interests, led to the Anglo-Boer Wars of 1899-1902 and a legacy of bitterness compounded by the comparative educational and economic disadvantages experienced by Afrikaners in relation to English-speaking Whites. The Afrikaner nationalist movement would later culminate in the victory of the National Party which ruled the country from 1948 to 1994, and mobilized Afrikaners against this imbalance as well as in support of white supremacy.

Apartheid

Over time, white South Africans would come to see themselves as distinct group, and often as a 'threatened minority'. But even the bitter Anglo-Boer conflict was eventually subsumed under efforts to maintain domination supported by the overwhelming majority of whites. The nineteenth-century wars of subjugation and the wholesale expropriation of black land lent support to a pervasive mythology, actively promoted by successive minority regimes, that the only alternative to white domination would be black retribution.

Legislation in 1913 and 1936 formally allocated 87 per cent of the land for settlement by whites. Apartheid, progressively introduced following the National Party victory in the white elections of 1948, was the culmination of such policies. All South Africans were categorized according to race and forced to live in their own 'group areas'. Additionally black South Africans were categorized according to 'tribe' and huge numbers were uprooted to the corresponding 'bantustans' or 'homelands', which roughly coincided with the land already reserved for black settlement. The bantustans were generally located away from the main centres of economic activity and functioned as labour reserves, and increasingly as dumping grounds for the homeless. Although economic requirements sometimes ran counter to the strict dictates of this ideology, and although apartheid was imposed on a country already heavily segregated on racial lines, over three million South Africans were forcibly removed from their homes in pursuit of these plans.

Sharpeville Massacre

The 1960 massacre of 69 black people at a protest in Sharpeville against pass laws proved a watershed in the struggle against apartheid. Mass protests and arrests followed the police shootings, and South Africa faced increased international scrutiny of its racist regime. The government banned the Pan Africanist Congress, which had organized the Sharpeville protest, as well as well as the African National Congress (ANC). The bans led to enhanced militarization of both liberation movements. In its heightened siege mentality, the government also cracked down on the labour union movement.

The government of Frederick de Klerk that came to power in 1989 realized that apartheid was no longer sustainable. Under mounting pressure, in 1990 the National Party government legalized the ANC and ended the 27-year jailing of its leader, Nelson Mandela. De Klerk set about negotiating with the ANC the end of minority rule at a time when the white government could still dictate some of the terms. The 1994 elections heralded the end of apartheid and the establishment of a Government of National Unity.

The new South Africa

However, political and economic factors severely constrained the ability of the new interim government to counteract the extreme inequalities of wealth and opportunity which had developed along racial lines. Indeed, whites' retention of economic gains made under apartheid was part of the grand bargain-if never clearly spelled out-that led to majority rule.

The status of the disadvantaged and marginalized – predominantly the black rural poor and urban unemployed, between them comprising a majority of the population – was a challenge that would continue to confront the government even after the full transition to majority rule. While whites kept their economic power and blacks gained political power, Coloured and Indian peoples remained in the middle-considered too black under apartheid, and too white in the post-apartheid era.

Complicating the challenge of widespread discontent was the HIV/AIDS pandemic that had begun a rapid spread across southern Africa by the time that the apartheid regime was coming to an end. Today, an estimated one-seventh of South Africa's population is HIV positive.

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Governance

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South Africa can be considered a country of minorities, yet questions of minority rights take a distinctive form. Pervasive opposition to the enforced racial and tribal classifications of apartheid has led to considerable scepticism over calls for any defence of rights on a group basis.

Political conflict in South Africa has been primarily across the fault-line of white domination. Consequently the strenuous efforts of the apartheid regime to promote divisions among blacks on tribal lines had limited success, even by comparison with the efforts of many colonial regimes in Africa. (The promotion of Zulu-based Inkatha movement was an exception to this.) The primary apartheid division into whites, Coloureds, Indians and blacks left a more profound and immediate legacy.

The interim constitution agreed in 1994 by the National Party and the ANC put a high premium on individual rights as opposed to those of any particular grouping. Exceptions were last-minute concessions made to right-wing whites and the Zulu Inkatha, and substantial devolution of authority to provincial governments.

The compromise settlement limited the potential for fundamental change, with the land question in particular remaining unresolved. Clauses protecting property rights in the interim constitution made the redistribution of virtually all white-owned land impossible for the succeeding five years; and although possibilities existed for the restitution of land alienated since 1913, owned by the state, or through commercial mechanisms, the scope was decidedly limited.

The new constitution contained an extensive bill of rights consistent with international human rights standards. It also declared eleven official languages, while recognizing an additional eight non-official languages. Under the new constitution, in June 1999 the National Assembly elected fellow ANC veteran Thabo Mbeki to succeed Nelson Mandela as president. The ANC won nearly 70 per cent of the vote in the 2004 elections, and the National Assembly re-elected Mbeki to another term as president.

HIV/AIDS, the challenge of an unskilled work force and high unemployment rates have all burdened South Africa's economy since the end of apartheid. It has grown steadily at around three per cent each year, just enough to keep up with population growth. More blacks have gained access to running water, electricity and telephone service, but much of the growth has simply benefited a racially broadened elite.

Slow progress has caused the majority poor black population to agitate for faster land reform. In 1994, 13 per cent of the land belonged to blacks, who make up 80 per cent of the population. Over subsequent years, with the government committed to a 'willing-buyer, willing-seller' approach, only four per cent of white-owned land has shifted to blacks.

South Africa is home to perhaps five or even ten million illegal immigrants, in addition to around 30,000 refugees and 100,000 asylum seekers. They come largely from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Angola. African immigrants have been subjected to growing harassment and resentment, principally on the grounds that as unregistered (as well as non-unionized) workers they are unfairly competing for jobs. Many have been resident for long periods, a significant number with South African spouses and children. In Cape Town in late 2005, 20-40 Somali shopkeepers were killed in targeted violence allegedly organized by competing South African shopkeepers. South African police and officials at the Department of Home Affairs have been regularly accused of abusing the rights of illegal immigrants and legitimate asylum seekers alike. Some 96,000 African immigrants were deported in 1993, mostly to Mozambique, and despite an amnesty in 1996 and reform of immigration law in 2003, this process has continued. Immigrants now form one of the country's largest and most marginalized groups, but with the implosion of neighbouring Zimbabwe's economy and instability elsewhere on the continent, incentives for immigration to relatively prosperous South Africa remain.

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Current state of minorities and indigenous peoples

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In South Africa the numerical majority black population continues to suffer acute disadvantages which correlate far more with the racial divisions enshrined by apartheid than with specific ethnolinguistic groupings. The particular status of each of South Africa's black linguistic groups, despite variations, is of lesser significance.

Zulus with their claims for distinctive political or cultural status, are an exception to this, as are the very small but highly marginalized San communities. There are certainly variations in the situations and prospects of different groups, correlating mainly with economic opportunities and access to resources which in turn relate to distance from metropolitan areas. The Shangaan and Venda in the northern and eastern Transvaal are disadvantaged in this way. Xhosa-speakers from the Eastern Cape, a traditional stronghold of the ANC, have a disproportionate political influence at a national level.

South African whites have expressed nervousness that Jacob Zuma, elected in December 2007 as chair of the ANC and poised succeed current President Thabo Mbeki, has not sufficiently distanced himself from Mugabe's policies of land redistribution, which beginning in 2000 stripped some 4,000 white Zimbabweans of their farms and precipitated Zimbabwe's economic meltdown. Many among South Africa's black majority are impatient with the pace of economic improvement after apartheid and the continued white ownership of most fertile land. They clamour for land redistribution, and the Mbeki government has announced a goal of bringing 30 per cent of the land into the hands of black farmers by 2014.

In 2006 his government announced that it would move to expropriate land from whites within six months of the beginning of negotiations on a 'willing-buyer, willing-seller' basis. In the past, such negotiations have often lasted five years or more, and the government has taken the position that whites are demanding too much for the farms. Landless blacks have expressed frustration that the government has been slow to process restitution claims in cases where blacks can document previous ownership of land seized from them during apartheid.

Black elites have been the greatest economic beneficiaries of the end of apartheid, with much of the country's respectable economic growth accruing to them. Growing disparity between rich and poor, exacerbated by corruption, has burdened South Africa's transition to democracy. Black Economic Empowerment has also meant that white youth – those who grew up after apartheid ended – are paying for the sins of their fathers. Access to universities is today unequal and the most senior positions in the civil service and major corporations are denied to whites. As many as two million may have quietly left. The remainder include many who are an angry and embittered minority – attacked in their homes and on their farms by blacks who are frustrated that access to wealth has not come to them. The country's high crime statistics (nearly 19,000 murders a year) have undermined cohesion and investment. Following the erosion of their privilege, Afrikaaners feel particularly vulnerable, both as whites and as a linguistic minority.

In 2008, the deepening crisis in neighbouring Zimbabwe converged with a poorly performing economy in South Africa to enhance xenophobic sentiment among many poor black South Africans. With 165,000 per cent annual inflation at home, some 3,000 Zimbabweans were crossing the border daily to seek work in South Africa. In May 2008, violent attacks on immigrants began in a township near Johannesburg, quickly spreading to the city and then beyond. Within three weeks, over 50 people had been killed and tens of thousands of migrants had fled back to their homelands in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and elsewhere. For the first time in the post-apartheid era, the government deployed the army to put down domestic unrest. South African intelligence officials hinted ominously that former supporters of the apartheid government had provoked, organized and armed the attackers – which some observers took as a reference to the largely Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party.

Topics: Minorities,