This paper examines trends in age-specific mortality in a rural South African population from 1992 to 2003, a decade spanning major sociopolitical change and emergence of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Changing mortality patterns are discussed within a health-transition framework.

Data on population size, structure, and deaths, obtained from the Agincourt health and demographic surveillance system, were used to calculate person-years at risk and death rates. Life tables were computed by age, sex and calendar year. Mortality rates for the early period 1992–93 and a decade later, 2002–03, were compared.

Findings demonstrate significant increases in mortality for both sexes since the mid-1990s, with a rapid decline in life expectancy of 12 years in females and 14 years in males. The increases are most prominent in children (0–4) and young adult (20–49) age groups, in which increases of two- and fivefold respectively have been observed in the past decade. Sex differences in mortality patterns are evident with increases more marked in females in most adult age groups.

Empirical data demonstrate a marked “counter transition” with mortality increasing in children and young adults, “epidemiologic polarization” with vulnerable subgroups experiencing a higher mortality burden, and a “protracted transition” with simultaneous emergence of HIV/AIDS together with increasing non-communicable disease in older adults. The health transition in rural South Africa is unlikely to predict patterns elsewhere; hence the need to examine trends in as many contexts as have the data to support such analyses.