The Afrikaners of South Africa

Afrikaners are South Africans of Dutch or French Huguenot descent that was known primarily as Boers, from the Dutch word for farmer. Afrikaners make up approximately 56 percent of South Africa’s white population. The first Afrikaners were Dutch pioneers who settled in 1652 in what is now Cape Province. Their language, customs and religion were shaped by more than three centuries of harsh frontier life. They intermarried with French Protestant (Huguenot) refugees to create the early Boer population. When the British occupied South Africa in 1795, many Boers refused to live under British occupation. During the 18th and 19th centuries, Afrikaans-speaking frontiersmen pushed into the interior, fighting both their Bantu neighbors and the British. These migrations, known as ‘the Great Trek’, were undertaken from Cape Colony into the interior beginning in 1835 and lasting into the 1840s. The participants moved inland by ox-wagons, settling and establishing two independent states, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. After the Afrikaner defeat in the Second South African War (1899-1902), the British annexed these territories, and in 1910 the Union of South Africa was formed. Politically, the Afrikaners played a secondary role to the English-speaking South Africans until 1948, when the electoral victory of the Afrikaner National Party institutionalized Afrikaner political supremacy.