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Author: BazBus Editorial Team
Quick Summary: South Africa has 12 official languages, and English is the home language of fewer than one in ten people. Despite that, it functions as the national lingua franca — it is the language of government, business, road signs, menus and tourism, and you can travel the entire Cape Town to Port Elizabeth corridor speaking only English without difficulty. What changes region by region is not whether people understand you, but which language they were speaking before you walked up.
You will be fine. English is spoken and understood almost everywhere a visitor is likely to go in South Africa, and in the tourist-facing parts of the economy — hostels, restaurants, tour operators, transport, banks, shops — it is essentially universal.
But the fuller answer is more interesting than that, and knowing it changes how you experience the country. English is not the majority language here. It is the shared second, third or fourth language of a country where most people are comfortably multilingual, and where the person serving you coffee may well speak three languages better than they speak English.
Understanding that distinction is the difference between travelling through South Africa and actually noticing it.
South Africa’s constitution recognises 12 official languages: Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, and since 2023, South African Sign Language.
The most recent national data comes from Census 2022. Measured by the language people speak most often at home, the Census 2022 statistical release reports:
South African Sign Language became the country’s 12th official language in July 2023. Census 2022 recorded fewer than 1% of the population communicating primarily through sign language.
So English sits fifth, spoken at home by roughly one South African in twelve. And yet almost every official notice, bank statement, road sign and restaurant menu you encounter will be in English. That gap between home language and public language is the single most important thing to understand about communicating here.
English became the default public language partly through colonial history and partly through post-1994 pragmatism. In a country with eleven spoken official languages and no single majority, English functions as the neutral middle ground — the language two people from different linguistic backgrounds are most likely to share.
The practical consequence for you is that English competence is very high in urban and tourism-facing contexts and thinner in deep rural areas, among older speakers, and in provinces where a single African language dominates almost completely. It is a competence distribution, not a yes-or-no.
This is where the national averages stop being useful and local detail takes over. The Cape Town to Port Elizabeth corridor crosses a genuine linguistic boundary, and the shift is noticeable if you know to listen for it.
The Western Cape is the one province where Afrikaans is the largest home language, spoken by roughly 41% of the provincial population, with isiXhosa at around 31%. English is widely spoken as a first language in parts of the city and near-universally as a second language.
In practice, in Cape Town you will hear all three, often in the same conversation, and frequently mixed within a single sentence. Kaapse Afrikaans — the distinctive Afrikaans of the Cape Flats and Bo-Kaap — is a language variety worth listening to even if you understand none of it.
You will not need a word of anything but English. But knowing that “Hoe gaan dit?” is Afrikaans for “How’s it going?” and that “dankie” means thank you will get you a warmer response than you expect.
Afrikaans becomes more dominant as you move inland and into smaller farming towns — Stellenbosch, Swellendam, and the agricultural areas around the Garden Route. English remains entirely functional in any tourism context, but in a rural hardware shop or a farm stall you may find Afrikaans is the working language and English the courtesy one.
On a Stellenbosch vineyard and wine tasting day tour, for instance, your tasting will be conducted in English, but the conversation at the next table probably will not be.
Mossel Bay through to Storms River is linguistically mixed — Afrikaans, isiXhosa and English all present, with English dominant in the visitor economy because the region runs substantially on tourism. This is the most English-comfortable stretch of the entire route outside central Cape Town.
Here the balance shifts decisively. isiXhosa is the home language of roughly 82% of the Eastern Cape’s population, the highest concentration of any language in any province apart from isiZulu in KwaZulu-Natal.
English remains the language of business, signage and tourism in Gqeberha, and you will have no practical difficulty. But you have crossed into genuinely isiXhosa-speaking territory, and if you are going to learn a few words of one African language on this trip, isiXhosa is the one that will be most useful along this route.
Different region, different languages again. Xitsonga, siSwati and Sepedi dominate around the Kruger area, with Afrikaans and English widely used in the tourism industry. Safari guides on any Kruger Park safari operate in English as standard, and many guide in several languages.
Here is what catches most visitors off guard: even when everyone around you is speaking English, you will not always understand it.
South African English has absorbed a substantial vocabulary from Afrikaans and the African languages, and locals use these words with visitors without ever thinking of them as unusual. A short glossary saves a lot of confusion:
Our drivers have been translating this vocabulary for international passengers since 1995, usually within the first hour of a trip. It is one of the small things that makes the on-board commentary useful in a way a rental car’s GPS is not.
Nobody expects you to learn isiXhosa. But a handful of words, used sincerely, changes interactions in a way that is genuinely noticeable.
isiXhosa (Eastern Cape and much of the Western Cape):
Afrikaans (Western Cape, Winelands, Northern Cape):
isiXhosa and isiZulu contain click consonants, written as c, x and q. Briefly: c is the dental click, the tutting sound; x is the lateral click, the sound used to urge on a horse; q is the palatal click, like a bottle cork popping.
You will almost certainly get them wrong at first. Say them anyway. The attempt is what registers, and South Africans are generally delighted rather than critical when a visitor tries. The “Xh” in isiXhosa is itself a click, which is why the word sounds nothing like its spelling suggests to an English speaker.
Being honest about the limits of “everyone speaks English”:
This is the quiet advantage of travelling with a South African crew rather than a GPS.
Every BazBus bus carries an onboard South African expert who is not just driving but explaining — what you are looking at, how the town you are entering works, and, routinely, what a word means. Our own how it works material describes the drivers as there to help you see South Africa through the eyes of a South African, and language is a large part of what that means in practice.
It also means that when something needs sorting out — a booking, a direction, a conversation with a local operator — there is someone on hand who speaks the relevant language. That is a different situation from standing at a counter in a small town working it out alone.
“Back again in Germany from a fantastic journey in South Africa partly together with BAZBUS I would like to thank you. BAZBUS they helped me a lot with my travel arrangements. All my questions in advance were answered very quickly and precise. The bus travel from Cape Town all the way to Port Elizabeth were punctual and very satisfactory. Busus drivers were very friendly, competently.” — Leonard, Berlin.
Do I need to learn Afrikaans or isiXhosa before visiting South Africa?
No. English will carry you through every practical situation a traveller encounters — accommodation, transport, restaurants, banks, medical care, tours and shops all operate in English. Learning a few greetings is worth doing for the quality of the interactions it produces rather than out of necessity, and South Africans generally respond warmly to any attempt regardless of how badly you mangle the pronunciation. If you only learn two words for the whole trip, make them dankie in the Western Cape and enkosi in the Eastern Cape.
Will people understand my accent?
Usually, though it depends on the accent and the setting. South Africans are exposed to a wide range of English through media and tourism, and staff in the visitor economy hear international accents daily. Where problems arise, it is more often speed than accent — speaking slightly slower and avoiding idioms specific to your own country resolves most misunderstandings. Bear in mind that the person you are talking to may be speaking their third or fourth language, which is worth a little patience on both sides.
Is it rude to speak English to someone whose first language is not English?
Not at all, and it is the normal default in South Africa. Most South Africans switch between languages constantly and will move to English with a visitor without giving it a second thought. What is worth avoiding is the assumption that English competence equals education or status — it does not, and treating someone as less capable because they are working in their second language is the one genuinely offensive move available here. Greeting someone in their own language first, then continuing in English, is the approach that lands best.
Which language should I learn if I am only learning one?
It depends on your route. For a trip concentrated on Cape Town and the Winelands, Afrikaans gives you more everyday exposure. For a Garden Route trip ending in the Eastern Cape, isiXhosa is the more useful choice and the more appreciated one, since fewer visitors attempt it. If you are heading to Kruger and the Lowveld afterwards, neither is especially useful there — that region runs on Xitsonga, siSwati and Sepedi.
Are road signs and menus in English?
Yes, essentially everywhere you will travel. National road signage is in English, and many signs in the Western Cape appear in both English and Afrikaans. Restaurant menus in tourist areas are in English, though dish names often use Afrikaans or African-language words — bobotie, boerewors, potjiekos, pap, chakalaka, bunny chow — which are worth asking about rather than skipping. Asking a waiter to explain a dish is one of the easier ways to get a genuine conversation going.
The language statistics here come from Census 2022, which measures the language spoken most often in the household rather than total speakers or second-language competence, so the figures understate how many South Africans actually speak English or any other language — treat them as a picture of home life rather than of what you will hear on the street. Regional generalisations also flatten considerable local variation, so the practical workaround is simple: listen to how people around you greet each other before deciding which language to lead with, and ask your onboard crew or hostel staff, who will tell you exactly what is spoken where you are standing.
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