Godless, rich, professional, environmentally conscious: a snapshot of South Africa’s atheists

Are the country’s atheists any happier, better off or more conscious of issues than their religious brothers and sisters? While South Africa remains an overwhelmingly religious country, there are a fair number of atheists (and Jedi apparently) who move among us. Who are they, what do they get up to and how do they live?

05 AUG 2014 01:00 (SOUTH AFRICA)
By MARIANNE THAMM.

While the country’s atheists (disclosure: I count myself among them) love the Internet and being online to catch up on news, do their banking, make travel bookings and buy books and music, their general social networking skills, at least on Facebook (the preferred social networking platform), leaves much to be desired. This might be because a large number of them like to garden, go to the movies and restaurants, travel and watch sport rather than hang about in a virtual world of play-play friends and followers.

Be that as it may, a quick search of Facebook reveals five pages by South African atheists with a collective online community of around only 1,000. The Dagga Party page, on the other hand, has around 33,000 likes and is far more active when it comes to posting, marketing (not zol obvs), prodding and provoking discussion. Then again atheists in general are not inclined to proselytising, even less so since the atheist Pope, Richard Dawkins, had a little meltdown in full view of around 1 million followers on Twitter recently.

While not all atheists tag themselves as such, some prefer to be referred to as “secular humanists” or “non-believers” and for several years now, just to peeve off the census, people some have enjoyed stating “Jedi” in the religious belief section. The grouping also includes people who would generally self-identify as agnostic, irreligious or non-religious. Whatever your choice of label, this section of society has never before been quantified or examined closely in this country.

But recent a WhyFive, BrandMapp Survey of 20,233 of the country’s nine million economically active citizens (49 percent of whom identified as black, 37 percent white, seven percent Indian and eight percent coloured) and the largest ever conducted, has yielded some interesting insights into the country’s godless.

http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2014-08-05-godless-rich-professional-environmentally-conscious-a-snapshot-of-south-africas-atheists/#.U-KxaPldVly