South Africa - The Rainbow Nation.

South Africa, home to more than 50 million Africans, is the country that I have chosen for the next few blog entries. While in the other articles, I will try to explain the diversity that is South Africa, my first blog post will be of the people.
The rainbow nation, as it is otherwise called is a suitable name for a nation that has an extraordinary diversity of races, tribes, creeds, languages and landscape. The people who live in this country itself are extremely different in nature. Of the 45 million South Africans, nearly 31 million are Black, 5 million White, 3 million Coloured and one million Indian in South Africa. The black population of the country itself is divided into four major ethnic groups, namely Nguni, Sotho, Shangaan-Tsonga and Venda. There are numerous subgroups of which the Zulu and Xhosa (two subgroups of the Nguni) are the largest.
One of the largest tribes, the Zulu tribe is extremely prominent in South Africa. The Zulu Kingdom played a major role in South African revolution, during the 19th and 20th centuries. Under apartheid Zulu people were classed as third-class citizens and suffered from state-sanctioned discrimination. They remain today the most numerous ethnic group in South Africa, and now have equal rights along with all other citizens.
The Xhosa tribe which is another major tribe in South Africa are speakers of the Bantu language and they life in the South East part of South Africa. Xhosa, which also means "angry fighters" is a tribe that has many internal conflicts. These conflicts could also be attributed to the fact that there are many sub tribes also present just within the Xhosa tribe.
Other than these two main tribes, the population also consists of White South Africans who are the boers who migrated there a few hundred years ago and who developed the language Afrikaans which is the national language of south Africa and bears a lot of similarity with German.
Also, there is the Indian population. The Indian south Africans were taken to south Africa as slaves to work on sugar cane farms around the time that mahatma Gandhi went there and have been there since , about 100 years or so. They were primarily from south India so alot of their culture is inherited from India but mixed with local cultures and traditions. "Many of our cultures and traditions are from the South of India. If you trace my family back, you can see that there are people from Tamil Nadu," says Aarti Logiaxu, who is an Indian South African. Her family and her have been in South Africa now for many years.
A country with a diverse population like this one, is a land filled with various layers. I hope to explore these layers in terms of culture, food, politics and many more in the next set of blogs.

SHARANYA RAMESH
ROLL NUMBER - 3760