Indians in South Africa: the 2026 guide to the community, the census figures, KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, Cape Town, work visas, schools, temples and Diwali

1,697,505 people were counted in the Indian or Asian population group in South Africa’s 2022 census, 2.7% of the population. Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) counts a single “Indian/Asian” group, by the population group a person reports and not by citizenship, and the group also takes in people of other Asian origin. It is therefore not a count of Indian citizens, and it is not the number of Indian nationals in the country: the same census counted 27,350 people born in India (31,165 in 2011). Stats SA adjusted the 2022 count for a large undercount, so every census figure on this page is an estimate; the numbers section says how large the adjustment was.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) gives a larger figure that is built differently: 1,800,000 overseas Indians in South Africa in January 2026, made up of 1,722,600 persons of Indian origin (PIOs) and 77,400 non-resident Indians (NRIs). The ministry’s page does not define the two terms; an NRI is normally an Indian passport holder living abroad and a PIO a person of Indian origin who holds another citizenship. The High Commission of India in Pretoria describes the Indian-origin community as “around 1.7 million”, about 3% of the population, which is its own round estimate and not a census measure.

The word “Indian” covers two communities here that share temples, food and a festival calendar but not a legal position. Indian South Africans are citizens descended mostly from the indentured labourers who began arriving at Durban in 1860 and the paying “passenger” traders who followed from the 1870s; English is their first language, most live in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, and since 1 December 2025 the Indian government has accepted OCI applications from descendants up to the seventh generation. Indian nationals come on work, study and business visas and are a far smaller group. The section on the two communities takes up the difference. City detail lives in the Durban guide and the Johannesburg and Pretoria guide; this page is the country picture, and it also covers Cape Town, Pietermaritzburg and the Eastern Cape, which the city guides do not.

Several things changed in 2026 and shape what follows. Cabinet approved a revised White Paper on citizenship and immigration on 3 April, which is not yet law. Phase II of the Trusted Employer Scheme opened to expressions of interest on 20 July and closed on 4 September. President Ramaphosa launched the Electronic Travel Authorisation on 12 August. The Consulate General in Durban has taken passport and OCI applications itself since 30 January, and the High Commission in Pretoria has taken them by appointment only since 24 August. The fresh OCI fee was set at US$275 from 1 April and Indian passport fees were revised on 1 July. Local government elections are on Wednesday 4 November, four days before Diwali. And the National Health Insurance Act, which would reshape private cover, is on hold until the Constitutional Court rules.

Before 1860

Indians were in the Cape long before indenture, as slaves. South African History Online (SAHO) says they first arrived there in 1684 under Dutch rule, gives a conservative count of more than 16,300, and says Indians made up over 80% of the Cape’s slaves in the years 1690 to 1725. Passenger Indians who settled at the Cape later often married Cape Malay women, and Wikipedia says their children were often classed as Cape Malay, which is a different census group from Indian/Asian.

Indenture, 1860 to 1911

On 16 November 1860 the Truro reached Port Natal from Madras with about 340 people, the first indentured labourers brought to work Natal’s sugar estates (SAHO). Between 1860 and 1911, 152,184 indentured workers arrived in Natal, 101,468 of them embarking at Madras and 50,716 at Calcutta, according to a review of the indenture documents held in SAHO’s archive, and the importation ended in 1911. By 1910 nearly 26.85% of the men had returned to India; most of the rest stayed. Natal taxed and restricted them: a £3 tax fell on former indentured Indians who neither re-indentured nor returned (SAHO dates it to 1885, Muthal Naidoo’s outline to 1895), and the Franchise Act of 1894 disenfranchised Indians in Natal. The ship lists survive in the South African archives in Durban and Pietermaritzburg, and the Indian government’s OCI rules for descendants now rely on them (see the missions section).

Passenger Indians

“Passenger” Indians paid their own fares and came outside the indenture arrangement, mostly as traders from Gujarat, including Memons and Surtis, from about 1875 (SAHO; sources differ on the first arrivals). In 1881 Memon traders bought the site for the Juma Masjid on what is now Dr Yusuf Dadoo Street in Durban. In the Transvaal, Act 3 of 1885 barred Indians from owning land and confined them to locations; the “Coolie location” west of Johannesburg’s centre was burned in 1904 after a plague outbreak, as the Johannesburg guide describes.

Gandhi, 1893 to 1914

Mohandas Gandhi came in May 1893 as a barrister to assist a Porbandar trading firm in a court case. On the night of 7 June 1893 he was put off a train at Pietermaritzburg for refusing to leave a first-class compartment and spent the night in the station waiting room; he later said the incident changed the course of his life (Paul Tichmann’s booklet on Gandhi’s Durban sites, hosted by the High Commission). A bronze statue of Gandhi stands in Church Street in the city centre (Wikipedia). In 1894 he helped found the Natal Indian Congress to fight the Franchise Bill, a petition against which gathered ten thousand signatures. He founded the Phoenix Settlement near Durban in 1904, ran Tolstoy Farm near what is now Lenasia from 1910, and led satyagraha campaigns between 1906 and 1914; the Durban guide and the Johannesburg guide describe those places. He left in 1914 and reached India on 9 January 1915, the date India marks as Pravasi Bharatiya Divas.

The Union and apartheid

The Union of South Africa was formed in 1910, and indenture ended in 1911. The Immigrants Regulation Act of 1913 ended Indian immigration, and the Indian Relief Act of 1914 repealed the £3 tax and recognised Hindu and Muslim marriages, which a 1913 Cape court ruling had invalidated. A round-table in 1926 and 1927 produced the Cape Town Agreement, which promoted subsidised repatriation; fewer people left than expected (Wikipedia). The Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Act of 1946, called the “Ghetto Act”, led to a passive-resistance campaign in which more than 2,000 people were imprisoned (Muthal Naidoo). The Group Areas Act (Act 41 of 1950) then decided where each group could live and trade, and Indian families were moved to townships on the edges of the cities: Chatsworth south of Durban, planned in 1960 and opened in 1964 with 7,000 sub-economic and 14,000 economic houses (SAHO), Phoenix to the north-west, Lenasia south-west of Johannesburg and Laudium in Pretoria, proclaimed in 1961. In Cape Town the United Hindu Association, formed in 1903, lost its Newlands property to expropriation under the Act in 1968 and was succeeded by the Cape Hindu Cultural Society in 1973 (Athlone News). In Pietermaritzburg Wikipedia says 90% of the Indian population was moved to the suburb of Northdale. The 1983 constitution gave Indians a separate House of Delegates in a tricameral parliament. In 1994 the apartheid immigration restrictions were scrapped, and people from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh began to arrive as new immigrants (SAHO).

Four censuses

These are Stats SA’s figures from Table 2.4 of its Census 2022 statistical release, with the shares from its Figure 2.3; the totals leave out people whose population group was not stated. The release’s own text, and the sum of its nine provinces, give 1,697,505 for 2022, although the national row of the table prints 1,697,506. The group grew by 31.9% between 2011 and 2022 (our arithmetic), against 19.7% for the whole population, and that fast growth is the first reason to read the figure with care.

How firm the number is

Stats SA put the undercount in Census 2022 at 31% nationally, and for Indian South Africans a final undercount of 42.10% after a preliminary 72.3% was corrected (Daily Maverick, quoting a Stats SA update); Stats SA also said it has difficulty doing fieldwork in high-walled and gated communities. The published counts were adjusted for it. The demographers Tom Moultrie and Rob Dorrington wrote in July 2024 that the adjusted national total of about 62 million may be roughly a million too high, that about half of that excess sits in the Indian/Asian and white groups, where they put the undercount estimates above 60%, and that the data “should be used with extreme caution”. The advice for anyone quoting a figure is to say “counted in the 2022 census”, not “live in South Africa”.

The other counts

The MEA’s page also carries a second, undated table that gives 1,640,000 PIOs and 60,000 NRIs for South Africa, 1,700,000 in all, with the columns in a different order; we have used the table dated January 2026. These counts measure different things on different dates: the census asks for a population group and a country of birth, the MEA estimates people of Indian origin and Indian passport holders, and the High Commission’s figure is a round number. The MEA’s 77,400 NRIs are almost three times the census’s 27,350 India-born residents, and neither source says why, so we do not guess. Stats SA’s Indian/Asian group may also take in some of the people born in Bangladesh and Pakistan, but the census does not say how many.

Languages

English is the first language of nearly all Indian South Africans. The census that tabulated first language by population group, in 2011, gave English to 1,094,317 of the 1,271,158 people in the Indian or Asian group who stated a first language (86.1%), Afrikaans to 58,700 (4.6%), isiZulu to 16,699 (1.3%) and “other” languages to 65,261 (5.1%). The table lists only the official languages and sign language, so Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Gujarati and Urdu are not counted separately and fall into that “other” line. The 2022 release publishes language for the whole population and by province, not by population group, so no newer figure for the group exists in the tables we read; for everyone, English is the first language of 14.4% of people in KwaZulu-Natal and 9.2% in Gauteng, against 8.7% nationally.

Rajend Mesthrie’s chapter on Indian languages in South Africa says the indentured workers from south India brought Tamil and Telugu, with smaller numbers speaking Malayalam and Kannada, and that Malayalam and Kannada did not survive beyond a generation; Wikipedia’s account of the community lists Hindi, Gujarati and Urdu as the other languages. Until 1991 state schools taught one of five Indian languages (Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu or Urdu) as a non-examination subject, and KwaZulu-Natal later allowed them again (Wikipedia). Writers on the shift say English came to stand for education and advancement, that the Group Areas Act scattered speakers, and that the home became the main place where a language was passed on. A professor at a Malaysian university, writing in The Post in 2026 from visits to Durban, says most Tamils understand Tamil but few use it fluently at home, and names afternoon Tamil classes run by a community organisation. The schools section lists the classes we could confirm.

Faiths

Stats SA’s 2022 release gives the religion of the Indian/Asian group as Hinduism 37.9%, Christianity 33.6% and Islam 24.5%, with Buddhism 0.5%, no religious affiliation 0.9% and “other” 1.9%. It says the group has the highest proportion of Hindus and Muslims of any population group, and only a third are Christian. The release has no Sikh line, so Sikhs, whom Wikipedia’s account of Sikhism in South Africa estimates at 13,000, are not counted on their own. Hindu life is organised nationally by the South African Hindu Maha Sabha, founded in 1912 and run from Durban; Muslim life runs through mosques such as the Juma Masjid in Durban and the Hamidia Mosque in Fordsburg, where Gandhi’s followers burned their registration documents in 1908. The Muslim families include Memons, Surtis and Konkanis, according to the city guides, and they share the markets and the neighbourhoods with Hindu families.

The counts and the 2011 figures are Stats SA’s (Table 2.4); the shares and changes are our arithmetic. KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng together hold 87.6% of the group. Two provinces behave oddly and the release does not explain either: North West’s count fell from 20,652 to 2,654, and Limpopo’s doubled. We found no explanation for either, so read them with the undercount caveat in mind.

KwaZulu-Natal

This is where most of the community lives, and the province’s 2022 profile (Table 2.9) breaks it down by municipality. The eThekwini (Durban) metro has 835,907, 19.7% of its people and 72% of the province’s group; the Durban guide covers Chatsworth, Phoenix, Overport and the north coast. The next largest are the Msunduzi municipality, which holds Pietermaritzburg, with 113,400 (13.9%); KwaDukuza, around Stanger and Ballito, with 60,377 (18.6%, the second-highest share in the province after eThekwini); Umdoni on the south coast with 20,778 (13.3%); Ray Nkonyeni around Port Shepstone with 20,397 (5.6%); Alfred Duma around Ladysmith with 19,559 (4.7%); Newcastle with 18,423 (3.6%); and uMhlathuze around Richards Bay with 15,285 (3.7%). eThekwini and Msunduzi together hold 82% of the province’s group.

Pietermaritzburg has the province’s second-largest community. Gandhi was put off the train at its station in 1893, the Shri Vishnu Temple on Langalibalele Street was completed in 1922, and in the apartheid years most of its Indian population was moved to Northdale (Wikipedia). The city is also one of the two places where the South African archives keep the digitised ship lists and records that OCI applicants now need.

Gauteng

Gauteng’s group fell 8% between 2011 and 2022 while the province grew. By the Gauteng profile’s metro table the City of Johannesburg has 167,363 (3.5% of its people), Ekurhuleni 72,422 (1.8%) and Tshwane, which holds Pretoria and the township of Laudium, 69,097 (1.7%); the Johannesburg and Pretoria guide covers Lenasia, Fordsburg, Mayfair, Laudium, Actonville, Sandton and the temples.

The Western Cape and Cape Town

The Western Cape has 84,363 (1.1% of the province), and 75,442 of them live in the City of Cape Town (1.6% of the 4,768,252 who gave a population group), which is 89% of the province’s group. In every other municipality of the province the group is below 1% of the people. Cape Town’s Indian presence goes back to the slaves of the 1600s, and its Hindu institutions to the United Hindu Association of 1903 and the Cape Hindu Cultural Society that succeeded it in 1973, with its Radha Krishna Mandir and Gandhi Memorial School in Rylands on the Cape Flats. The Consulate General of India is on Bree Street in the city centre. Rents, schools and temples for these places are in the sections below. Cape Town is also the city Parliament was asked about in April 2026 in a question on remote workers and property prices.

The Eastern Cape and the rest

The Eastern Cape has 37,568 (0.5% of the province): 13,758 in Nelson Mandela Bay, the metro of Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth), which is 1.2% of its people, and 9,711 in Buffalo City, around East London, 1.0%. Limpopo has 35,958, Mpumalanga 25,882, the Free State 12,978, the Northern Cape 10,824 and North West 2,654. Each province has a count in the census, but we found no source that describes those communities, so we name no towns.

The Durban guide sets out the document checklists for the two work visas; this section gives the rules that apply in every city and what changed in 2026. A South African work visa is applied for before you travel. The High Commission of South Africa in New Delhi says all visa applications must be submitted to a VFS Global application centre and that it does not take them directly. VFS’s India page lists centres in Delhi, Gurgaon, Jaipur, Kolkata, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Pune, Goa and Bangalore, says the decision is taken by the High Commission in New Delhi and the Consulate General in Mumbai, and gives an indicative minimum of 60 days from submission. Never pay anyone to “arrange” a visa or a job offer.

The 100-point system

The Minister of Home Affairs announced a points-based system for the two work visas on 9 October 2024 and gazetted the table on 18 October 2024 (Government Notice 5448). An applicant must earn 100 points and meet every other requirement, such as the police clearance and the medical report.

Reaching 100 through a critical-skills occupation leads to a Critical Skills Work Visa; reaching it by any other combination leads to a General Work Visa. By our arithmetic from the table, a master’s degree at NQF level 9 (50) with an offer above R976,194 (50) reaches 100; a bachelor’s degree (30), five to ten years’ experience (20), an offer in the middle band (20) and official-language proficiency (10) make 80, which a Trusted Employer’s offer (30) would lift to 110. The gazette prints the lower salary band as R650,976, where Home Affairs’ own statements give R650,796, and it does not say how language proficiency is proved, so ask your employer’s immigration adviser.

The Critical Skills List

The list in force is still the 2022 list as revised in 2023. In a written reply to parliamentary question NW1499, asked on 28 July 2026, the Minister said its lifespan is ordinarily five years and that the next review is expected in 2027. A page advertising a “2026 updated” list is not an official one.

The Trusted Employer Scheme

The scheme is the employer’s, not the worker’s. It gives accredited employers priority processing of work visas and reduced documentary requirements, according to Baker McKenzie. Phase I was announced in 2023 and piloted in 2024; Phase II was gazetted on 20 July 2026 and added companies in strategic infrastructure projects, businesses setting up regional or global headquarters, and qualifying financial-sector entities (SAnews, 21 July 2026). Expressions of interest were open from 20 July to 4 September 2026, applicants must show meaningful investment, mostly South African staff and skills development, and outcomes were expected from 19 October 2026; we found no announcement of results by 23 October. Ask an employer whether it is accredited, because a Trusted Employer’s offer is worth 30 points.

The remote work visitor visa

This visa lets someone employed abroad stay in South Africa without competing for local jobs. It is a visitor’s visa under section 11(1)(b)(iv) of the Immigration Regulations, with a minimum gross income of R650,796 a year, and the holder may not take employment in South Africa; a holder who stays more than 183 days in a 12-month period must register with the tax authority (the Minister’s reply to question NW296, 2 April 2026). The Rio Times reported on 14 October 2026 that the visa runs for more than three months and up to three years and that the R1 million proposed in 2024 was lowered; the reply itself gives no validity period. The reply was prompted by a question about remote workers in Cape Town and property prices.

Visiting, and why the ETA is not a way to find work

The Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) was launched by President Ramaphosa at OR Tambo International Airport on 12 August 2026; eligible travellers apply online without visiting a mission or visa centre (SAnews). The Deccan Chronicle reported on 27 July that eligible Indian passport holders can use it when arriving at OR Tambo, Cape Town International or Lanseria, that applications are meant to be decided in 24 to 48 hours and that a stay is limited to 90 days. The official pages we opened did not list eligible countries or fees, so confirm on the Home Affairs ETA portal before you book. An ETA is not a work permit: the Minister told Parliament on 2 April 2026 that foreigners may not work on ordinary visitor status, and that short-term work needs authorisation under section 11(2) of the Immigration Act, usually for 90 days once a year, applied for from abroad.

The 2026 White Paper and the job market

Cabinet approved a revised White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection on 3 April 2026. It proposes merit and points-based routes to permanent residence and citizenship, new visa categories including remote work and start-ups, sectoral work visas and an electronic travel authorisation; none of it is law until the department drafts amendments and Parliament passes them (EWN, 9 April 2026). The market a General Work Visa tests is tight: the official unemployment rate in the second quarter of 2026 was 33.6% (Stats SA, released 11 August).

A few steps are the same for every newcomer wherever in South Africa they land, and the city guides add the local detail. The order below is the one that works.

1. Carry a copy of your passport and visa and keep the original safe. The Department of Home Affairs’ checklist wants your passport to be valid for at least 30 days beyond the date you intend to leave.
2. Register with the Indian mission that serves you. The High Commission in Pretoria has pages for the registration of Indian nationals and of Indian students, the Consulate General in Durban asks Indian citizens in South Africa for work, study or a short visit to register on its website, and the Consulate General in Cape Town lists a registration page too. The missions section says which mission is yours.
3. A short stay, then a lease. View a flat in person before paying anything; the housing section has the asking rents.
4. A bank account and a SIM card. See below.
5. Medical cover from the first week. The health section explains why.
6. Water and power. Keep a few days of drinking water and charged power banks; see safety.
7. Find your people. A temple, a mosque or a regional association will give you a doctor, a landlord and an accountant faster than an agent.

A bank account

Banks must verify the identity and address of every client under the Financial Intelligence Centre Act (FICA), and the rules differ from bank to bank. We read only Nedbank’s pages. They say its standard accounts suit foreign nationals with valid work or study permits or permanent residence, and the page for foreign nationals residing in South Africa, whose permits include work, spousal and retirement permits, lists a foreign passport among the accepted documents. Accounts are opened in person at a branch. Take your passport, your visa or permit, your employer’s letter and a proof of address, ask the bank what else it wants when you book, and keep your Indian account open for one-time passwords and for sending money home.

A SIM card

SIM cards must be registered under the RICA law. Vodacom says foreign nationals require a valid passport, that proof of address may be required depending on the registration type, and that you can register by digital self-service, in a shop or with assisted support. Cell C says proof of address is any document showing your full name and the address where you live, such as a bank statement, a rates or electricity account, a telephone account, a TV licence, an insurance policy or a lease agreement. MTN’s subscriber terms, as quoted in a search result, ask for an original passport and proof of residential address, and its Self-RICA app asks for a photo of the passport, proof of residence and a selfie. A relocation agency’s page says a passport alone is enough at OR Tambo arrivals; we could not confirm that on an operator’s page, so carry the lease or the employer’s letter anyway.

Driving

The Western Cape government’s page on converting a foreign licence covers permanent residents and South African citizens who got their licence abroad, who must convert within five years, with a confirmation letter from the issuing authority or the country’s High Commission. It does not mention people on work visas, so ask the licensing centre which document it wants before you pay for anything. The Consulate General in Cape Town’s menu lists a translation of an Indian driving licence, and the Consulate General in Durban offers an endorsement service. The UK Foreign Office says fatal road accidents are common, especially at weekends and on holidays, that carjacking and robbery happen at traffic lights, junctions and petrol stations, and that fuel should be kept above half a tank.

South Africa has no official city-level rent survey that we could find. The Durban guide and the Johannesburg guide carry the PrivateProperty and Numbeo figures for their cities; for the places they do not cover, PrivateProperty’s pages of asking rents, opened on 23 October 2026, are the most local source. Each row is the first page of listings, which is 20 listings sorted by promotion, so read the ranges as a guide to the order of magnitude and not as an average. Numbeo refused our request for its Cape Town page that day (HTTP 429). The rental-payments platform PayProp said on 24 March 2026 that national average rent was R9,462 in the fourth quarter of 2025, up 4.5% on the year.

Three things stand out. First, Cape Town’s rents run well above Pietermaritzburg’s and Nelson Mandela Bay’s: the median two-bedroom in the Southern Suburbs listings, R22,000, is more than twice Pietermaritzburg’s R10,450. Second, Rylands, where the Cape Hindu Cultural Society sits, and Athlone have so few listings that the portal gives almost no guide, so ask the temple, the school or a local agent. Third, the three-bedroom column is the least reliable, because it has few listings and a very wide spread.

How renting works

We did not research South Africa’s rental law for this guide, so the rules below are plain precautions and not a summary of the statute. Insist on a written lease that names the owner, and ask for a receipt for the deposit. Ask what backup water storage the building has, because water outages have been frequent in 2026, and for a flat above the ground floor ask what happens to the lift and the water pump when power fails. Ask about the levy, security and the body corporate’s rules. Do not wire a deposit to an account in a different name from the owner’s, and do not send a passport scan before you have met the person and seen the flat. A flat advertised far below the going rent by a “landlord abroad” is the usual scam.

South Africa runs a public health system and a private one side by side. Public hospitals and clinics, run by the provinces, charge on a means-tested schedule; private hospitals bill in full and are paid for through a medical scheme, a hospital-cover plan or cash. A newcomer on a work visa should assume private cover from the first day, and should read the contract to see whether the employer pays for it.

Foreign nationals and public care

Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi told Parliament in March 2026 that nobody may be refused emergency treatment under section 27(3) of the Constitution and that walk-in patients are billed under a means-tested fee schedule. We found no official document that settles which fee category a work-visa holder falls in, so ask the hospital before you go and do not count on public care for planned treatment.

Medical schemes

Medical schemes are regulated by the Council for Medical Schemes (CMS), which describes prescribed minimum benefits as “defined benefits to ensure certain minimum health services” and invites people to lodge a complaint about a scheme’s conduct (+27 86 112 3267, information@medicalschemes.co.za). Ask your employer whether the job includes a scheme, ask the scheme for its list of network hospitals and check that it is registered with the CMS before you pay. Contributions are rising faster than prices: the Cape Argus reported in October 2025 that the 2026 average increases were 9.9% at Momentum, 9.6% at Fedhealth, 8.88% at Bonitas, 8.46% at Medihelp, 7.2% at Discovery (an effective 5.4% for the year because its increase took effect in April) and 6.8% at Bestmed, against inflation of 3.4%. A scheme’s own rules decide what it pays for a spouse, children and parents, so ask before you add dependants.

The National Health Insurance Act

The NHI Act, which would move funding for most care into a state fund, is not being implemented. President Ramaphosa undertook in February 2026 not to promulgate its provisions until the Constitutional Court rules on the challenges to how Parliament consulted the public; the Court heard argument on 5 and 6 May 2026 and reserved judgment (EWN, 7 May 2026). We found no judgment by 23 October, so private cover works as it did.

Hospitals

The Durban and Johannesburg guides list the public and private hospitals near Chatsworth, Phoenix, Lenasia, Laudium and the northern suburbs. For Cape Town, Pietermaritzburg and Gqeberha we did not research individual hospitals, so ask the groups or your scheme for its network. Dial 112 from a mobile phone for an emergency and go to the nearest casualty department; the police number is 10111.

Electricity and water

Eskom’s statement of 14 August 2026 says South Africa had recorded 455 consecutive days without load-shedding since 16 May 2025 and that seven of the nine provinces were free of the separate “load reduction”, the targeted interruptions on certain network feeders; the remaining affected areas are in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, the provinces where most Indian South Africans live. Eskom’s public status feed showed no load-shedding when we queried it on 23 October 2026. Water is the bigger problem in 2026, with repeated outages in Durban and Johannesburg that the city guides describe.

Public schools are run by the nine provincial education departments, and each sets its own application window, so the dates below are for the 2027 school year. All three windows have closed.

The Western Cape lists what to upload: the latest school report, a certified birth certificate, the learner’s ID or passport, proof of residence and an immunisation card for primary schools. For foreign learners it accepts a passport, a study permit, proof of a permit application, or a parent’s asylum-seeker or refugee permit, and a police affidavit if official papers are unavailable. Applications are made on the department’s online platform, and the department opens pop-up sites for parents without internet access. The KwaZulu-Natal department has said that undocumented learners must not be refused admission, and the Basic Education department said in January 2025, as reported, that undocumented parents must be allowed to enrol their children. If your child arrives after a window has closed, go to the school and the district office at once. For the 2028 intake, watch the Western Cape from March 2027, KwaZulu-Natal from April 2027 and Gauteng from July 2027, since that is when the 2027 windows opened or were announced.

Indian languages and culture

English is the medium of instruction in most schools. Weekend and afternoon classes are run by the community. The Cape Hindu Cultural Society’s Gandhi Memorial School in Rylands holds Gujarati classes in the afternoons, and the society also runs weekly meditation and yoga, classical Indian dance classes and an annual Gandhi Walk (Athlone News, 2023). The Benoni Tamil School Board runs a Saturday Tamil school at the Siva Alayam in Actonville, and an organisation called MTSS runs afternoon Tamil classes (The Post, 2026). In Durban the Swami Vivekananda Cultural Centre, which the Indian Council for Cultural Relations runs as part of the Consulate General, offers cultural programmes and scholarships. The Consulate General in Cape Town’s menu lists a page on Indian music and dance institutions in Cape Town, the ICCR scholarships and the Know India Programme. Class lists change every year, so ask for the current one.

International schools and universities

Numbeo’s crowd-sourced figures for an international primary school were R126,240.91 a year in Durban and R83,183.64 in Johannesburg, as the city guides show; the schools publish their own fees. The universities are named in the city guides; for Cape Town we did not research them.

South Africa’s Indian food has dishes of its own, and the most widely known markets are in the two big cities. In Durban the Victoria Street Market on Bertha Mkhize Street has more than 170 stalls selling fish, meat, fruit, vegetables and spices on the ground floor, and Patel’s Vegetarian Refreshment Room at 202 Dr Yusuf Dadoo Street is a vegetarian bunny chow place with a history from 1911; bunny chow, a curry served in a hollowed-out loaf, is Durban’s dish. In Johannesburg the Oriental Plaza at 38 Lilian Ngoyi Street, Fordsburg, has over 300 stores and was built in the 1970s to house the traders moved out of Fietas, and Fordsburg’s restaurants are mostly halaal. The Durban guide and the Johannesburg guide name the other places and say what we could and could not confirm.

For Cape Town, ISKCON’s own directory lists its centre at Govinda’s Pure Vegetarian Cafe, 17 Saint Andrews Road; we did not confirm a named Indian grocer in Cape Town, Pietermaritzburg or Gqeberha, so we name none. Temples and mosques are usually the quickest way to find a grocer, and mithai for Diwali should be ordered a week ahead. The businesses on Namaste Community’s directory page for South Africa are a starting point, and if your grocer, tailor or favourite thali house is missing, a business can add itself.

The places below were confirmed from a temple’s own page, a heritage record, a directory or a dated report, and the table says where only one source exists. Opening times change, so call before a first visit. This site has no South Africa temples page, so none is linked; the two city guides have their own tables.

Notes on the places

The Pietermaritzburg temple is described as being in a simple north Indian style, with a central dome and a shrine room surrounded by a veranda that lets devotees walk round it, and as a centre of faith, education and language for the city’s Hindi-speaking community. The Cape Hindu Cultural Society succeeded the United Hindu Association, which lost its Newlands property to expropriation under the Group Areas Act in 1968. The South African Hindu Maha Sabha, founded in 1912, is the national body: it has 150 affiliated organisations, accredits priests and organises the Durban Diwali Festival. About a quarter of the group is Muslim, and the city guides name the main mosques; we did not research churches or gurdwaras beyond what the city guides say.

Visiting

Dress modestly, remove your shoes and ask before photographing inside. Sunday programmes, such as the love feasts at the ISKCON centres, are open to everyone and are the easiest first visit.

Diwali is not a public holiday in South Africa: it is not on the government’s public-holiday lists for 2026 and 2027, and in 2026 it falls on a Sunday. The public events are on the weekends around it, and what follows is what could be confirmed as of 23 October. The Diwali in South Africa page, the South Africa events calendar and the city pages for Durban and Johannesburg carry the dates as organisers announce them.

We found no 2026 Diwali programme for Cape Town, Pietermaritzburg or Gqeberha, so ask the Cape Hindu Cultural Society or the temples directly. Private fireworks are controlled by municipal by-laws, which differ from one municipality to the next; the rules quoted for eThekwini, which allow consumer fireworks at a home on Diwali between sunset and midnight, are in the Durban guide, we did not find a 2026 notice for Johannesburg, and we did not research Cape Town’s.

Elsewhere in the calendar

Holi, Ram Navami, Janmashtami and Guru Nanak’s birthday are kept at the temples and gurdwaras, and the Indian missions close for them. The Thaipoosam Kavady at the Clairwood temple in Durban, the Draupadi firewalking at Cato Manor and the Sivaratri and Kavadi festivals of the Siva Alayam in Actonville are the Tamil temples’ largest events. India marks Gandhi’s return on 9 January 1915 each year as Pravasi Bharatiya Divas. The events posted near you on Namaste Community appear below as they are added.

Someone arriving from Chennai or Ahmedabad and someone whose family has lived in Chatsworth for five generations may both be called Indian, and the word does different work for each. The sources are frank that the two are not the same.

What separates them

SAHO says that after 1994 people from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh arrived as new immigrants and that “there is a major cultural division” between them and Indian South Africans. Its account is that a shared South African Indian identity was forged by the resistance to discriminatory laws, with a primary local identity and a secondary ancestral one. The legal position differs as well: an Indian South African is a South African citizen, an Indian national needs a visa and a work permit, and a descendant of the indentured and passenger arrivals may now apply for an OCI card, which an Indian national does not need. In the census, the first appears in the Indian/Asian group and the second, if born in India, in the 27,350. English is the first language of the first group, while newcomers arrive speaking the languages of the Indian states they come from.

Goolam Vahed and Ashwin Desai wrote in the journal South Asian Diaspora in 2017 that the shared label “Indian” is weakening because of class divisions and splits along religious lines, that South African law still defines citizens by race and so keeps Indians as a group apart from both white and African South Africans, and that newer migrants from the subcontinent compete with working-class Africans in the townships, which strains relations. Those are the authors’ claims, not census findings. Wikipedia says that in Laudium many large houses have been divided and let to newcomers from India, Pakistan and elsewhere, and that most of the township’s businesses are foreign-owned; the Johannesburg guide gives the detail.

What connects them

The temples, the Sunday love feasts, the Hindu Maha Sabha’s calendar, the High Commission’s events and Diwali are open to both, and the Indian government has chosen to treat the descendants of the indentured labourers, traders and other migrants, up to the seventh generation, as part of the Indian diaspora. The High Commission held a PIO Connect event on 31 July 2026 and hosts an oral-history series on the diaspora in South Africa, according to the Johannesburg guide. A newcomer can use those events and the temples to meet the older community, and a South African Indian family is often the quickest source of a landlord, a school or a doctor.

A caution

Anti-immigrant marches have taken place in Durban (6 May 2026) and Johannesburg (Operation Dudula supporters, 26 June), according to the city guides, and the UK Foreign Office reports a rise in xenophobic and anti-immigration marches and violence. We found no report that Indian nationals or Indian South African businesses were singled out, but the marches target foreign-owned shops. A South Asian shopkeeper or newcomer should read the news, avoid crowds and keep passport and visa copies to hand.

India has four missions in South Africa, and which applies to you depends on your address and on what you need. The High Commission is India’s embassy-level mission; the three Consulates General each serve a region.

• The High Commission of India is at 852 Francis Baard Street, Arcadia 0083, Pretoria (postal address PO Box 40216, Sunnyside 0007), telephone (012) 342 5392 to 5, open 08:30 to 17:00 on weekdays. It is also accredited to Lesotho. Since 24 August 2026 it receives passport, visa and miscellaneous consular applications only on prior appointment, booked at hcipretoria.gov.in/apt/, where it says it has “NOT outsourced consular services to any private agency” and that applicants without an appointment will not be entertained. Its passport page gives submission from 09:00 to 12:30, collection from 14:00 to 16:00, payment by electronic transfer with the original proof of payment, and a processing time of one month. Its 24-hour distress number is +27 82 867 6851, for emergencies only.
• The Consulate General of India, Johannesburg is at 1 Eton Road, corner of Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown 2193; main number +27 11 581 9800, consular enquiries +27 11 482 1368. S. Koventhan took charge as Consul General on 11 June 2026.
• The Consulate General of India, Durban is at 1 Kingsmead Boulevard (2nd Floor), Kingsmead Office Park, Durban 4001, telephone +27 31 335 0300. It serves KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape and the Free State. VFS Global stopped taking its applications after 29 January 2026, and since 30 January the Consulate takes passport, visa and OCI applications itself, in person from 09:00 to 12:00 on working days, with postal and courier applications suspended until further notice.
• The Consulate General of India, Cape Town is at The Terraces, 8th Floor, 34 Bree Street, Cape Town 8001, telephone +27 21 419 8110 or 8111, open 09:00 to 17:30 on weekdays; Ruby Jaspreet took charge as Consul General on 18 January 2025 (the High Commission’s page on the Consulate). Its own working-hours page, which a search result showed as last updated on 5 May 2026, gives submission of OCI, passport and consular applications from 09:30 to 12:30 on working days and collection from 16:00 to 17:00. The site refused our requests, so we could not read the page ourselves; confirm by telephone or at cons.capetown@mea.gov.in, the address a search result showed for visa and consular matters.

VFS Global, and BLS

In South Africa the outsourcing company is VFS Global, not BLS; we found no mention of BLS on any South African mission’s pages. VFS’s undated page for India says the India Visa and Consular Service Application Centre is run by VFS Visa Processing SA and lists three centres: Johannesburg for Gauteng, Limpopo, North West and Mpumalanga, Durban for KwaZulu-Natal, the Free State and the Eastern Cape, and Cape Town for the Western Cape and Northern Cape. That page sits oddly with the High Commission’s statement that it has not outsourced, and with the Durban Consulate General’s notice that VFS stopped taking applications in January. Treat the missions’ own notices as the authority, and telephone the mission that serves you before you pay or travel.

Fees

The fees in force from 1 July 2026, including the R35 Indian Community Welfare Fund fee, are R2,070 (US$125) for an ordinary 36-page passport, R2,885 for a 60-page one, R1,500 for a minor’s passport, R280 for an emergency certificate and R690 for a police clearance or surrender certificate. Fresh (not reissued) passports for applicants over 60 and for children up to eight carry a 10% discount.

OCI for South African Indians

On 1 December 2025 the Government of India extended OCI registration to descendants of the fifth, sixth and seventh generations of the Indian-origin immigrants who arrived in South Africa as migrants, indentured labourers and traders; before that it stopped at the fourth. Applicants file at ociservices.gov.in, upload a family tree with supporting documents from the South African archives in Durban and Pietermaritzburg, show “India” as the place of birth of root ancestors up to the sixth generation, or use a notarised declaration with three OCI-holding witnesses in exceptional cases, apostille every document and present the originals at the High Commission or a Consulate General between 09:30 and 12:30 on weekdays. The fresh OCI fee from 1 April 2026 is US$275, R4,680 in rand, or R4,735 with the R55 welfare fee. The mission decides eligibility and may ask for more.

The UK Foreign Office describes a high crime rate across South Africa, with violent muggings, carjacking, smash-and-grab attacks, house robbery and murder, and says the risk is higher after dark. SAPS released its figures for April to June 2026 on 28 August: 5,427 murders nationally, 5.9% fewer than a year earlier and 343 fewer than in the same quarter of 2025, with Gauteng at 1,276, KwaZulu-Natal at 1,179 and the Western Cape at 1,071, and carjackings down 18.2% from 4,657 to 3,811 (Business Day, EWN). Those are falls from a high level, and the Foreign Office’s advice stands.

• Valuables and driving. Do not display valuables, keep fuel above half a tank, keep windows closed at junctions, avoid walking alone after dark and do not resist a robbery. E-hail through an official app and wait somewhere safe for the car; the Foreign Office also warns of tension between e-hailing and metered taxi drivers near stations and airports.
• Marches and protests. Regular protests can turn violent at short notice, and the Foreign Office says not to cross protester roadblocks. See the section on the two communities for the 2026 anti-immigrant marches.
• The election. Local government elections are on Wednesday 4 November 2026, four days before Diwali; avoid rallies and crowds that week.
• Power. Eskom’s status feed showed no load-shedding on 23 October 2026. The utility’s statement of 14 August puts the run at 455 consecutive days since 16 May 2025, and other reports count from late April 2025 (EnergyBee counted 408 days by 10 June). Load reduction, the targeted interruptions on certain network feeders, continues in parts of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. The Foreign Office adds that unplanned outages still occur and can affect security systems, traffic lights, ATMs, mobile networks and water, and that the crime risk is higher when street lighting fails.
• Water. Outages and restrictions, including bans on drinking tap water, have occurred in parts of the country; the city guides describe Durban’s and Johannesburg’s in 2026.
• Fraud. Do not pay for a visa decision, a job offer or a flat you have not seen, and check anyone who phones you about an immigration or passport problem against the mission’s website. Do not give a passport to an agent.
• Numbers to save. 10111 for SAPS; 112 from a mobile; the High Commission’s distress number and the Consulate General’s telephone line for Indian nationals in difficulty; the Council for Medical Schemes on +27 86 112 3267 for a complaint about a scheme.

Most day-to-day information in a community like this moves through WhatsApp groups organised by temple, language, school, suburb and workplace: which clinic sees patients on a Sunday, which landlord to avoid, whether the water is back. South Africa’s groups are fast and generous, but you need to know someone to get the link, links circulate for months after a group has died, every member can see your phone number, and groups are where rental and visa scams circulate. A warning to “send the deposit today” or “pay the agent, the work visa is arranged” is the signal to stop.

What Namaste Community offers

Namaste Community is a community platform for Indians abroad, on the web and as an app. The app has groups, events, a directory and a way to ask questions. On the website: - the local groups for the country are on the South Africa groups page, and there are pages for Durban and Johannesburg; groups in the app are moderated and tied to a place; - the events across the country are on the South Africa events page, with pages for Durban and Johannesburg; - the directory for South Africa lists the businesses and services on the site, and a business can add itself; - Ask lets members put a question to people who have done it, and an anonymous mode exists for questions you would rather not attach to your name.

Your first week, practically

1. Open the groups for your city and read before you post; the paperwork answers are often there already.
2. Go to one event in the first fortnight, such as a Sunday programme at a temple or the Durban Diwali Festival, and say who you are.
3. Say in your question whether you are a South African citizen, an OCI applicant or an Indian national on a visa, because the answers differ for visas, school places, banking and driving licences.
4. Never send a deposit, a passport scan or a fee to someone you met in a group without meeting them and checking who they are.
5. When you have found your flat, your doctor and your grocer, leave an answer or a review for the next person from Hyderabad, Chennai or Ahmedabad. This guide links city pages only for Durban and Johannesburg, so for Cape Town, Pietermaritzburg and Gqeberha start from the country pages, and if the group you need is missing, start it.

The groups near you are listed below.