Bantu peoples of South Africa

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Bantu peoples of South Africa" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (June 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. The specific problem is: This entire article needs a copy edit to rephrase much of the text to match actual English grammar. Please help improve this article if you can. (December 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) The neutrality of this article is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met. (April 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Black South Africans, South African Bantu-speaking peoples

One of the seven terracotta artifacts referred to as the Lydenburg heads (c. 500 CE)
Total population
85% of South Africans ()
Languages
Pedi Southern Ndebele Southern Sotho Swazi Tsonga Tswana Venda Xhosa Zulu
Religion
Christianity Irreligious Traditional African religions Undetermined Further information: Religion in South Africa
Related ethnic groups
Other Indigenous Southern Africans Relating Coloureds Relating South African diaspora

South African Bantu-speaking peoples represent the majority of people in South Africa and who have lived in what is now South Africa for thousands of years as an indigenous people alongside other indigenous groups like Khoisans. Occasionally grouped as Bantu, the term itself is derived from the English word "people", common to many of the Bantu languages. The Oxford Dictionary of South African English describes "Bantu", when used in a contemporary usage or racial context as "obsolescent and offensive", because of its strong association with the "white minority rule" with their Apartheid system. However, Bantu is used without pejorative connotations in other parts of Africa and is still used in South Africa as the group term for the language family.