According to the most comprehensive study to date on the emerging black middle class in South Africa, the group is responsible for nearly a quarter of the annual cash buying power of R600 billion.

"There were huge surprises for the average marketer in this study," said John Simpson, director of the Unilever Institute at the University of Cape Town which conducted the research.

"The one is the sheer size of the group and then it also accounts for 23 per cent of total consumer power in this country, which has been achieved in a very, very short period and continues to grow very rapidly indeed," he added.

The so-called "Black Diamond" marketing survey found the new black middle class to be two-million-strong or about 10 per cent of the black adult population.

"It's taken off in a space of 10 or 15 years," said Simpson, referring to the end of apartheid in 1994 when Nelson Mandela became the first democratically-elected president.

"We've had political intervention which has suddenly unleashed opportunities for a group of people who normally would have been part of a vibrant middle class," he told AFP.

The report said that under apartheid, "black society was a single, monolithic, classless society with limited, menial jobs, no home ownership and under-educated".

But the end of apartheid caused a "dramatic disruption" with "enormous and immediate effects - access to jobs, finance, credit, homes, education".

The research was compiled from 750 face-to-face countrywide interviews lasting about 50 minutes in November and December last year.

Research project leader Refiloe Mataboge said the black middle class was a very complex group to understand because they lived in two worlds - modern and traditional.

Some 86 per cent of respondents said they still believed in the practice of "lobola" while 75 per cent believed in slaughtering cows to thank their ancestors.

Nearly half of them said they believed in the power of traditional healers and 34 per cent said they would consult a traditional healer before going to a medical doctor.

Almost 90 per cent said it was their duty to "take care of my parents after I have left home".

- Nampa-AFP

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