1.
Culture of South Africa
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The culture of South Africa is known for its ethnic and cultural diversity. The South African majority still has a number of rural inhabitants who lead largely impoverished lives. It is among people, however, that cultural traditions survive most strongly, as South Africans have become increasingly urbanized and Westernised. Urban South Africans usually speak English or Afrikaans in addition to their native language, there are smaller but still significant groups of speakers of Khoisan languages, not included in the eleven official languages, but are one of the eight other officially recognised languages. Members of the middle class often study and work abroad for greater exposure to the markets of the world, the first Indians arrived on the Truro ship as indentured labourers in Natal to work the Sugar Cane Fields, while the rest arrived as traders. A post-apartheid wave of South Asian immigration has also influenced South African Indian culture, there is a much smaller Chinese South African community, made up of early immigrants, apartheid-era immigrants from Taiwan, and post-apartheid immigrants from mainland China. The oldest art objects in the world were discovered in a South African cave, dating from 75,000 years ago, these small drilled snail shells could have no other function than to have been strung on a string as a necklace. South Africa was one of the cradles of the human species, One of the defining characteristics of our species is the making of art. The scattered tribes of Khoisan peoples moving into South Africa from around 10,000 BC had their own fluent art styles seen today in a multitude of cave paintings and they were superseded by Bantu and Nguni peoples with their own vocabularies of art forms. In the 20th century, traditional forms of art were scattered and re-melded by the divisive policies of apartheid. New forms of art evolved in the mines and townships, a dynamic art using everything from plastic strips to bicycle spokes, contemporary South Africa has a stellar art scene, with artists receiving international recognition. Contemporary South African artists whose work has met with international acclaim include Marlene Dumas. The architecture of South Africa mirrors the vast ethnic and cultural diversity of the country, in addition, influences from other distant countries have contributed to the variety of the South African architectural landscape. Herbert Baker, among the countrys most influential architects, designed the Union Buildings in Pretoria, other buildings of note include the Rhodes memorial and St Georges Cathedral in Cape Town, and St Johns College in Johannesburg. Cape Dutch architecture was prominent in the days of the Cape Colony. The style has roots in medieval Holland, Germany, France, the rural landscape of South Africa is populated with traditional and European-influenced African architecture. There are 11 national languages in South Africa, many of the first black South African print authors were missionary-educated, and many thus wrote in either English or Afrikaans. One of the first well known novels written by an author in an African language was Solomon Thekiso Plaatjes Mhudi
2.
History of South Africa
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The history of South Africa starts more than 100,000 years ago, when the first humans inhabited the region. The discoveries also led to new conflicts culminating in open warfare between the Boer settlers and imperial Britain, fought essentially for control over the nascent South African mining industry. The country became a nation state within the British Empire in 1934 following enactment of the Status of the Union Act. The dominion came to an end on 31 May 1961 in consequence of a 1960 referendum, from 1948 to 1994, South African politics were dominated by Afrikaner nationalism. It was an extension of segregationist legislation enacted in 1960, since then the ANC has dominated the politics of the country in an uneasy alliance with the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions. It was inhabited by Australopithecines since at least 2.5 million years ago, Modern human settlement occurred around 125,000 years ago in the Middle Stone Age, as shown by archaeological discoveries at Klasies River Caves. The first human habitation is associated with a DNA group originating in a area of southern Africa. At the Blombos cave Professor Raymond Dart discovered the skull of a 2.51 million year old Taung Child in 1924, in further research at the Blombos cave in 2002, stones were discovered engraved with grid or cross-hatch patterns, dated to some 70,000 years ago. This has been interpreted as the earliest example ever discovered of abstract art or symbolic art created by Homo sapiens, many more species of early hominid have come to light in recent decades. The oldest is Little Foot, a collection of footbones of an unknown hominid between 2.2 and 3.3 million years old, discovered at Sterkfontein by Ronald J. Clarke. An important recent find was that of 1.9 million year old Australopithecus sediba, in 2015, the discovery near Johannesburg of a previously unknown species of Homo was announced, named Homo naledi. It has been described as one of the most important paleontological discoveries in modern times, the descendants of the Middle Paleolithic populations are thought to be the aboriginal San and Khoikhoi tribes. The San and Khoikhoi are grouped under the term Khoisan, and are distinguished only by their respective occupations. Whereas the San were hunter-gathers, the Khoikhoi were pastoral herders, archaeological discoveries of livestock bones on the Cape Peninsula indicate that the Khoikhoi began to settle there by about 2000 years ago. In the late 15th and early 16th centuries, Portuguese mariners, later, English and Dutch seafarers in the late 16th and 17th centuries exchanged metals for cattle and sheep with the Khoikhoi. The initial origin of the Khoikhoi remains uncertain, the establishment of the staging post by the Dutch East India Company at the Cape in 1652 soon brought the Khoikhoi into conflict with Dutch settlers over land ownership. Cattle rustling and livestock theft ensued, with the Khoikhoi being ultimately expelled from the peninsula by force, the first Khoikhoi-Dutch War broke out in 1659, the second in 1673, and the third 1674–1677. The disease had brought to the Cape by Dutch sailors
3.
Ethnic groups in South Africa
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The Act defines black as referring to Africans, coloureds and Indians. Apartheid and the identification which underpinned it explicitly linked race with differential access to resources. This was the reasoning that led to a question about race or population group in both the 1996 and 2001 population censuses, and in Statistics SAs household survey programme. The 2011 census figures for these categories were African at 76. 4%, White at 9. 1%, Coloured at 8. 9%, Asian at 2. 5%, and Other/Unspecified at 0. 5%. Statistics South Africa provided five racial categories by which people could classify themselves, the last of which, unspecified/other drew negligible responses, and these results were omitted. The 2010 midyear estimated figures for the categories were African at 78. 4%, White at 10. 2%, Coloured at 8. 8%. The first census in South Africa in 1911 showed that whites made up 22% of the population, bantu-speaking people of South Africa By far the major part of the population classifies itself as African or black, but it is not culturally or linguistically homogeneous. Major ethnic groups include the Zulu, Xhosa, Basotho, Bapedi, Venda, Tswana, Tsonga, Swazi and Ndebele, some, such as the Zulu, Xhosa, and Bapedi are unique to South Africa. Other groups are distributed across the borders with neighbours of South Africa, the Tswana ethnic group constitute the majority of the population of Botswana. The Swazi ethnic group is the ethnic group in Swaziland. A part of the Zulu ethnic group is found in Matabeleland in Zimbabwe. These Ndebele people are the descendants of a Zulu faction under the warrior Mzilikazi that escaped persecution from Shaka during the Mfecane by migrating to their current territory, the Tsonga ethnic group is also found in southern Mozambique, where they are known as the Shangaan. As of the calculations of 2004, there are 34,216,164 Black Africans and 8,625,050 Black African households residing in South Africa, the Black South African population density is 29/km². The density of Black households is 7/km², Black South Africans make up 79. 0% of the total population. The percentage of all Black South African households that are made up of individuals is 19. 9%, the average Black household size is 4.11 members. In South Africa, the Black population is out with 34. 0% under the age of 15,21. 6% from 15 to 24,28. 3% from 25 to 44,11. 8% from 45 to 64. The median age of a Black African is 21 years, for every 100 Black females there are 91.1 Black males. For every 100 Black females age 18 and over, there are 86.2 Black males, overall,22. 0% of Black Africans have completed high school
4.
Afrikaans
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Afrikaans is a West Germanic language spoken in South Africa, Namibia and, to a lesser extent, Botswana and Zimbabwe. Hence, it is a language of Dutch, and was previously referred to as Cape Dutch or kitchen Dutch. Although, it is described as a creole, a partially creolised language the least. The term is derived from Dutch Afrikaans-Hollands meaning African Dutch. It is the first language of most of the Afrikaner and Coloured people of Southern Africa, therefore, differences with Dutch often lie in the more analytic morphology and grammar of Afrikaans, and a spelling that expresses Afrikaans pronunciation rather than standard Dutch. There is a degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages—especially in written form. With about 7 million native speakers in South Africa, or 13. 5% of the population and it has the widest geographical and racial distribution of all the eleven official languages of South Africa, and is widely spoken and understood as a second or third language. About 1. 5% of black South Africans speak it as their first language, large numbers of speakers of Bantu languages and English-speaking South Africans also speak it as their second language. It is taught in schools, with about 10.3 million second-language students and it, along with German, was among the official languages of Namibia until the country became independent in 1990, 25% of the population of Windhoek spoke Afrikaans at home. Both Afrikaans and German survive as recognised regional languages in the country, estimates of the total number of Afrikaans speakers range between 15 and 23 million. The Afrikaans language arose in the Dutch Cape Colony, through a gradual divergence from European Dutch dialects, there is a degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages, particularly in written form. Nevertheless, Dutch speakers are confronted with fewer non-cognates when listening to Afrikaans than the way round. Mutual intelligibility thus tends to be asymmetrical, as it is easier for Dutch speakers to understand Afrikaans than for Afrikaans speakers to understand Dutch, in general, mutual intelligibility between Dutch and Afrikaans is better than between Dutch and Frisian or between Danish and Swedish. The workers and slaves who contributed to the development of Afrikaans were Asians and Malagasys, as well as the Khoi, San, and Bantu peoples who also lived in the area. African creole people in the early 18th century — documented on the cases of Hendrik Bibault, Only much later in the second half of the 19th century did the Boers adopt this attribution, too. The Khoi and mixed-race groups became collectively referred to as Coloureds, beginning in about 1815, Afrikaans started to replace Malay as the language of instruction in Muslim schools in South Africa, written with the Arabic alphabet, see Arabic Afrikaans. Later, Afrikaans, now written with the Latin alphabet, started to appear in newspapers and political, in 1925, Afrikaans was recognised by the South African government as a real language, rather than simply a slang version of Dutch proper. Before the Boer Wars, and indeed for some time afterwards, rather, Afrikaans was described derogatorily as ‘a kitchen language’ or as ‘a bastard jargon, suitable for communication mainly between the Boers and their servants
5.
Southern Ndebele language
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The Transvaal Ndebele language is an African language belonging to the Nguni group of Bantu languages, and spoken by the amaNdebele. There is also another language called Zimbabwean Ndebele, or Matabele, spoken in Zimbabwe, king Musi was a polygamist and fathered the following sons, Skhosana, Manala, Ndzundza, Thombeni, Sibasa, Mhwaduba and Mphafuli and others. Ndebele is one of the official languages in the Republic of South Africa. The language is a Nguni or Zunda classification spoken mostly in the Mpumalanga Province, Gauteng, Limpopo, the expression isikhethu can be loosely translated to mean the Ndebele way of doing or saying. Isikhethu means Ndebele the same way that sikitsi will mean Swazi, the language has been severely marginalised over the years. Until the formation of the apartheid Ndebele homeland, speaking the language publicly was discouraged, most Ndebele speakers preferred Zulu especially because the latter was learned at school. Months in Ndebele The two Ndebele groups are part of the Nguni language group and are therefore mutually intelligible to some extent. However, the Zimbabwean Ndebele is part of the Zunda sub-group of the Nguni languages while the South African, while maintaining its Nguni roots, has been influenced by the Sotho languages
6.
Northern Sotho
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Northern Sotho is a Bantu language spoken primarily in South Africa, where it is one of the 11 official languages. According to the 2011 census it was the first language of 4,618,576 people in South Africa, principally in the provinces of Limpopo, Gauteng and Mpumalanga. Urban varieties of Northern Sotho, such as Pretoria Sotho, have acquired clicks in a process of such sounds spreading from Nguni languages. Northern Sotho is one of the Sotho languages of the Bantu family, Northern Sotho is thus most closely related to Sesotho, Setswana, sheKgalagari and siLozi. Lobedu exists only in a form, and the standard Northern Sotho language. The monarch associated with this community is Queen Modjadji. Lobedu is spoken mainly in the area of Modjadjiskloof in the Limpopo Province and its speakers are known as the Balobedu. Sepulana also exists in form and forms part of the standard Northern Sotho. Sepulana is spoken in Bushbuckridge area by the Mapulana people, Northern Sotho has often been equated with its major component Sepedi, and continued to be known as Pedi or Sepedi for some years after the new South African constitution appeared. However, the Pan South African Language Board and the Northern Sotho National Lexicography Unit now specifically prefer, apart from Sepedi itself, the other languages or dialects covered by the term Northern Sotho appear to be a diverse grouping of communal speech-forms within the Sotho-Tswana group. They are apparently united by the fact that they are neither as Southern Sotho nor as Tswana. Maho leaves SePhalaborwa and the East Sotho varieties of SeKutswe, SePai and their precise classification would appear to be a matter for further research. Some examples of Northern Sotho words and phrases, slang jargon Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin, world Atlas of Language Structures Online
7.
Sotho language
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Like all Bantu languages, Sesotho is an agglutinative language, which uses numerous affixes and derivational and inflexional rules to build complete words. Within the Sotho-Tswana group, Sesotho proper is most closely related to Lozi, the Northern Sotho group is geographical, and includes a number of dialects also closely related to Sesotho-Lozi. Tswana is also known as Western Sesotho, Sotho is a tribal suffix, i. e. the name of the Sotho people or Basotho, while Sesotho is the term for the language of the Basotho. Use of Sesotho rather than Sotho language in English has seen increasing use since the 1980s, especially in South African English, the Nguni language Phuthi has been heavily influenced by Sesotho, its speakers have mixed Nguni and Sotho–Tswana ancestry. It seems that it is sometimes treated erroneously as a dialect of Sesotho called Sephuthi, however, Phuthi is mutually unintelligible with standard Sesotho and thus cannot in any sense be termed a dialect of it. These were the first peoples to be called Basotho, before many of their descendants, the situation is even further complicated by various historical factors, such as members of parent clans joining their descendants or various clans calling themselves by the same names. According to the South African National Census of 2011, there were almost four million first language Sesotho speakers recorded in South Africa – approximately eight per cent of the population. Sesotho is also the language spoken by the people of Lesotho. The census fails, to record other South Africans for whom Sesotho is a second or third language, such speakers are found in all major residential areas of Metropolitan Municipalities - such as Johannesburg, and Tshwane - where multilingualism and polylectalism are very high. Sesotho is one of the official languages of South Africa. Sesotho is one of the languages from which the pseudo-language Tsotsitaal is derived. Tsotsitaal is not a language, as it is primarily a unique vocabulary. It is a part of the culture in most Southern Gauteng townships and is the primary language used in Kwaito music. The sound system of Sesotho is unusual in many respects and it has ejective consonants, click consonants, a uvular trill, a relatively large number of affricate consonants, no prenasalised consonants, and a rare form of vowel-height harmony. In total, the language contains some 39 consonantal and 9 vowel phonemes and it also has a large number of complex sound transformations which often change the phones of words due to the influence of other sounds. The most striking properties of Sesotho grammar, and the most important properties which reveal it as a Bantu language, are its noun gender, the grammatical gender system does not encode sex gender, and indeed, Bantu languages in general are not grammatically marked for gender. Another well-known property of the Bantu languages is their agglutinative morphology, additionally, they tend to lack any grammatical case systems, indicating noun roles almost exclusively through word order. Sotho calendar Sotho people South African Translators Association Sesotho Online A gentle introduction to the Sesotho language, weblog on Sesotho Translate. org. za Project translating Free and Open Source Software into South African languages, including Sesotho
8.
Swazi language
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The Swazi or Swati language is a Bantu language of the Nguni group spoken in Swaziland and South Africa by the Swazi people. The number of speakers is estimated to be in the region of 3 million, the language is taught in Swaziland and some South African schools in Mpumalanga, particularly former KaNgwane areas. Swazi is a language of Swaziland, and is also one of the eleven official languages of South Africa. Although the preferred term is Swati among native speakers, in English it is referred to as Swazi. Swazi spoken in Swaziland can be divided into four dialects corresponding to the four regions of the country, Hhohho, Lubombo, Manzini. Swazi has at least two varieties, the standard, prestige variety spoken mainly in the north, centre and southwest of the country, in the far south, especially in towns such as Nhlangano and Hlatikhulu, the variety of the language spoken is significantly influenced by iSiZulu. Many Swazis, including those in the south who speak this variety and this is what may be referred to as the second dialect in the country. The sizeable number of Swazi speakers in South Africa are considered by Swaziland Swazi speakers to speak a form of the language. Unlike the variant in the south of Swaziland, the Mpumalanga variety appears to be influenced by Zulu. However, this Mpumalanga variety is distinguishable by distinct intonation, intonation patterns in Mpumalanga Swazi are often considered discordant to the Swazi ear. This South African variety of Swazi is considered to influence from other South African languages spoken close to Swazi. A feature of the prestige variety of Swazi is the royal style of slow, heavily stressed enunciation. Swazi does not distinguish between places of articulation in its clicks, any of them may be dental or alveolar. It does, however, distinguish five or six manners of articulation and of manner, including tenuis, aspirated, voiced, nasal, other consonants are /ɓ, bʱ, ɡ, kʰ, kʼ, n/. The Swazi noun consists of two parts, the prefix and the stem. Using the prefixes, nouns can be grouped into noun classes, the following table gives an overview of Swazi noun classes, arranged according to singular-plural pairs. 1 umu- replaces um- before monosyllabic stems, e. g. umuntfu,2 s- and t- replace si- and ti- respectively before stems beginning with a vowel, e. g. sandla/tandla. 3 The placeholder N in the prefixes iN- and tiN- for m, n or no letter at all, baphiwe ingcondvo nekucondza kanye nanembeza ngakoke bafanele batiphatse nekutsi baphatse nalabanye ngemoya webuzalwane
9.
Tswana language
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The Tswana language, Setswana, is a language spoken in southern Africa by about five million people. Tswana is a language and lingua franca of Botswana. The two South African provinces with largest number of speakers are Gauteng Province and North West Province, until 1994, South African Tswana people were notionally citizens of Bophuthatswana, one of the bantustans of the apartheid regime. The first European to describe the Tswana language was the German traveller H. Lichtenstein and he mistakenly regarded Tswana as a dialect of the Xhosa language, and the name he used for the language Beetjuana may also have covered the Northern- and Southern Sotho languages. In the following years he published other books of the Bible. Masego was the first to speak the language, the first grammar of the Tswana language was published in 1833 by the missionary James Archbell, although it was modelled on a Xhosa grammar. The first grammar of Tswana which regarded it as a language from Xhosa was published by the French missionary E. Casalis in 1841. He changed his mind later, and in a publication from 1882 he noted that the Northern-, in 1876 the South African intellectual and linguist Solomon Plaatje was born, and he became one of the first writers to extensively write in and about the Tswana language. The vowel inventory of Tswana can be seen below, some dialects have two additional vowels, the close-mid vowels /e/ and /o/. The consonant inventory of Tswana can be seen below, the consonant /d/ is merely an allophone of /l/, when the latter is followed by the vowels /i/ or /u/. Tswana also has three click consonants, but these are used in interjections or ideophones, and tend only to be used by the older generation. The three click consonants are the dental click /ǀ/, orthographically ⟨c⟩, the lateral click /ǁ/, orthographically ⟨x⟩, there are some minor dialectal variations among the consonants between speakers of Tswana. For instance, /χ/ is realised as either /x/ or /h/ by many speakers, /f/ is realised as /h/ in most dialects, and /tɬ/ and /tɬʰ/ are realised as /t/ and /tʰ/ in northern dialects. Stress is fixed in Tswana and thus falls on the penult of a word. The syllable on which the falls is lengthened. Tswana has two tones, high and low, although the latter has a wider distribution in words than the former. Tones are not marked orthographically which may lead to ambiguity, if a syllable bears a high tone, the following two syllables will also get high tones, unless they are at the end of the word. The nine classes and their respective prefixes can be seen below, some nouns may be found in several classes
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