Main article: Apartheid Apartheid era In recent years there has been a tendency within South Africa to describe the mixed race ("
coloured") population of South Africa, most of whom speak Afrikaans as their first language, as Afrikaners or 'coloured Afrikaners'. However the Afrikaans-speakers of mixed race in South Africa and
Namibia usually refer to themselves as "
kleurlinge" ('coloureds') and "bruinmense" ('brown people'). "
Basters" ('of mixed race', literally '
bastards') is a term that was formerly common but is now rarely encountered due to its pejorative nature. Other non-white Afrikaans-speaking groups are the "
Griqua", "
Namaqua", and "
Khoikhoi".
The switch from 'coloured' to 'Afrikaner' has seen some success despite the history of exclusion during the colonial and apartheid eras. However, many Afrikaans-speaking coloureds feel they have developed a separate identity from white Afrikaners due to the strict
racial segregation policies of the apartheid years, and there are marked colloquial differences between the languages as spoken by whites and Cape coloureds. Some Afrikaans-speaking coloureds also practise the Islamic religion, due to their
Malay roots.
Recently, some liberal Afrikaans-speaking South Africans and Namibians have rejected the label 'Afrikaner', because of its negative connotations of racial and religious intolerance. Some use the
neologism and racially neutral term "Afrikaanses" to refer to themselves as persons whose mother tongue is Afrikaans, disregarding the supposed – and hard to define – ethnic identity or apartheid-era racial categorisation.
Post-Apartheid era Geography Although there is no indication of "ethnic group" or "ethnicity" in the South African census, a combination of race (
white) and first language (Afrikaans) is the closest available approximation of
Afrikaner. There were 2,536,906 white Afrikaans first language speakers in
South Africa according to the 2001 census (1996: 2,558,956).
This population were spread across the provinces as follows according to the 2001 census:
The fine spread of the population throughout the country was caused by the
Great Trek, which took advantage of the abundance of undeveloped land in the South African interior and a steady supply of non-Afrikaner labour. This counteracted any need for Afrikaners to stay in an area equitable with their total population.
Eastern Cape 148,809 (1996: 154,513), forming 2.31% of total provincial population
Free State 214,020 (1996: 279,135), forming 7.9% of the total provincial population
Gauteng 1,003,860 (1996: 958,351), forming 11.36% of the total provincial population
Kwazulu-Natal 116,307 (1996: 124,555), forming 1.22% of the total provincial population
Limpopo 110,028 (1996: 98,875), forming 2.08% of the total provincial population
Mpumalanga 170,526 (1996: 208,655), forming 5.46% of the total provincial population
Northern Cape 93,222 (1996: 101,704), forming 11.33% of the total provincial population
North West 218,611 (1996: 196,347), forming 5.95% of the total provincial population
Western Cape 461,522 (1996: 436,822), forming 10.42% of the total provincial population
Republic of South Africa There were 133,324 speakers of Afrikaans in Namibia, forming 9.5% of the total national population, according to the 1991 census. Afrikaners are mostly found in
Windhoek and in the Southern provinces.
Namibia A significant number of Afrikaners have migrated to countries such as
Canada, the
United Kingdom, the
United States,
the Netherlands,
Belgium,
Australia,
New Zealand,
Spain,
Argentina, and
Mexico.
A large number of young Afrikaners are taking advantage of
working holiday visas made available by the United Kingdom and other
Commonwealth countries, as well as
the Netherlands and
Belgium, to gain work experience. The favourable exchange rate with the South African Rand (
ZAR) also increases the attractiveness of international experience.
Global presence 
Religion Main article: Afrikaans Language Afrikaners have a long literary tradition, and have produced a number of notable
novelists and
poets, including
Uys Krige,
Elisabeth Eybers,
Breyten Breytenbach,
André Brink, and
Athol Fugard.
Literature Music is probably the most popular artform among Afrikaners. While the traditional
Boeremusiek (Boer Music) and
Volkspele (literally, People Games) folk dancing enjoyed popularity in the past, most Afrikaners today favour a variety of international genres and light popular Afrikaans music. Some also enjoy a social dance event called a
sokkie.
Arts Rugby,
cricket and
golf are generally considered to be the most popular sports among Afrikaners. Rugby in particular is considered one of the central pillars of the Afrikaner community.
"Boere-sport" also played a very big role in the Afrikaner history. It consisted of a variety of sports like 'tug of war', three-legged races, jukskei, skilpadloop (tortoise walk) and other games.
Sport Institutions The
Afrikaanse Taal en Kultuurvereniging (ATKV) (Afrikaans Language and Culture Society) is responsible for promoting the Afrikaans language and culture.
Cultural The
Freedom Front is an Afrikaner ethnic political party in the Republican tradition, which lobbies for minority rights to be granted to all of the South African ethnic minorities. The Freedom Front is also leading the
Volkstaat initiative and is closely associated to the small town of
Orania. However, this party has only minority support among Afrikaners, with most supporting the
Democratic Alliance.
Political Differences of opinion about who qualifies as an Afrikaner arise from two opposing assumptions about the nature of ethnicity. A complicating factor is that ethnicity can be self-claimed, or can be ascribed by outsiders.
A first understanding of ethnicity is that it primarily describes relatively static inherent qualities that define exclusive groups based on common descent. Accordingly, individuals are born into distinct ethnic groups which share distinctive characteristics such as culture, religion, and language. From this perspective, you are born an Afrikaner; once an Afrikaner, always an Afrikaner. This perspective tends to be a-historical, in as far as it ignores the transmission of culture over time. Ethnicity is seen as a given.
A second assumption is that ethnicity comprises more fluid identity elements that create rather open-ended groups for particular purposes. Accordingly, ethnic groups form to meet particular needs, often to forge a superficial nationalistic unity out of rather disparate groups in order to gain material, social, or political advantages. From this viewpoint, ethnic groups exhibit great fluidity over time. Simply put, someone who is French can become an Afrikaner, for instance by learning the language and identifying with others who claim to be Afrikaners. In an extreme form, this argument leads to the conclusion that the commonalities within ethnic groups are largely imagined, and may in fact hide huge differences of dialect, religion, and historical experience. Proponents of this viewpoint may find it difficult to account for the stability of certain ethnic groups over time.
A commonly-understood--but seldom-mentioned--factor is that the definition of Afrikaner hinged on racial and linguistic components. While both were present from the start, the linguistic element received particular emphasis under British rule, and the racial element during apartheid. The project of forging an ethnic group arose among some non-British settlers who wanted to organize nationalistic opposition against the restrictive political oversight of first, their Dutch, and, later, their British rulers. Another purpose was to distinguish Afrikaans-speakers of European descent from indigenous groups (such as the Khoi) and slaves who may well have coined the language. Consequently, the meaning of "Afrikaner" was restricted to those who were both white and Afrikaans-speaking.
Changes in how "Afrikaner" is understood can clearly be traced through South African history in a way that incorporates elements of both static and fluid assumptions about ethnicity. During the 18th century the term was initially used by Dutch colonists to indicate their unique rootedness in Africa, even though they actually still spoke Dutch. The initial assumption of Dutch descent became irrelevant later when German and French settlers were incorporated into the 19th century definition. At this time the definition depended largely (but not completely) on uniting disparate settlers in opposition to British rule. The challenge was to forge an Afrikaner ethnic group from different economic classes and divergent levels of support for the British regime. What qualified one as belonging to an Afrikaner ethnic group varied somewhat according to historical period, .
While it may seem that the definition of "Afrikaner" is currently more problematic than before, such complexities were already present in colonial periods, as discussed below. Some have argued that the exclusive, racial overtones inherent in "Afrikaner" should be abandoned in favor of the linguistically more inclusive term,
Afrikaanses.
Classification The early Dutch colonists who claimed to be Afrikaners at the beginning of the 18th century did not constitute a distinct and new ethnic group. As first generation immigrants, they were culturally closer to their original ethnicities, (Dutch and later French and German). (Note that while the linguistic categories "Dutch", "French," and "German" are used as though they were homogeneous, they, too, comprised quite distinct dialects forged into unity through political and social projects, as indicated by the need to impose "Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands" in the Netherlands, for instance)
see Dutch language. From the first assumption about ethnicity described above, this group over time formed a shared identity with a common language (
Afrikaans), Protestant religious orientation, and cultural traits, distinct from--yet often borrowed from--their respective ancestors and British colonists. Yet while the early Afrikaners were largely Protestants, the Great Trek soon divided them into opposing religious factions. Economic differences existed which largely overlapped with regional variations between the western and eastern parts of the Cape colony, for instance.
The colonists at the Cape who remained when others began to trek inland during the 1690s and into the 1700s and were generally more affluent than those who trekked eastwards. The Cape Dutch tended to be loyal or indifferent to the colonial powers and as such did not take part in the
Great Trek.
Ideological and cultural divides emerged between the
Cape Dutch, Trekboers who migrated northwest, and Voortrekkers who moved northeast in the Great Trek. The term "
Boer" (farmer) came to be applied to Afrikaners who settled along the eastern Cape frontier and the Republican Afrikanders who trekked inland during the Great Trek. While such distinctions are presently less pronounced, due to the free movement between all areas of the South Africa, regional
dialects among Afrikaans-speakers remain.
Historical (tagged since February 2007) Currently it is difficult to classify anyone as an Afrikaner
White nationalism Afrikaner Calvinism Afrikaner cattle Anglo-Africans Afrikaner-Jews Huguenots in South Africa Whites in South Africa White people White Africans Boers Cape Coloureds Cape Dutch Cape Malay Culture of South Africa List of notable Afrikaners Orania South African farm attacks Trekboers Volkstaat Voortrekkers
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