Afrikaners () are a Southern African ethnic group descended from predominantly Dutch settlers who first arrived at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652.Entry: Cape Colony. Encyclopædia Britannica Volume 4 Part 2: Brain to Casting. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. 1933. James Louis Garvin, editor. Until 1994, they dominated South Africa's politics as well as the country's commercial and agricultural sector.
Afrikaans, a language which evolved from the Dutch dialect of South Holland, is the mother tongue of Afrikaners and most Cape Coloureds. According to the South African National Census of 2022, 10.6% of South Africans spoke Afrikaans as a first language at home, making it the country's fourth-largest home language after English, Zulu and Xhosa.
The arrival of Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama at Calicut, India, in 1498 opened a gateway of free access to Asia from Western Europe around the Cape of Good Hope. This access necessitated the founding and safeguarding of trade stations along the African and Asian coasts. The Portuguese landed in Mossel Bay in 1488, explored Table Bay two years later, and by 1510 had started raiding inland. Shortly afterwards, the Dutch Republic sent merchant vessels to India and, in 1602, founded the Dutch East India Company (; VOC). As the volume of traffic rounding the Cape increased, the VOC recognised its natural harbour as an ideal watering point for the long voyage around Africa to East Asia and established a victualling station there in 1652. VOC officials did not favour the permanent settlement of Europeans in their trading empire, although during the 140 years of Dutch rule many VOC servants retired or were discharged and remained as private citizens. Furthermore, the exigencies of supplying local garrisons and passing fleets compelled the administration to confer free status on employees and oblige them to become independent farmers.
Encouraged by the success of this experiment, the company extended free passage from 1685 to 1707 for Dutch families wishing to settle at the Cape. In 1688, it sponsored the settlement of 200 French Huguenot refugees forced into exile by the Edict of Fontainebleau. The terms under which the Huguenots agreed to immigrate were the same as those offered to other VOC subjects, including free passage and the requisite farm equipment on credit. Prior attempts at cultivating vineyards or exploiting olive groves for fruit had been unsuccessful, and it was hoped that Huguenot colonists accustomed to Mediterranean agriculture could succeed where the Dutch had failed.Theale, George McCall (4 May 1882). Chronicles of Cape Commanders, or, An abstract of original manuscripts in the Archives of the Cape Colony. Cape Town: WA Richards & Sons 1882. pp 24—387. They were augmented by VOC soldiers returning from Asia, predominantly Germans channelled into Amsterdam by the company's extensive recruitment network and thence overseas. Despite their diverse nationalities, the colonists used a common language and adopted similar attitudes towards politics. The attributes they shared served as a basis for the evolution of Afrikaner identity and consciousness.
In the 20th century, Afrikaner nationalism took the form of political parties and closed societies, such as the . In 1914, the National Party (NP) was founded to promote Afrikaner interests. After winning the 1948 general election, the party implemented a harsh policy of racial segregation (apartheid) and declared South Africa a republic in 1961. Following decades of domestic unrest and international sanctions that resulted in bilateral and multi-party negotiations to end apartheid, South Africa held its first non-racial elections under a universal franchise in 1994. As a result of this election, the NP was ousted from power, and was eventually dissolved in 2005.
Nomenclature The term "Afrikaner" currently denotes the politically, culturally, and socially dominant and majority group among white South Africans, or the Afrikaans-speaking population of Dutch origin. Their original progenitors, especially in paternal lines, also included smaller numbers of Flemish, French Huguenot, German, Danish, Norwegian, Swiss, and Swedish immigrants. Historically, the terms "" and "" have both been used to describe white Afrikaans-speakers as a group; neither is particularly objectionable, but "Afrikaner" has been considered a more appropriate term.
The term "Afrikaner" originally described mixed-race nomadic people in Southern Africa similar to Basters across Namibia and South Africa. Such groups include the Oorlam people under Oude Ram Afrikaner and Jager Afrikaner in the early 1700s, with the Oorlam continuing to use Afrikaner as a surname and subgroup of their people. The first recorded instance of a colonist identifying as an Afrikaner occurred in March 1707, during a disturbance in Stellenbosch. When the magistrate, Johannes Starrenburg, ordered an unruly crowd to desist, a young white man named Hendrik Biebouw retorted, "" ("I will not leave, I am an African – even if the magistrate were to beat me to death or put me in jail, I shall not be, nor will I stay, silent!"). Biebouw was flogged for his insolence and later banished to Batavia (present-day Jakarta, Indonesia). The word Afrikaner is thought to have first been used to classify Cape Coloureds, or other groups of mixed-race ancestry. Biebouw had numerous mixed-race siblings and may have identified with Coloureds socially. The growing use of the term appeared to express the rise of a new identity for white South Africans, suggesting for the first time a group identification with the Cape Colony rather than with an ancestral homeland in Europe.
By the late nineteenth century, the term was common language in both the Boer republics and the Cape Colony.S. W. Martin, Faith Negotiating Loyalties: An Exploration of South African Christianity Through a Reading of the Theology of H. Richard Niebuhr (University Press of America, 2008), , pp. 53-54. At one time, burghers denoted Cape Dutch: those settlers who were influential in the administration, able to participate in urban affairs, and did so regularly. Boers often refer to settled ethnic European farmers or nomadic cattleherders. During the Batavian Republic of 1795–1806, ('citizen') was popularised among Dutch communities both at home and abroad as a popular revolutionary form of address. In South Africa, it remained in use as late as the Second Boer War of 1899–1902. Afrikaner people are also commonly referred to as Afrikaans people.
Population 1691 estimates
VOC initially had no intention of establishing a permanent Dutch settlement at the Cape of Good Hope; until 1657, it devoted as little attention as possible to the development or administration of the Dutch Cape Colony. From the VOC's perspective, there was little financial incentive to regard the region as anything more than the site of a strategic manufacturing centre. Furthermore, the Cape was unpopular among VOC employees, who regarded it as a barren and insignificant outpost with little opportunity for advancement.
A small number of longtime VOC employees who had been instrumental in the colony's founding and its first five years of existence, however, expressed interest in applying for grants of land with the objective of retiring at the Cape as farmers. In time, they came to form a class of former VOC employees, , also known as (free citizens, who stayed in Dutch territories overseas after serving their contracts). The were to be of Dutch birth (although exceptions were made for some Germans), married, "of good character", and had to undertake to spend at least twenty years in Southern Africa. In March 1657, when the first started receiving their farms, the white population of the Cape was only about 134. Although the soil and climate in Cape Town were suitable for farming, willing immigrants remained in short supply, including a number of orphans, refugees, and foreigners. From 1688 onward, the Cape attracted some French Huguenots, most of them refugees from the protracted conflict between Protestants and Catholics in France.
South Africa's white population in 1691 has been described as the Afrikaner "parent stock", as no significant effort was made to secure more colonist families after the dawn of the 18th century, and a majority of Afrikaners are descended from progenitors who arrived prior to 1700 in general and the late 1600s in particular. Although some two-thirds of this figure were Dutch-speaking Hollanders, there were at least 150 Huguenots and a nearly equal number of Low German speakers. Also represented in smaller numbers were Swedes, Danes, and Belgians.
+White population in the Dutch Cape Colony, 1691AncestryPercentage Dutch 66.67% French16.67% German 14.29% Scandinavian, Belgian 2.37% Note – Figures do not include expatriate soldiers, sailors, or servants of the company.
1754 estimates In 1754, Cape Governor Ryk Tulbagh conducted a census of his non-indigenous subjects. White - now outnumbered by slaves brought from West Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar and the Dutch East Indies - only totalled about 6,000.
1806 estimates Following the defeat and collapse of the Dutch Republic during Joseph Souham's Flanders Campaign, William V, Prince of Orange, escaped to the United Kingdom and appealed to the British to occupy his colonial possessions until he was restored. Holland's administration was never effectively reestablished; upon a new outbreak of hostilities with France, expeditionary forces led by Sir David Baird, 1st Baronet, finally permanently imposed British rule when they defeated Cape governor Jan Willem Janssens in 1806.
At the onset of Cape Town's annexation to the British Empire, the original Afrikaners numbered 26,720 – or 36% of the colony's population.
+White population in the British Cape Colony, 1806Colenbrander, Herman. (1902). Kessinger Publishing 2010. .AncestryPercentage Dutch 50.0% German 27.0% French 17.0% Scandinavian, Belgian, other 5.5% Note – Figures do not include expatriate soldiers or officials from other British possessions.
1936 Census The South African census of 1936 gave the following breakdown of language speakers of European origin. +Home language of people of European origin in 1936LanguageCape of Good HopeNatalTransvaalOrange Free StateUnion of South Africa (total)Percentage of totalAfrikaans461,35638,301452,252168,8611,120,77055.93%English297,077141,550318,09026,354783,07139.08%Afrikaans & English19,6983,72723,1923,79450,4112.52%German6,0484,7926,47050017,8100.89%Yiddish4,74529911,5281,11217,6840.88%Dutch8261752,7401673,9080.19%Greek299981,435861,9180.1%Portuguese158671,51081,7430.09%Italian3831141,17571,6790.08%French189815423181,4450.07%Other5785481600472,7730.14%Unspecified21763341246450.03%
1960 Census The South African census of 1960 was the final census undertaken in the Union of South Africa. The ethno-linguistic status of some 15,994,181 South African citizens was projected by various sources through sampling language, religion, and race. At least 1.6 million South Africans were white Afrikaans speakers, or 10% of the total population. They also constituted 9.3% of the population in neighbouring South West Africa.
1985 Census According to the 1985 South African census, there were 2,581,080 white Afrikaans speakers then residing in the country, or about 9.4% of the total population.
1996 Census The South African National Census of 1996 was the first census conducted in post-apartheid South Africa. It was calculated on Census Day and reported a population of 2,558,956 white Afrikaans speakers. The census noted that Afrikaners represented the eighth largest ethnic group in the country, or 6.3% of the total population. Even after the end of apartheid, the ethnic group only fell by 25,000 people.
2001 Census