Cobus Coetzee
FOREIGNERS are the second largest group of people who came to live in the Western Cape during the past decade.
Altogether 26 percent, or 113 973, of nearly half a million people who moved to the province between 2001 and 2011 were from outside South Africa.
These are just some of the details to emerge from the latest census data on the province released yesterday.
“The Western Cape’s increase in population growth is largely due to an inflow of people from other provinces,” said Statistician-General Pali Lehohla in Cape Town yesterday when he presented the findings to Premier Helen Zille.
More than 170 000 people from the Eastern Cape moved to the Western Cape since 2001, while 74 915 Gautengers came to the province.
The Western Cape recorded the second biggest in-migration behind Gauteng during the past decade.
Over 1.4 million people moved to Gauteng, while the Western Cape is the new home to 432 790 people from the other eight provinces and other countries.
The province’s population had grown by 29 percent to 5.8 million since 1996 – the highest population growth in the country.
“The increase in our population is huge and almost a third. I’m glad that despite the increase we were able to keep up with service delivery,” Zille said.
The Western Cape has also lost some of its residents to other provinces – 128 967 people moved away, with 50 694 moving to Gauteng.
Other Capetonians moved to the Eastern Cape (40 152), Northern Cape (10 566) and KwaZulu-Natal (9 221).
Lehohla said the census data show South Africa’s population is changing at a rapid pace especially in places like the Western Cape.
“In the province almost 70 percent of the population were of working age in 2011,” he said.
Over a million people living in the Western Cape are between the ages of 20 and 29.
The unemployment rate, however, was at 22 percent while 29 percent of the youth are unemployed.
Unemployment is above 40 percent in places in the Central Karoo and Eden district.
The census also found that 64 percent, or 3.7 million, of people living in the Western Cape live in the City of Cape Town area.
The change to the province’s population has also altered the racial makeup of the province. In 1996 of the 3.9 million living in the province 56 percent were coloured. Last year 48.8 percent of 5.8 million people were coloured. In 1996 21.6 percent of the population were African (32.9 percent in 2011) and 21.4 percent white (15.7 percent in 2011).
cobus.coetzee@inl.co.za
