Census 2022: 62 million people now live in SA

The South African population increased to 62 027 503 in February 2022 according to the results of Census 2022.

Statistician-General, Risenga Maluleke, handed the results of Census 2022 to President Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday at a ceremony at the Union Buildings.

The country’s population has steadily increased from 40 583 573 in 1996, 44 819 778 in 2001 and 51 770 560 in 2011. The population grew by 4.1% from 1996 to 2022, with the biggest growth rates observed between 2011 and 2022 at 1.8% compared to 1.4% between 2001 and 2011.

The data shows that 30 076 814 (48.5%) South Africans are male and 31 947 531 (51.5%) female.

White population declined

When it comes to population groups, 50 485 026 (81.4%) are black, 5 052 299 (8.2%) coloured, 4 503 780 (7.3%) white, 1 697 468 (2.7%) Indian or Asian, and 247 353 were counted as ‘other’. The white population percentage declined from 8.9% in 2011.

Most people lived in Gauteng (15 099 528), followed by KwaZulu-Natal (12 423 907), while the Northern Cape had the smallest population at 1 355 946. There are 7 433 019 in the Western Cape, 7 230 204 in the Eastern Cape, 2 964 412 in the Free State, 3 804 548 in North West, 5 143 324 in Mpumalanga and 6 572 720 in Limpopo.

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The median age increased to 28 from 25 years in 2011, according to Statistics SA.

When it came to marital status, there was an increase in people who are not married, while there was also a decrease in the proportion of people who were legally married between 2011 (29.9%) and 2022 (24%).

isiZulu still most spoken language

When people talked to each other, most of them still do it in isiZulu (24.4%), followed by isiXhosa (16.3%) and Afrikaans (10.6%). There was a downward trend in Afrikaans speakers (from 14.5% in 1996 to 10.6% in 2022), while the proportion of people who speak English, Xitsonga and Tshivenda remained relatively stable. Less than 1% communicated using sign language in both 2011 and 2022.

Migrants

Gauteng and the Western Cape still dominate internal migration in South Africa. Gauteng remained the dominant migration stream, receiving more than a third of all internal migrants, followed by Western Cape with 15%. Limpopo, the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State experienced an outflow of people.

Census 2022 also showed the presence of more than 2.4 million international migrants, just above 3% of the total population. Most of them came from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region (86%), with 45.5% coming from Zimbabwe, followed by Mozambique with 18.7% and Lesotho with 10.2%.

The top five countries sending citizens to South Africa were Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Lesotho and the United Kingdom, the same as in 2011.

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