Some perspective

There are 47.9 million people in South Africa. This breaks down to 38,079,000 black Africans (79.6%), 4,245,000 coloured (8.9%), 1,173,700 Indian/Asian (2.5%), and 4,352,100 (9.1%) white.

In the Cape Town municipal area there are 2.9 million people. Coloured people account for 48.13% of the population, followed by black Africans at 31%, whites at 18.75%, and Asians at 1.43%. Close to 1 million of those people live in the Khayelitsha township alone. Unemployment stands at 19.4% for Cape Town, and near 50% in Khayelitsha.

Life expectancy at birth is estimated at approximately 49 years for males and 52 years for females. Life expectancy is highest here in the Western Cape and lowest in the KwaZulu-Natal province. Compare this to an average life expectancy of 77.6 years in the United States.

The estimated HIV-prevalence in South Africa is 11%. Approximately 5.3 million South Africans are HIV-positive. The HIV-positive population in the United States numbers around 900,000, which is less than one percent of the country's population of more than 300 million people. South Africa has the highest number of people living with HIV/AIDS in the world.