South Africa’s statistician-general Risenga Maluleke says Limpopo has a new language that was not captured in the census of 2011.
Presenting the 2022 census report to premier Stanley Mathabatha in Polokwane, Risenga noted that the province now has Shona as a language.
He points out that the language is spoken in more than 28 000 households. The province now has a population of 6.6 million.
He attributed the population growth to Zimbabwean migrants.
“Let’s look at this province: 55.5 % speak Sepedi followed by 17.4% who speak Tshivenda, followed by Xitsonga 17.3%, but there is this one which was never there before Shona 1.6 %,” Risenga said.
“So, the people from Zimbabwe are moving into this province and this is their first port-of-call which was never picked up in the previous Census. Now, this is what we are picking up.”
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The census revealed that Zimbabwe had the highest number of immigrants in South Africa at over one million.
Meanwhile, Mathabatha has expressed concern about the migration of the province’s residents to provinces such as Gauteng in search of greener pastures.
“For us to curb this migration, we need to come up with a different kind of education system which will train our children to be relevant to our people and industrial battles, you see amoebas, which is not relevant to the Tubatse community, a community full of mining but we are not teaching them anything about mining and our economy, let us be relevant,” he said.