A new South Africa census figures reveal the income of white households is six times higher than black ones.
President Jacob Zuma said the census showed the black majority is still at the “bottom of the rung”, 18 years after white minority rule ended.
The statistics showed that while the income of black households had increased by nearly 170% in the last decade, they still earned the least.
The population now stands at nearly 52 million, 79% of whom are black people.
It has risen by seven million since 2001.
The 2011 census statistics showed that children below the age of five number nearly 11 million, making them the largest age group.
“It could be that HIV [infection] rates have leveled out and fertility has begun to recover,” said Statistics South Africa’s demographic analysis executive director, Diego Iturralde.
The average annual income of a white household is about 365,000 rand ($42,000), followed by Indians at 251,000 rand, people of mixed race at 251,500 rand and blacks at 60,600 rand, it showed.
South Africa census figures reveal the income of white households is six times higher than black ones
Other key findings include:
• Nearly 30% of the labor force is unemployed
• More than three million children (nearly 4%) are orphans
• More than nine million people live in homes while the number of shack-dwellers has risen since 2001 to nearly two million
• The number of homes with flush toilets has increased from 50% in 2001 to 57%
• The number of people who have completed higher education has increased to 11.8%, from 8.4% in 2001
• The number of homes with electricity has increased from 58.2% in 1996 to 84.7% in 2011
• Paraffin is the main energy source at 7.5% of all homes
• Mobile phone ownership has increased from less than 32% a decade ago to nearly 90%.
Jacob Zuma said the census showed that while “great strides” have been made since racial segregation ended in 1994, much still needed to be done to end inequality.
“These figures tell us that at the bottom of the rung is the black majority who continue to be confronted by deep poverty, unemployment and inequality, despite the progress that we have made since 1994,” he said.
“Much remains to be done to further improve the livelihoods of our people especially in terms of significant disparities that still exist between the rich and poor.”
Jacob Zuma pledged that by 2030 the African National Congress (ANC) government would make sure that each community had a clinic, school, library and police station.
A series of documentaries aired on Abc’s Nightline has laid bare the shocking truth about the Ku Klux Klan which remains very much in existence.
In them members of the Klan shed light on their rituals and beliefs and their frightening pledge to achieve racial segregation at any cost.
Shrouded in secrecy, the Klan rarely opens its doors to outsiders, enacting centuries-old rituals in remote rural locations.
The KKK and its racist ways is often considered to be a relic of the civil-war era, one better off forgotten at that.
But the Inside The New Ku Klux Klan short films tell otherwise, featuring groups in Mississippi and Virginia.
Many members hid their faces and withheld their names for fear of retribution in mainstream society.
“You don’t know who I am,” one man said.
“You could think the world of me, and yet if you see me in this hood and knew who I was, your whole thoughts could change.”
The latest group to be featured is the Mississippi White Nights of the Ku Klux Klan, the klavern made famous by the film Mississippi Burning.
A series of documentaries aired on Abc’s Nightline has laid bare the shocking truth about the Ku Klux Klan which remains very much in existence
Several dozen men and women were filmed meeting in a forest grove as they marched around a 16-foot burning cross wearing white hooded robes and chanting.
“Klansmen, we are the only Klan in the state of Mississippi!” a man shouted.
“White power!” yelled another.
The group’s leader, Grand Wizard Steven Howard, took the film crew to a remote spot in the woods where fellow Klansmen and women were preparing the symbolic cross for an evening of chanting and burning.
Steven Howard’s wife prepared a barbeque with the help of his 11-year-old daughter who will one day join the Klan herself, having been given a robe for her eighth birthday.
Other young members of the community were practicing their shot, aiming a pistol at an old television set.
“Black people and white people are nowhere related,” Steven Howard said.
“In my opinion, black people evolved from animals. That’s what I think they evolved from: apes.”
Steven Howard insisted that being a member of the Klan “is a state of Christianity” and non-violent, but he conceded to being a racist.
“I consider myself a white separatist. A bigot? No. A racist? That’s fair; you could call me a racist. Because a racist is just somebody who is racially aware, that thinks about race.”
“You can’t trust a black person as far as you can throw them,” he said, adding that he would disown her daughter if she dated a black boy.
“I believe that 100 per cent.”
Violence, Steven Howard said, would be permitted if necessary in order to achieve segregation, promising a race war if President Barack Obama were to get re-elected.
“Oh, it’s going to happen. And I fear it. And it ain’t just me. If he gets four more years, Barack Obama will ruin this country.
“And white people will be in concentration camps, and if you don’t think that white people [can] be in concentration camps, [you] are sadly mistaken.”
While Steven Howard’s extreme views may seem unlikely to be popular a worrying trend over the past decade has seen membership dramatically increase.
“The Klan and other [similar] groups grew pretty significantly by our account,” Senior Fellow Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center said.
“Six hundred groups in the year 2000 to 1,018 last year.
“And that’s not the half of it. Militia groups have come back, and have come back with a force that is amazing.”
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