During Apartheid only the "white" languages, Afrikaans and English, were recognised as official languages in South Africa. After the first democratic elections in 1994 the picture changes dramatically and the new South African Constitution now recognises eleven official languages. It also places a responsibility on the South African Government to implement positive measures to elevate the status and advance the use of all these languages. The official languages, in alphabetic order, the users thereof and the percentage of use of each of the biggest five as mother tongue/ first language are as follows:

• Afrikaans, spoken by Afrikaners / Afrikaanses - 14.4%
• English, spoken by South African English - 8.6%
• isiNdebele, spoken by Ndebeles
• isiXhosa, spoken by Xhosas - 17.9%
• isiZulu, spoken by Zulus - 22.9%
• Sepedi, spoken by Pedis - 9.2%
• Sesotho, spoken by Sotho's
• Setswana, spoken by Tswana's
• siSwati, spoken by South African Swazi's (also spoken in Kingdom of Swaziland)
• Tshivenda, spoken by Vendas (vhaVenda)
• Xitsonga, spoken by Tsonga's

(source: adapted from South African Yearbook 2002-2003, based on General Population Census ’96 figures)