The census is the largest task that any country can undertake, we are a young democracy and we have scaled big heights.
These were the words of President Cyril Ramaphosa at the handover of the Census 2022 report by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) in Pretoria on Tuesday afternoon.
The handover marked the country’s fourth census since the last report was published in 2011.
Ramaphosa applauded the Stats SA team that began with the work of compiling the report in 2018, despite many challenges including the July 2021 unrest, floods, and the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
“Stats SA was innovative and I applaud them. It introduced the digitalized way of doing things and this is the way that we are moving into now,” said Ramaphosa.
“The digital platform is what our people have become accustomed to. As a result, Stats SA was able to adapt and modernise the system, as this is South Africa’s first digitalised stats.”
According to the report, South Africa’s population drastically increased to 62-million from 51.7-million recorded in 2011.
This means that South Africa’s population increased by about 10-million people in the last decade. Women constitute 51.1% of the population while men account for 48.5%.
Most of the migrants, according to the census report, come from the Southern African Development Community region, with the majority of them migrating from Zimbabwe, 18.7% from Mozambique, and 10.2% from Lesotho.
IsiZulu remains the language most spoken in many South African households accounting for 24.4%, followed by isiXhosa at 16.3%, Afrikaans at 10.6%, and Sepedi at 10%.
The results also show that about 8.7% of the population speak English at home.
The number of people who speak IsiZulu increased by 1.7% while isiXhosa speakers rose by 0.3%. Afrikaans speakers decreased by 2.9%.
The majority of the population reported that they are Christians (85.3%) followed by traditional African religions at 7.8%.
About 1.6% of the population subscribes to Islam while 2.9% people said they have no religious affiliation.
Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal remain the most populated provinces with 15-million and 12.4-million people, respectively. The Western Cape has a population of about 7.4-million.
The Northern Cape has the smallest population of about 1.3-million people, shows the census report.
Based on Census 2022 findings, a total of 17.8-million households were recorded in South Africa, an increase from the 14-million households recorded in 2011.
This includes formal and informal dwellings.
The census also looked at collating the number of homeless people in the country, stating that about 55 719 people were homeless in 2022.
Of these, 44 512 were roofless while 11 207 were residing in shelters. Gauteng recorded the highest number of homeless people at 45.6% followed by the Western Cape at 17.5%.
As a metropolitan area, the City of Tshwane recorded the highest proportion of homelessness.
Most people recorded loss of job/income (41.3%) as the reason for their homelessness, followed by alcohol and drug use (25%).
In 2022, more than 80% of households in the country had access to piped water, either inside their dwellings or in their yards, and over 90% of households had access to electricity for lighting, an increase from 58% recorded in 2011.
The Western Cape has the largest population with access to electricity at 88.7% followed by Gauteng at 85%.
According to the data, there has been an upward trend in accessing the internet since 2011, which has been attributed to the rapid advancement of communication services such as cellphone ownership.
Households with no access to the internet dropped from 64.8% in 2011 to 21.1% in 2022.
The report shows that about 60.5% of households access the internet using cellphones and other mobile devices compared to 16.3% in 2011.
It also indicates that more than 2.5-million people aged 20 and older reported having no schooling education, about 11.8-million completed some secondary schooling, with around 14.1-million people completing high school.
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