Culture in South Africa

South Africa is a country rich in culture, and has been referred to as the "rainbow nation", a title which illuminates the country's cultural diversity. The population of South Africa is one of the most complex and diverse in the world. Of the estimated 45 million South Africans, nearly 31 million are black, 5 million white, 3 million colored, and one million Indian. In fact, culture in South Africa is as diverse as you can think of!

Sooth Africa is a multiracial society and defining distinct sub groups by skin color will potentially get you into trouble. Those of African and British descent won't be too happy to be confused with one another and there are several major and minority groupings in the traditional black cultures. Here are some major races that can be classified in South Africa.

1.Black People
The country's black are mostly rural inhabitants that lead largely impoverished and simple lives. However, blacks are increasingly getting urbanized and speak English or Afrikaans in addition to their native language, which might be one of the nine Bantu languages with official status since 1994. Culture differences between speakers of the two language groups (Nugni and Sotho) may be compared to those between speakers of German and Italian.

Most are Christians with membership of Anglican and Roman Catholic churches being strong as is the membership of the predominantly black Zion Christian church.

2.White People
The white minority leads lifestyles similar in many respects to Europe, North America and Australia, with sport being immensely popular. The "Braai" (short for barbeque) is another national pastime epitomized by the whites. Most of the English speaking whites are either Anglican or Roman Catholic. Perhaps ninety thousand whites are Jewish, with a similar number being of Portuguese origin.

3.Colored (Mixed-race) people
The mixed race coloreds are, culturally speaking much closer to whites, especially Afrikaans speakers, whose language and cultural beliefs they share, than they are to black South Africans, despite suffering a lot of discrimination under apartheid. A minority of colored's known as Cape Malays are Muslims.

4.Asian people
Asians protect their own cultural heritage, languages and natural beliefs, being predominantly, Hindu and Muslim speaking mostly English, with Tamil, Telegu and Gujarati being spoken less frequently. Small Chinese, Japanese and Korean populations also exist in South Africa as well. However, during the recent decades the Chinese population has increase d due to the influx of people from China, Taiwan and surrounding nations.

Well, above are some of the races and culture that co-exist in harmony and love in South Africa.