In July, Statistics South Africa released a report on the mid-year population estimates for 2018. The report details how many people live in South Africa, by gender, race and province.

According to findings by Stats SA, there are 57 725 600 people in the country. Every 27 seconds, a person is born in South Africa, and every 58 seconds, a person dies. That’s around 3195 births and 1481 deaths per day.

We are certainly growing, year by year. Last year, we were sitting at 56.5 million, and back in 2001, at 44.8 million. At the current rate – we could be looking at a population of 77 593 422 by the year 2080.

Let’s take a look at some of the other notable findings.
 

There are a number of interesting points to take away from the 2018 census. Here are some of the most important ones.

• Provincially, Gauteng is by far the most populated with 14.7 million people. KwaZulu-Natal is the second highest, with 11.3 million, and the Northern Cape – the largest province in South Africa – has the lowest population with only around 1.2 million people. 

• When looking at cities by population, however, Cape Town emerged with the highest at 3.4 million. The next four on the list were Durban with 3.1 million, Johannesburg with 2 million, Soweto with just under 1.7 million and Pretoria with 1.6 million.
• Around 51% - 29.5 million – of the national population is female. 
• By age, around 29.5% of the population are younger than 15 and around 8.5% are over 60. Life expectancy, at birth for 2018, is estimated at 61 years for men and 67 years for women. 
• This year, the infant mortality rate is estimated at 36.4 per 1000 live births.
• By race, there are currently an estimated 1 448 300 Indian / Asian citizens, 4 520 500 White, and 5 074 300 Coloured. At 46 682 900, Black citizens are by far the majority, making up 80.9% of the population.