NO COUNTRY has had as checkered a history, solely predicated on race, as South Africa, at the southern tip of the African continent. The peoples of South Africa are traditionally grouped into four races: Bantu, white, coloured, and Asian. This hierarchial racial stratification became the bedrock of apartheid policy. Seventy-seven percent of the South African population of some 42 million people is Bantu. This largest of South African groups is made up of an extraordinary variety of tribal and cultural identities. The Nguni group is divided into Xhosa (former President Nelson Mandela’s tribe), Zulu, Swati, Ndebele, and Xitsonga. The Sotho Group comprises Northern Sotho (Pedi), Southern Sotho (Sotho), and Western Sotho (Tswana). The Vendaare closely related to the Shona of Zimbabwe. And then there is the unique Khoi-Khoi group made up of the Khoi, Nama, and San. Their languages are characterized by implosives (palatal, dental, and bilabial). Some of these extraordinary sounds, commonly known as clicks, have made their way into Xhosa, in particular, Zulu, and to a lesser extent Southern Sotho.

The second largest group of people living in South Africa today are whites, whose numbers have been steadily dwindling through emigration since the demise of apartheid. They now number 10.7 percent of the population. They include people of European origin such as the Afrikaaners (descendants of Dutch, German, and French Huguenots), by far the largest group, people of British stock (English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish), Portuguese, Jews, and East Europeans.

Asians, from the sub-continent of India (Indians and Pakistans), and Chinese make up 2.5 percent of the population and constitute a third, but nonetheless important, group living in South Africa today. Coloureds, a classification designated by previous South African governments for people of mixed ancestry – European, Khoi-Khoi, and slaves brought in from Malaysia – comprise 8.8 percent of the population and constitute the fourth and last of the major groups living in South Africa today. This percentage may dwindle in the future, as a number of coloureds now prefer to be classified as black. The remaining one percent of the population is made up of people described as other.

In Canada there are some 25,000 people who were born in the Republic of South Africa, but the total could be nearly 60,000, if descendants of South Africans are included. Fifty-six percent of these South African-born peoples live in Ontario; 25 percent live in British Columbia; and approximately 10 percent in Alberta. Although Toronto is home to 40 percent of South Africans in Canada, many live in the Greater Toronto area (GTA). Vancouver has approximately 15 percent of the South African population in Canada, and Montreal 5 percent. In contrast to the population distribution in South Africa, 73 percent of South Africans living in Canada are white. Twenty-five percent are of British descent, 20 percent are of Jewish origin, and 35 percent have multiple European origins. This immigration pattern reflects the restrictions imposed on movement by the South African government during the apartheid era. In the 1960s, Canada liberated its immigration laws to be less racially biased. Most South Africans of all backgrounds migrated after 1971. Although this position reflects the changed circumstances in Canada, it was also mostly due to the mounting violence and instability in South Africa during that tumultuous decade at which time many liberal whites, blacks, and Asians left South Africa rather than face harassment by a rigid government for their opposition to apartheid. Some were put in jail or under house arrest. Many left the country because they could not stand seeing their children conscripted into an army whose main purpose was to oppress its fellow citizens rather than to defend the country against foreign aggression.

Since Canadian immigration policy traditionally favoured immigrants with high educational backgrounds and job skills, South Africans who live in Canada are generally well educated and many are professionals. According to the 1991 Canadian census, 31 percent of white, a similar percentage of Asians, and 25 percent of black South Africans in Canada have university degrees compared to 11 percent as a whole for Canada. The high education of black South African immigrants is impressive. Given the restrictions placed on them during the apartheid regime, it is a testament to the human spirit that no amount of oppression can completely quell its aspirations. Thus South Africa’s brain drain has been a great boon to Canada, especially at a time when South Africa could ill afford to lose such a rare human resource.

The apartheid regime has had a chilling effect on South Africans and their associations over seas. The “group areas act” under the old apartheid regime residentially segregated people by imposing arbitrary racial categories. At first, South African heritage organizations and institutions in Canada tended to be based on one racial group or another. Furthermore, the old South African regime was notorious for employing agents to infiltrate suspected anti-apartheid organizations overseas. The policy in turn discouraged too much mixing among South African expatriates, because nobody trusted anyone, especially since the apartheid regime was not too reluctant to exact retribution on someone’s captive relatives back home in South Africa.

In recent years, however, as the apartheid regime was replaced by a democratic government in South Africa, expatriate organizations in Canada began to work together, regardless of racial or cultural differences. In 1997, the Canadian Council of South Africans (CANCOSA) was established to encourage the growth of a vibrant and united South African community in Canada and to strengthen the links between Canada and South Africa. And, in 1998, the Canadian Friends of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund was launched by President Mandela before a crowd of 50,000, including 45,000 school children, at Toronto’s famous Sky Dome.

While South Africa, the nation, enters its place in the community of democratic societies for the twenty-first century, the South African presence in Canada as a collective group is only now showing signs of emerging.

Emmanuel Seko