Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to provide a demographic profile of South Africa. First, we focus on the Cape because we suggest that the Cape experience has general implications for other settlements in South Africa such as Natal, Transvaal, and Orange Free State, and helps in understanding the emerging national context of racial classification in the census. Secondly, we turn to the use of Race in the efforts to conduct censuses by the Colonial administrators. These enumerations are different from the census, in that they were not as systematic, nor did they have the same authoritative mandate as censuses. Next, we turn our attention to how the system of racial classification developed in the Cape Colony was expanded and extended to other regions of South Africa. The colonial history provides a foundation for a discussion of race and ethnicity in the segregation period. Finally, we move to an examination of apartheid and post apartheid periods and provide an outlook of the future in post apartheid South Africa. We conclude by mentioning how these enumerations were related to European colonial domination and racial classification more generally and are associated the racial stratification system.
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Griffith, F.M., Zuberi, T. (2015). Demography of Race and Ethnicity in South Africa. In: Sáenz, R., Embrick, D., RodrÃguez, N. (eds) The International Handbook of the Demography of Race and Ethnicity. International Handbooks of Population, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8891-8_20
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