See below for a static version of this animation.

Gauteng contributes more than a third to South Africa’s economy and dominates every sector except mining and agriculture. Mining is the main industry of Limpopo, Mpumalanga, North West and the Northern Cape. KwaZulu-Natal has the country’s largest farming sector, but the province’s major industry is manufacturing – second in size only to manufacturing in Gauteng.

Gauteng’s biggest sector is finance, real estate and business services, which makes up almost a quarter of the province’s economy, followed by general government services, and then manufacturing.

General government services include all major government administrative spending, as well as social grants. Investment in public healthcare and education fall under the category personal services.

Government services make the biggest contribution to the economies of the Free State (followed by finance) and the Eastern Cape (followed by trade, catering and accommodation).

The Western Cape’s largest industry is finance, followed by trade, catering and accommodation (a sector that roughly corresponds to shopping, leisure and tourism).

• READ MORE: The nine provinces of South Africa

In 2016 the main industries in each province were:

• Eastern Cape: government services 21%, trade, catering and accommodation 18%, finance 16%
• Free State: government services 15%, finance 14%, trade, catering and accommodation 13%
• Gauteng: finance 23%, government services 19%, manufacturing 14%
• KwaZulu-Natal: manufacturing 16%, finance 15%, government services 15%
• Limpopo: mining 25%, government services 18%, trade, catering and accommodation 13%
• Mpumalanga: mining 20%, trade, catering and accommodation 13%, manufacturing 13%
• Northern Cape: mining 19%, government services 15%, finance 12%
• North West: mining 30%, government services 12%, finance 12%
• Western Cape: finance 23%, trade, catering and accommodation 15%, manufacturing 14%

See below for the actual figures.

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Provincial economies in numbers

Here’s the composition and value of South Africa’s provincial economies in 2016.

All amounts are in millions of rands, so (for example) R7,140 means R7.1-billion, and R1,507,082 means R1.5-trillion.

Eastern Cape economy (in millions)

• Agriculture, forestry and fishing: R5,695 (1.9%)
• Mining and quarrying: R437 (0.1%)
• Manufacturing: R37,724 (12.8%)
• Electricity, gas and water: R7,140 (2.4%)
• Construction: R12,543 (4.2%)
• Trade, catering and accommodation: R60,351 (20.4%)
• Transport, storage and communication: R27,759 (9.4%)
• Finance, real estate and business services: R53,401 (18.1%)
• Personal services: R21,880 (7.4%)
• General government services: R68,820 (23.3%)
• Taxes less subsidies on products: R35,343
• Eastern Cape GDP at market prices (millions): R331,093

Free State economy (in millions)

• Agriculture, forestry and fishing: R10,057 (5.2%)
• Mining and quarrying: R20,501 (10.5%)
• Manufacturing: R22,560 (11.6%)
• Electricity, gas and water: R8,871 (4.6%)
• Construction: R4,990 (2.6%)
• Trade, catering and accommodation: R27,410 (14.1%)
• Transport, storage and communication: R20,203 (10.4%)
• Finance, real estate and business services: R30,551 (15.7%)
• Personal services: R15,511 (8.0%)
• General government services: R33,711 (17.3%)
• Taxes less subsidies on products: R23,485
• Free State GDP at market prices (millions): R217,849

Gauteng economy (in millions)

• Agriculture, forestry and fishing: R6,344 (0.5%)
• Mining and quarrying: R33,927 (2.5%)
• Manufacturing: R204,292 (15.2%)
• Electricity, gas and water: R43,657 (3.2%)
• Construction: R53,278 (4.0%)
• Trade, catering and accommodation: R180,864 (13.5%)
• Transport, storage and communication: R136,434 (10.1%)
• Finance, real estate and business services: R340,571 (25.3%)
• Personal services: R66,177 (4.9%)
• General government services: R278,994 (20.8%)
• Taxes less subsidies on products: R162,545
• Gauteng GDP at market prices (millions): R1,507,082

KwaZulu-Natal economy (in millions)

• Agriculture, forestry and fishing: R23,896 (3.9%)
• Mining and quarrying: R9,226 (1.5%)
• Manufacturing: R112,407 (18.2%)
• Electricity, gas and water: R24,005 (3.9%)
• Construction: R26,836 (4.3%)
• Trade, catering and accommodation: R94,782 (15.3%)
• Transport, storage and communication: R83,412 (13.5%)
• Finance, real estate and business services: R103,667 (16.8%)
• Personal services: R37,262 (6.0%)
• General government services: R103,395 (16.7%)
• Taxes less subsidies on products: R73,334
• KwaZulu-Natal GDP at market prices (millions): R692,222

Limpopo economy (in millions)

• Agriculture, forestry and fishing: R7,051 (2.5%)
• Mining and quarrying: R77,239 (27.8%)
• Manufacturing: R8,124 (2.9%)
• Electricity, gas and water: R12,332 (4.4%)
• Construction: R9,158 (3.3%)
• Trade, catering and accommodation: R41,984 (15.1%)
• Transport, storage and communication: R13,957 (5.0%)
• Finance, real estate and business services: R40,554 (14.6%)
• Personal services: R11,870 (4.3%)
• General government services: R55,104 (19.9%)
• Taxes less subsidies on products: R34,313
• Limpopo GDP at market prices (millions): R311,686

Mpumalanga economy (in millions)

• Agriculture, forestry and fishing: R8,268 (2.9%)
• Mining and quarrying: R64,958 (22.5%)
• Manufacturing: R40,810 (14.2%)
• Electricity, gas and water: R22,522 (7.8%)
• Construction: R9,073 (3.1%)
• Trade, catering and accommodation: R42,455 (14.7%)
• Transport, storage and communication: R19,065 (6.6%)
• Finance, real estate and business services: R33,406 (11.6%)
• Personal services: R11,278 (3.9%)
• General government services: R36,273 (12.6%)
• Taxes less subsidies on products: R35,613
• Mpumalanga GDP at market prices (millions): R323,722

Northern Cape economy (in millions)

• Agriculture, forestry and fishing: R5,937 (7.3%)
• Mining and quarrying: R17,220 (21.2%)
• Manufacturing: R2,927 (3.6%)
• Electricity, gas and water: R3,344 (4.1%)
• Construction: R2,946 (3.6%)
• Trade, catering and accommodation: R9,771 (12.0%)
• Transport, storage and communication: R9,946 (12.2%)
• Finance, real estate and business services: R10,779 (13.3%)
• Personal services: R4,405 (5.4%)
• General government services: R14,001 (17.2%)
• Taxes less subsidies on products: R9,607
• Northern Cape GDP at market prices (millions): R90,883

North West economy (in millions)

• Agriculture, forestry and fishing: R6,637 (2.7%)
• Mining and quarrying: R82,529 (33.3%)
• Manufacturing: R13,401 (5.4%)
• Electricity, gas and water: R8,618 (3.5%)
• Construction: R6,129 (2.5%)
• Trade, catering and accommodation: R29,349 (11.8%)
• Transport, storage and communication: R16,183 (6.5%)
• Finance, real estate and business services: R32,957 (13.3%)
• Personal services: R18,909 (7.6%)
• General government services: R33,267 (13.4%)
• Taxes less subsidies on products: R31,755
• North West GDP at market prices (millions): R279,733

Western Cape economy (in millions)

• Agriculture, forestry and fishing: R20,873 (3.9%)
• Mining and quarrying: R1,268 (0.2%)
• Manufacturing: R81,540 (15.3%)
• Electricity, gas and water: R15,534 (2.9%)
• Construction: R29,416 (5.5%)
• Trade, catering and accommodation: R91,247 (17.1%)
• Transport, storage and communication: R57,544 (10.8%)
• Finance, real estate and business services: R138,179 (25.9%)
• Personal services: R35,555 (6.7%)
• General government services: R61,393 (11.5%)
• Taxes less subsidies on products: R63,495
• Western Cape GDP at market prices (millions): R596,043

Researched, written and designed by Mary Alexander.
Updated 17 June 2021.
Comments? Email mary1alexander@mail.com

The graphics on this page are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.

The post The economies of South Africa’s nine provinces appeared first on South Africa Gateway.

The main languages of each province are:

• Eastern Cape – isiXhosa (78.8%), Afrikaans (10.6%)
• Free State – Sesotho (64.2%), Afrikaans (12.7%)
• Gauteng – isiZulu (19.8%), English (13.3%), Afrikaans (12.4%), Sesotho (11.6%)
• KwaZulu-Natal – isiZulu (77.8%), English (13.2%)
• Limpopo – Sesotho sa Leboa (52.9%), Xitsonga (17%), Tshivenda (16.7%)
• Mpumalanga – siSwati (27.7%), isiZulu (24.1%), Xitsonga (10.4%), isiNdebele (10.1%)
• Northern Cape – Afrikaans (53.8%), Setswana (33.1%)
• North West – Setswana (63.4%), Afrikaans (9%)
• Western Cape – Afrikaans (49.7%), isiXhosa (24.7%), English (20.3%)

READ MORE:

• The 11 languages of South Africa
• The nine provinces of South Africa
• What languages do black, coloured, Indian and white South Africans speak?
• South Africa’s population

Researched, written and designed by Mary Alexander.
Updated 11 June 2021.
Comments? Email mary1alexander@gmail.com

The graphic on this page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.

The post What languages are spoken in South Africa’s nine provinces? appeared first on South Africa Gateway.

Click animation to view from the start.

READ MORE: South Africa’s population

Most black South Africans die young. Most white South Africans live long lives.

In between, coloured South Africans statistically live a bit longer than black people. Indian South Africans tend to have shorter lives than white people.

Inequality and social injustice don’t only limit how people live. They also limit how long people live.

South Africa isn’t unusual in the way wealth and privilege run with race. What is unusual is that, thanks to the old apartheid state’s attention to bureaucratic detail, we still have a system of recording life and death statistics by race.

Race isn’t a real thing. But the concept has a history in South Africa, and still affects people’s lives. We still need statistics on it.

Statistics South Africa uses “population group” as a better term for “race”. France stopped recording population statistics by race in 1978. According to the Guardian, this now has “the side-effect of making systemic racism in the labour market much harder to quantify”.

South African notions of race, made law as late as 1950, are maybe more absurd than most. Our “races” are weird.

We have black people. We have white people. We have “coloured” people. But – wait. Black people, and coloured people? We also have a population group known as “Indian or Asian”.

Black, coloured, white, Indian-or-Asian. The labels come from history. In biology they are meaningless. In culture they describe nothing.

But they still determine who will live a longer life, and who won’t.

READ MORE: Infographic: The people of South Africa by age, sex and race 

Researched, written and designed by Mary Alexander.
Updated 17 June 2019.

The post Animation: How long do South Africans live? appeared first on South Africa Gateway.

Data: Statistics South Africa mid-year population estimates 2017

Gauteng is South Africa’s wealthiest province, mostly a city region and the centre of the country’s economy. It has the largest population, constantly increased by migration. Gauteng’s net migration rate (the number of people moving in minus people moving out) was nearly two million between 2006 and 2016. Its population will be swelled by another million from 2016 to 2021.

The Eastern Cape is the poorest province. Between 2006 and 2016 a million of its people migrated to other provinces, while only 300,000 or so moved into the province, leaving the Eastern Cape with a negative net migration of minus 700,000 people. From 2016 to 2021 the Eastern Cape is expected to lose another 324,000 people to migration.

Read more

• South Africa’s population
• The nine provinces of South Africa
• Infographic: The population of South Africa’s nine provinces
• Infographic: Population density in South Africa’s nine provinces
• Animation: The economies of South Africa’s provinces

Estimated migration between the provinces from 2006 to 2011

Estimated migration between the provinces from 2011 to 2016

Projected migration between the provinces from 2016 to 2021

• Data: Statistics South Africa mid-year population estimates 2017

Researched, written and designed by Mary Alexander.
Updated 2 October 2020

The graphic on this page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.

The post Moving to the city: Provincial migration in South Africa from 2002 to 2017 appeared first on South Africa Gateway.

Most tourist guides to South Africa give you only basic phrases – hello, goodbye, how much? But our languages are richer and more complex than that.

Get the flavour of South Africa’s languages, and learn to speak them a little, with these animations.

Read more: The languages of South Africa

Afrikaans

isiNdebele

isiXhosa

isiZulu

Sesotho

Sepedi (Sesotho sa Leboa)

Setswana

siSwati

Tshivenda

Xitsonga

… and English

Finally, when you’re in South Africa

… learn to say the name of the country you’re in.

Researched, written and designed by Mary Alexander

More infographics

The post Animations: South Africa’s many languages appeared first on South Africa Gateway.

The shacks of Vrygrond township and the walled Marina da Gama housing complex in Muizenberg, Cape Town. South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world. (Mikael Colville-Andersen, CC BY 2.0)

Poverty is easy to see, but less easy to define – or to measure across a city, a province or a country. Many measures of poverty use money. If a person lives on less than a certain threshold income they are considered to be living in poverty.

Income is used for the three national poverty lines developed in South Africa. These are the food poverty line (set at R531 per person per month in April 2017), the lower-bound poverty line (R758) and the upper-bound poverty line (R1,138).

Another picture can be painted when we look beyond income to the other ways people experience poverty. How does poverty reveal itself in people’s health, their level of education, the dwelling they live in, how they cook their food, the water they drink? Poverty examined according to different types of deprivation is known as multidimensional poverty.

For its 2016 Community Survey, on which the feature Mapping poverty in South Africa was based, Statistics South Africa used the South African Multidimensional Poverty Index.

Click animation to view from the start.

The index calculates the poverty of households according to four aspects of life: health, education, living standards and economic activity.

These four are known as the dimensions of poverty. Each dimension is assessed according to different indicators.

The poverty indicators

The health dimension has only one indicator: child mortality, or whether a child under the age of five living in the household has died in the past year.

Education has two indicators. One is years of schooling, or whether no person in the household aged 15 or older has completed five years of schooling. The other, school attendance, looks at whether any school-age child seven to 15 years old does not attend school.

Living standards has seven indicators, to do with fuel, water, sanitation, type of dwelling and ownership of assets. What fuel does the household use for lighting, heating and cooking? Is there piped water in the dwelling? Does the household have a flushing toilet? What kind of dwelling does the household live in? What does the household own?

Economic activity is measured by joblessness: whether all the adults, people aged 15 to 64, are out of work.

Each household is scored according to these indicators. If the score is 33.3% or more, the household is living in poverty – they are “multidimensionally poor”.

The South African Multidimensional Poverty Index

The intensity of poverty

The score also measures the intensity of poverty.

In the 2016 Community Survey, the average intensity of the poverty experienced by multidimensionally poor people in the nine provinces ranged from 40.1% in the Western Cape to 44.1% in Gauteng.

Poverty headcount and intensity in South Africa’s provinces

In Gauteng, only 4.6% of the population live in poverty. But the poverty experienced in Gauteng, the wealthiest province, is the most intense.

The multidimensional poverty index is not intended to replace the other important measures of poverty.

The food poverty line, for example, is the rand value below which people are unable to buy enough food to give them the minimum daily energy requirement for adequate health.

The multidimensional index, Statistics South Africa says, should rather be seen as “a complementary measure to these money-metric measures”.

Sources

• Statistics South Africa Community Survey 2016
• Community Survey 2016: Provinces at a Glance
• The South African Multidimensional Poverty Index
• Statistics South Africa: Poverty Trends in South Africa
• World Bank and Statistics South Africa: Overcoming Poverty and Inequality in South Africa

Read more

• Mapping poverty in South Africa
• Infographic: Exploring poverty in South Africa’s provinces
• Map: Distribution of South Africa’s races
• The nine provinces of South Africa
• Infographic: Population density in South Africa’s provinces
• The economies of South Africa’s provinces
• South Africa’s population

Researched, written and designed by Mary Alexander.
Updated 24 June 2019.

The post Animation: Measuring the dimensions of poverty in South Africa appeared first on South Africa Gateway.

But it’s a multilingual country

These statistics are first-language speakers only, so they don’t show the full picture. The data is from Census 2011, which gathered its information by asking South Africans which language they spoke most often at home.

Almost all South Africans speak more than one language, even at home. But there aren’t yet census statistics on how many of the country’s people are fluent in a second (or third, or more) language.

• READ MORE: The 11 languages of South Africa

Home languages of black South Africans

Census 2011 recorded South Africa’s black population as 40.4-million people. (The full number is 40,413,408.)

According to the census, a third of black South Africans speak isiZulu at home, making it the largest language among black people. A total of 11.5-million black South Africans speak isiZulu as a first language, or about three in 10 (28.5%) black people.

Next up is isiXhosa, the first language of 8.1-million black South Africans, spoken at home by two in every 10 (20.1%) black people.

The third most common home language in South Africa’s black population is Sesotho sa Leboa, also known as Sepedi. It’s the first language of 4.6-million black people – around one in 10, or 11.4%.

Black South Africans are the country’s most linguistically diverse community.

Here’s the breakdown of black South Africans’ home languages, from the largest to the smallest:

• isiZulu: 11,519,234 black speakers (28.5% of all black South Africans speak isiZulu as a first language)
• isiXhosa: 8,104,752 (20.1%)
• Sesotho sa Leboa (Sepedi): 4,602,459 (11.4%)
• Setswana: 3,996,951 (9.9%)
• Sesotho: 3,798,915 (9.4%)
• Xitsonga: 2,257,771 (5.6%)
• siSwati: 1,288,156 (3.2%)
• Tshivenda: 1,201,588 (3.0%)
• English: 1,167,913 (2.9%)
• isiNdebele: 1,057,781 (2.6%)
• Other languages: 604,587 (1.5%)
• Afrikaans: 602,166 (1.5%)
• Sign language: 211,134 (0.5%)

Home languages of coloured South Africans

Census 2011 recorded South Africa’s coloured population as 4.5-million people. (The full number is 4,541,358.)

According to the census, over three-quarters of the coloured population speaks Afrikaans as a home language. Afrikaans is first language of 3.4-million coloured South Africans, or about seven to eight in every 10 (75.8%) coloured people.

Next up is English, the first language of 946-thousand (945,847) coloured South Africans. This means about two in 10 (20.8%) coloured people speak English at home.

Here’s the breakdown of coloured South Africans’ home languages, from the largest to the smallest:

• Afrikaans: 3,442,164 coloured speakers (75.8% of all coloured South Africans speak Afrikaans as their first language )
• English: 945,847 (20.8%)
• Setswana: 40,351 (0.9%)
• isiXhosa: 25,340 (0.6%)
• isiZulu: 23,797 (0.5%)
• Sesotho: 23,230 (0.5%)
• Sign language: 11,891 (0.3%)
• isiNdebele: 8,225 (0.2%)
• Other languages: 5,702 (0.1%)
• Sesotho sa Leboa (Sepedi): 5,642 (0.1%)
• siSwati: 4,056 (0.09%)
• Tshivenda: 2,847 (0.06%)
• Xitsonga: 2,268 (0.05%)

Home languages of Indian South Africans

Census 2011 recorded South Africa’s Indian population as 1.3-million people. (The full number is 1,271,158.)

According to the census, almost all Indian South Africans speak English at home. English is the first language of 1.1-million Indian people, or nearly nine in 10 (86.1%) Indian South Africans.

The balance of languages spoken by the Indian population is negligible, making this community South Africa’s least linguistically diverse.

Here’s the breakdown of Indian South Africans’ home languages, from the largest to the smallest:

• English: 1,094,317 Indian speakers (86.1% of all Indian South Africans speak English as their first language)
• Other languages: 65,261 (5.1%)
• Afrikaans: 58,700 (4.6%)
• isiZulu: 16,699 (1.3%)
• isiNdebele: 9,815 (0.8%)
• isiXhosa: 5,342 (0.4%)
• Sesotho: 5,269 (0.4%)
• Setswana: 4,917 (0.4%)
• Sign language: 3,360 (0.3%)
• Sesotho sa Leboa (Sepedi): 2,943 (0.2%)
• Xitsonga: 2,506 (0.2%)
• siSwati: 1,217 (0.1%)
• Tshivenda: 810 (0.06%)

Home languages of white South Africans

Census 2011 recorded South Africa’s white population as 4.5-million people. (The full number is 4,461,409.)

According to the census, about a two-thirds of white people speak Afrikaans as their first language, and the other third speak English.

Afrikaans is home language of 2.7-million white South Africans, or about six in every 10 (60.8%) white people.

Next up is English, the first language of 1.6-million white South Africans. Three or four (35.9%) of every 10 white South Africans speak English at home.

Here’s the breakdown of white South Africans’ home languages, from the largest to the smallest:

• Afrikaans: 2,710,461 white speakers (60.8% of all white South Africans speak Afrikaans as their first language)
• English: 1,603,575 (35.9%)
• Other languages: 50,118 (1.1%)
• Setswana: 18,358 (0.4%)
• Sesotho: 17,491 (0.4%)
• isiZulu: 16,458 (0.4%)
• isiXhosa: 13,641 (0.3%)
• isiNdebele: 8,611 (0.2%)
• Sign language: 7,604 (0.2%)
• Sesotho sa Leboa (Sepedi): 5,917 (0.1%)
• Xitsonga: 3,987 (0.09%)
• Tshivenda: 2,889 (0.06%)
• siSwati: 2,299 (0.05%)

Read more:

• The 11 languages of South Africa
• The nine provinces of South Africa
• What languages are spoken in South Africa’s nine provinces?
• South Africa’s population

Researched, written and designed by Mary Alexander
Updated 10 June 2019

The graphic on this page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.

The post What languages do black, coloured, Indian and white South Africans speak? appeared first on South Africa Gateway.