Zulu and the media: a success story in Africa

Abstract

This research paper examines the prevalence and expansion, in the media, of Zulu, one of South Africa’s eleven official languages. Zulu is an indigenous African language spoken mainly in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. There are 10,677,000 Zulu speakers in South Africa. This community represents 23.8% of South Africa’s total population of 44,820,000 (2001 census). This is the biggest language group in the country and is followed by the Xhosa language group of 7,907,000 persons comprising 17,6% of the population. The third biggest linguistic group is Afrikaans with 5,983,000 people accounting for 13,3% of the population. In the KwaZulu- Natal province of South Africa 80% of the population is Zulu speaking.