Islam in South Africa: history and Muslim population data

History of Islam in South Africa

The Republic of South Africa has an area of 1,219,090 sq km and its map is presented in Figure 3.5.9a. The Dutch arrived here in 1652, followed by the British in 1806. The Union of South Africa was formed from former British colonies: Cape Hope, Natal, Orange Free State, and Transvaal. It gained independence from the UK in 1931 and changed to republic in 1961. The first Muslims were brought here in 1658 by the Dutch soon after their arrival and consisted of slaves and political prisoners mainly from current Indonesia. Then the British brought more Muslims from India starting the eighteenth century, consisting of indentured workers and businessmen with their families.

The census of 1891 found 15,000 Muslims living in the Cape Colony or 0.7% of the population of the Cape and Natal British Colonies, which was half the land and two-thirds of the population of current South Africa. Based on census data, the Muslim population increased from 15,000 or 0.7% in 1891, to 33,000 or 0.6% in 1904, to 46,000 or 0.8% in 1911, to 50,000 or 0.7% in 1921, to 79,000 or 0.8% in 1936, to 0.11 million or 1.0% in 1946, to 0.15 million or 1.2% in 1951, to 0.19 million or 1.2% in 1960, to 0.27 million or 1.3% in 1970, to 0.35 million or 1.7% in 1980, but decreased to 0.34 million or 1.1% in 1991. It continued to increase since then to 0.55 million or 1.5% in 1996, to 0.65 million or 1.5% in 2001, to 0.89 million or 1.6% in 2016.

The 2016 data showed that over 88% of the Muslim population lives in three provinces: Western Cape (39%), Gauteng (28%) and KwaZulu-Natal (21%). The percentage of Muslims in these provinces is 5.6%, 1.9% and 1.7%, respectively. The main towns in these provinces are Cape Town, Pretoria/Johannesburg and Durban, respectively. In 1996, over 90% of Muslims lived in these three provinces, and the fraction of Muslims and makeup of the province was 48% and 6.7% for Western Cape, 19% and 1.5% for Gauteng and 23% and 1.5% for KwaZulu-Natal.

Thus, assuming that the percentage of Muslims will continue to increase by a tenth of a percentage point per decade; then the Muslim population is expected to increase to 1.5 million or 2.0% by 2050 and two million or 2.5% by 2100.

Historical Muslim population dataset for South Africa

The figures below are from the CoMPS historical dataset. Population values are expressed in thousands; 2100 is a modelled projection, not a present-day count.

For the full time series and visualisation, use the interactive map above.