About this site

This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.

Major population centres

According to the 1991 census there were 4 865 827 people living in the Johannesburg/Randburg/East Rand/West Rand (Witwatersrand) urban area. The Pretoria/Witwatersrand/ Vereeniging (PWV) area was home to 6 719 578 people on census day, or over 21 percent of the population outside the TBVC. One of every three people live in Transvaal and one in four in Natal/KwaZulu (TBVC excluded).

These are all urban areas in the "white" part of South Africa falling under the jursidication of a formal local authority. As can be seen in Table 1, the homelands are predominantly rural although high population densities may indicate that there are functionally urban population concentrations in these areas as well. QwaQwa, for instance, consists only of the Witsieshoek district with a population of 379 034 (Table 1).

This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. Return to theThis resource is hosted by the site.