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Huddled around tables and surrounded by kitsch Boer War memorabilia, they roar with laughter as a transvestite stalks across the stage ranting about AIDS. His whiplash wit and taboo material is delivered in thickly-accented English interrupted with Afrikaans slang, and the bouffant wig, raspberry-coloured frock and diamante jewellery make him a frighteningly convincing old-style madam. This is Evita Bezuidenhout, a transvestite and satirist, and as far removed from the Afrikaner stereotype as is possible.

South Africans prefer to think of Afrikaners as thick-necked, red-faced farmers, as Boers who have suspect views on race and a penchant for pick-up trucks. But that’s just one of myriad stereotypes. From the noble Zulu to the up-tight English-speaker, each of the country’s cultures and ethnicities is labelled and pigeon-holed. South Africa does of course have one of the world’s most diverse populations, with far more confusing distinctions than simple black and white. There are an astonishing eleven official national languages, and countless religions, cultures and ethnicities which make it impossible to define what it means to be South African. No wonder that the country’s nick-name is “Rainbow Nation”, a term first coined by Desmond Tutu and now something of an epithet, fondly used by South Africans and gleefully splashed across tourist literature.

The “Rainbow” isn’t just about race. While the old apartheid government defined the population by skin colour, the way South Africans define themselves is far more complicated, rooted in history, geography and, perhaps most importantly, language. Afrikaans, for example, is central to the identity of its speakers. Originating from Dutch spoken by the first European settlers in the 17th century, it soaked up vocabulary from imported slaves from East Africa, Madagascar and Indonesia, and from the indigenous San and Khoi. The enormous Taal Monument, built in 1975 in the town of Paarl, illustrates these influences with gleaming white columns representing the various languages. It is hugely controversial, as the relative heights of the columns are said to downplay the effect that non-white languages had on Afrikaans.

With time, the language warped and wound away from Dutch and became distinct, spoken by both master and servant. And this is where the relevance lies today. While most people associate Afrikaans with white South Africans, it is actually spoken by just 60 per cent of the white population. However, Afrikaans is the language of 90 per cent of the ‘coloured’ population (a term lacking the negative connotations it has in Europe and the US, which refers to people of mixed race). This means that the majority of the Western Cape, inhabited mostly by coloured people, speaks Afrikaans.

Yet despite this important linguistic link, which is so fundamental to the identity and politics of both coloured and white people, the groups don’t mingle as much as you’d expect. Go to the Winelands and take a wander amongst the vineyards, for example. Here, the farm labourers bent over the grapes and trundling to and fro on tractors are coloured. Stroll into the cool interior of the historical wine estates, though, and the faces become white – the large majority of wine estates are white-owned. On the orange plantations around Citrusdal, further north, a twenty-thousand-acre farm might be run by a single white family. Here, a farm may hold schools, housing and shops for the hundreds of coloured orange-pickers, but the white children of the farm-owners will attend schools in the nearby towns, and the parents will shop in the towns’ supermarkets.

That is of course the story of South Africa – division and separation. But things are changing. Like with Evita Bezuidenhout, the stereotypes are being dispelled. Johannesburg, the great South African metropolis, a vast splat of shopping malls, fortified mansions and townships, is home to the latest South African development, the Buppies. Buppies are Black Upwardly Mobile People, a new clan of the young, wealthy and flash. The country’s first black-owned BMW dealership opened in Johannesburg to much media furore in 2003, in an area better known for its high crime rate than its top-end consumables – and business is booming. In modern Johannesburg, more black people own luxury cars than anywhere else in the country. Have a night out in one of the city’s cutting-edge nightclubs, and you’ll see glamorous groups of young black professionals in designer labels getting the best tables and footing the highest bills – something unthinkable in the dark days of apartheid, just over a decade ago.

Not that Johannesburg’s reputation for flashing its cash is anything new. There has been something of a long-standing rivalry between Johannesburg and Cape Town, a sort of New York/LA thing, where Capetonians envy Johannesburg’s strong economy, and Johannesburg residents crave Cape Town’s location and relaxed way of life. Johannesburg is where the money is – all the big businesses have their headquarters there, and the social scene is correspondingly vibrant and expensive. Cape Town, on the other hand, has a stunning ocean-side and mountainous setting, and laid-back lifestyle. While Johannesburg’s population is seen as sophisticated and cutting-edge, Capetonians are seen as carefree lovers of the good life. Pretoria, meanwhile, is envied by few, and is seen as a staid and stuffy administrative capital, albeit with a big student population which does its best to liven things up.

Johannesburg’s free-flowing cash has an obvious downside – it has the highest crime rate in South Africa. Much of this now rampages through downtown Johannesburg or in outlying slums; the notorious township of Soweto is no longer the hub of underground activity it once was. Instead, Soweto has grown into a city in its own right, and is the second most visited area by tourists after Kruger National Park. Here visitors get a real taster of South Africa’s melting pot. The various ‘tribes’ or ethnicities found in Southern Africa live side by side along Soweto’s dusty streets, their numbers bolstered by immigrants from Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. This mix of cultures and languages has created a new township lingua franca, known as Tsotsi taal, widely spoken by young males. It is a hybrid of Afrikaans, English and various African languages, and is a way of bridging language gaps – and sounding cool in the process (Tsotsi taal has something of a ‘gangster rap’ quality to it).

The most widely spoken language in South Africa after English is isiZulu, the language of South Africa’s most famous tribal group. The Zulu clan is best-known for its merciless rampage across 19th century South Africa under the warrior chief Shaka Zulu, and today remains one of the most politically powerful groups in the country. But the traditional movie-inspired image of the noble Zulu warrior isn’t one visitors will see today. Even the more recent stereotype of rural Zulus living off the land and longing for an independent state is no longer applicable. Over half of the Zulu population lives in cities, and young urban Zulus are having a big impact on popular culture. Kwaito, for example, the biggest force in music today, is dominated by two Zulu stars – Mandoza and Zola. Kwaito, a mix of dance music, hip-hop and rap, has become the sound of young, black Johannesburg and the stars that propagate it are resolutely hard-edged and urban. And the sound has been picked up across South Africa – Kwaito is played in bars and nightclubs from Cape Town to the Kalahari.

So the boundaries are shifting – if slowly. Rural areas may be lagging behind, but in urban South Africa you’ll happily find a Buppie in a BMW, or an Afrikaaner transvestite tapping his heels to a Kwaito beat. Or frankly, anything in between.

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