Dear Karl,
First of all I am not neutral or objective in this matter. I say it directly, bluntly and frank. I have connections to white South-Africans. My sisters family is mainly English South-African, but also have Afrikaander (Boer) roots. My sister has no connections with Afrikaander Boers, because she lives in the English speaking white South-African community. But because she lives in South-Africa she of course has contacts with Xsosa, coloured, Afrikaner (Boer people), Indian and Cape Malayan (The Cape Muslims) people in her daily life. Her community is mainly white Christian (Anglican church, Methodist) and jewish English speaking. I don't hate the Black, coloured or Cape Malayan people, but fact is that due to Portuguese, Dutch and English colonial systems, centuries of tribal warfare, the British racist colonial system of the 19th and early 20th century and the Apartheid system, the Black and coloured people got less and less good education, economical possibilities and health care than the white population. It is true that you have some reverse racism today. But don't be mistaken, despite the farmer murders, the largest discrimination takes place against coloured people, and black tribes which are less numerous. You have 8,104,752 Xsosa people in South-Africa and they are very dominant in the ANC, South-African administration, police, army and intelligence community. Next to the Xsosa people you have 10–12 million Zulu people. The Zulu's who are connected to the ANC also have a certain position like for instance president Zuma, Malusi Gigaba, minister of Minister of Finance (and before that serving as Minister of Home Affairs), Blade Nzimande; former Minister for Higher Education and Training and General Secretary of the South African Communist Party, Jeff Radebe; Minister in the Presidency for Planning, Performance, Monitoring, Evaluation and Administration. Radebe has served in the government of South Africa as Minister in the Presidency since 2014. Previously he was Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development from 2009 to 2014. Radebe is South Africa's longest continuously serving cabinet member, having been part of every national administration since 1994 and under every post-apartheid President. And last but not least I want to mention Mangosuthu Buthelezi, founder and president of the Inkatha Freedom Party.
I detest the brutal murders of the white South-African farmers from a human perspective. It is terrible that these productive, hardworking farmers are targeted, tortured and murdered like that. But in the same time it is bad for South-Africa as an investment country, for South-Africa's economy. There are presently no people who could replace that Afrikaander Boer farmers with their genetically centuries of farm experience with the South-African dry land. My sister lives in the city, but also there danger is present du to Tik (Crystal meth) addicted junkies in the hood and very poor black Xsosa people in the townships nearby. Third world lives next to the First world. Also Black (Zulu, Xsosa, Sotho, Swahili) middle class and high class faces the danger of robing, looting and being attacked by the poor have nots. It is a rather extreme country, South-Africa, comparable to for instance the extremely dangerous Venezuela in South-America. Income and wealth inequality and lack of education, skills and jobs for many people creates huge tension, violence, crime, political tension and an unsafe environment for white South-Africans and wealthy Black and coloured South-Africans. Mind you that blacks, coloured and Indians (South-African Hindu) people are target today too. And I wouldn't like to stand in the shoes of Black African immigrants or coloured immigrants with another ethnic background (Pakistani and others), because you are a target today. Immigrants got attacked, beaten up, lynched, tortured and murdered by South-African black mobs.
If we want to know the whole truth of South-Africa we have to look at it's history. I don't deny the wrongdoings of Apartheid, but do not condone the brutal murders of the white Afrikaander Boers either. Maybe it is different from me because I have a South-African sister and family and because the Afrikaander Boers have Dutch heritage. Afrikaans comes close to Dutch and I have spoken Dutch with white and coloured Afrikaans speaking people in South-Africa who spoke Afrikaans back. Afrikaander people are people like most other people. Historical factors like the fact that they are mostly offspring of VOC (the Dutch East India Company) sailors and early Dutch, German, French (Huguenot/Protestant) and Swiss settlers in the Dutch VOC colony. Later they became their own people when they settled the land and struggled with the climate, indigenous peoples and the Brits who invaded South-Africa centuries later. Already during the VOC time the Afrikaanders developed a different independent culture from the Dutch. You could compare them to the Americans and Australians, who also became different than the British coloniser.
In my opinion Apartheid was bad, but in the same time the white South-Afrikaander Afrikaanders (Boers) aren't Europeans anymore. They have a different, language, different culture, different lifestyle and different mentality than the Dutch for instance. You know them better than I do probably, because you have been longer in South-Africa and Namibia than I do Karl. Fact is that the Boers always lived next to and inbetween the Black peoples of South-Africa and the Coloured people, while the English South-Africans or Anglo-Africans, like my sisters family, always lived in white cities or towns, in predominantly white area's. Where the Afrikaanders (Boers) dominated the South-African administration, army, police and agriculture, the white English South-Africans had a dominant position in the South-African economy. Of course you also had Afrikaander lawjers, autorney's, judges, doctors, intellectuals, professors and teachers.
Fact is that you still have 2,600,000 Afrikaander people in South-Africa and about 3.5 million Afrikaander people world wide. If all Afrikaander Boer people will leave South-Africa they will go to the UK, the Netherlands, the USA, Australia and probably Canada and New Zealand. Maybe some of them will go to Germany or Scandinavia. They will look for area's where they can find work. Of course most Afrikaander today are not farmers, but businesspeople, merchants, middle class, police officers, civil servants, teachers, academic people and such. In contrast with the popular image of the primitive blunt Afrikaander in Hollywood movies and other Western movies there are very intelligent, sophisticated and educated Afrikaander people too. University professors, rather good writers, poets, artists, musicians, journalists (for instance of the Afrikaner newspaper Die Burger), teachers, doctors, lawjers, real estate agents and etc. The West will have to get used to the influx of these people. Hundreds of thousands of Afrikaners in the Netherlands will create some tensions between the rather liberal, secular and progressive Dutch and the rather conservative, orthodox Calvinist Afrikaners.
Due to the Anti-Apartheid sympathies of many Dutch they aren't per se so Pro Afrikaner Boers as you may think. Kindred peoples in genes, language and certain aspects in culture. The Afrikaner Boers and Dutch farmers will have something in common, so will the Dutch traditional middle class and Afrikaner middle class and the Afrikaner intelligentsia mixes very well with the Dutch intelligentsia. There are connections between Dutch writers, poets and artists and South-African Afrikaner Boer writers, poets and artists.
South Africa's history
Settlements of Bantu-speaking peoples, who were iron-using agriculturists and herdsmen, were already present south of the Limpopo River (now the northern border with Botswana and Zimbabwe) by the 4th or 5th century CE. (See Bantu expansion.) They displaced, conquered and absorbed the original Khoisan speakers, the Khoikhoi and San peoples. The Bantu slowly moved south. The earliest ironworks in modern-day KwaZulu-Natal Province are believed to date from around 1050. The southernmost group was the Xhosa people, whose language incorporates certain linguistic traits from the earlier Khoisan people. The Xhosa reached the Great Fish River, in today's Eastern Cape Province. As they migrated, these larger Iron Age populations displaced or assimilated earlier peoples. In Mpumalanga, several stone circles have been found along with the stone arrangement that has been named Adam's Calendar.
Khoisan people walking through sandy bush
Khoisan huntersPortuguese contactsAt the time of European contact, the dominant ethnic group were Bantu-speaking peoples who had migrated from other parts of Africa about one thousand years before. The two major historic groups were the
Xhosa and
Zulu peoples.
Xhosa people in South-Africa
Zulu Dancers, KwaZulu Natal, South-AfricaIn 1487, the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias led the first European voyage to land in southern Africa.[29] On 4 December, he landed at Walfisch Bay (now known as Walvis Bay in present-day Namibia). This was south of the furthest point reached in 1485 by his predecessor, the Portuguese navigator Diogo Cão (Cape Cross, north of the bay). Dias continued down the western coast of southern Africa. After 8 January 1488, prevented by storms from proceeding along the coast, he sailed out of sight of land and passed the southernmost point of Africa without seeing it. He reached as far up the eastern coast of Africa as, what he called, Rio do Infante, probably the present-day Groot River, in May 1488, but on his return he saw the Cape, which he first named Cabo das Tormentas (Cape of Storms). His King, John II, renamed the point Cabo da Boa Esperança, or Cape of Good Hope, as it led to the riches of the East Indies.[30] Dias' feat of navigation was later immortalised in Luís de Camões' Portuguese epic poem, The Lusiads (1572).
Dutch colonisation
By the early 17th century, Portugal's maritime power was starting to decline, and English and Dutch merchants competed to oust Lisbon from its lucrative monopoly on the spice trade. Representatives of the British East India Company did call sporadically at the Cape in search of provisions as early as 1601, but later came to favour Ascension Island and St. Helena as alternative ports of refuge.[32] Dutch interest was aroused after 1647, when two employees of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) were shipwrecked there for several months. The sailors were able to survive by obtaining fresh water and meat from the natives. They also sowed vegetables in the fertile soil. Upon their return to Holland they reported favourably on the Cape's potential as a "warehouse and garden" for provisions to stock passing ships for long voyages.
Jan van Riebeeck arrives in Table Bay in April 1652, painted by Charles Davidson BellIn 1652, a century and a half after the discovery of the Cape sea route,
Jan van Riebeeck established a victualing station at
the Cape of Good Hope, at what would become
Cape Town, on behalf of
the Dutch East India Company (
De Verenigde Oost Indische Compagnie). In time, the Cape become home to a large population of "
vrijlieden", also known as "
vrijburgers" (
free citizens),
former Company employees who stayed in Dutch territories overseas after serving their contracts. Dutch traders also imported
thousands of slaves to the fledgling colony from
Indonesia,
Madagascar, and
parts of eastern Africa. The descendants of these Indonesians are
the Muslim Cape Malayans of
the Western Cape today. Some of the earliest mixed race communities in the country were later formed through unions between vrijburgers, their slaves, and various indigenous peoples. This led to the development of a new ethnic group,
the Cape Coloureds, most of whom adopted
the Dutch language and
Christian faith. The 4,771,500 Cape Coloureds are the largest ethnic group in Cape Town and the Western Cape Province today. The second largest group are the Xsosa people there. And after that come the white Anglo-Saxons and the Afrikaners (Boer people).
The eastward expansion of Dutch colonists ushered in
a series of wars with the southwesterly migrating Xhosa tribe, as both sides competed for the pastureland necessary to graze their cattle near the Great Fish River.
Vrijburgers who became independent farmers on the frontier were known as Boers, with some adopting
semi-nomadic lifestyles being denoted as
trekboers (
wandering farmers).
The Boers formed loose militias, which they termed
commandos, and
forged alliances with Khoisan groups to
repel Xhosa raids. Both sides launched bloody but inconclusive offensives, and sporadic violence, often accompanied by
livestock theft, remained common for several decades.
British colonisationGreat Britain occupied
Cape Town between
1795 and
1803 to prevent it from falling under the control of
the French First Republic, which had invaded
the Low Countries (
The Netherlands). Despite briefly returning to
Dutch rule under
the Batavian Republic in
1803,
the Cape was occupied again by
the British in
1806. Following
the end of the Napoleonic Wars, it was formally ceded to
Great Britain and became
an integral part of
the British Empire.
British immigration to
South Africa began around
1818, subsequently culminating in
the arrival of the 1820 Settlers. The new colonists were induced to settle for a variety of reasons, namely to increase the size of the European workforce and to bolster frontier regions against Xhosa incursions.
In the first two decades of the 19th century, the Zulu people grew in power and expanded their territory under their leader, Shaka.[41] Shaka's warfare led indirectly to the Mfecane ("crushing") that devastated and depopulated the inland plateau in the early 1820s. An offshoot of
the Zulu,
the Matabele people created a larger empire that included large parts of the highveld under their king
Mzilikazi.
During the early 1800s, many Dutch settlers departed from the Cape Colony, where they had been subjected to British control. They migrated to the future
Natal,
Orange Free State, and
Transvaal regions.
The Boers founded
the Boer Republics:
the South African Republic (now Gauteng, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North West provinces) and
the Orange Free State (
Free State).
The discovery of
diamonds in
1867 and gold in
1884 in the interior started
the Mineral Revolution and increased economic growth and immigration. This intensified
British efforts to gain control over
the indigenous peoples. The struggle to control these important economic resources was a factor in relations between Europeans and the indigenous population and also between
the Boers and
the British.
The Anglo-Zulu War was fought in 1
879 between
the British Empire and
the Zulu Kingdom. Following Lord Carnarvon's successful introduction of federation in Canada, it was thought that similar political effort, coupled with military campaigns, might succeed with
the African kingdoms,
tribal areas and
Boer republics in
South Africa. In
1874,
Sir Henry Bartle Frere was sent to
South Africa as
High Commissioner for the British Empire to bring such plans into being. Among the obstacles were the presence of the independent states of
the South African Republic and
the Kingdom of Zululand and
its army.
The Zulu nation spectacularly defeated
the British at
the Battle of Isandlwana. Eventually though the war was lost resulting in
the end of the Zulu nation's independence.
The Boer Republics successfully
resisted British encroachments during
the First Boer War (1880–1881) using
guerrilla warfare tactics, which were
well suited to local conditions.
The British returned with greater numbers, more experience, and new strategy in
the Second Boer War (1899–1902) but suffered heavy casualties through attrition; nonetheless, they were ultimately successful.
IndependenceWithin the country,
anti-British policies among
white South Africans focused on
independence. During the
Dutch and
British colonial years,
racial segregation was mostly informal, though some legislation was enacted to control the settlement and movement of native people, including
the Native Location Act of 1879 and
the system of pass laws.
Eight years after the end of
the Second Boer War and after
four years of negotiation,
an act of the British Parliament (
South Africa Act 1909) granted
nominal independence, while creating
the Union of South Africa on
31 May 1910.
The Union was a dominion that included
the former territories of the Cape and
Natal colonies, as well as
the republics of
Orange Free State and
Transvaal.
The Natives' Land Act of
1913 severely restricted the ownership of land by blacks; at that stage natives controlled only 7% of the country. The amount of land reserved for indigenous peoples was later marginally increased.
In 1931 the union was fully sovereign from
the United Kingdom with the passage of
the Statute of Westminster, which
abolished the last powers of the British Government on the country. In
1934,
the South African Party and
National Party merged to form
the United Party,
seeking reconciliation between Afrikaners and English-speaking "
Whites". In 1939 the party split over the entry of the Union into
World War II as an ally of
the United Kingdom, a move which
the National Party followers strongly opposed. Some Nationalist Afrikaners had Pro-Nazi sympahties due to their anti-British feelings.
Beginning of apartheidIn
1948, the
National Party was elected to power.
It strengthened the racial segregation begun under Dutch and British colonial rule.
The Nationalist Government classified all peoples into three races and developed rights and limitations for each. The white minority (less than 20%) controlled the vastly larger black majority.
The legally institutionalized segregation became known as apartheid. While whites enjoyed the highest standard of living in all of Africa, comparable to First World Western nations, the black majority remained disadvantaged by almost every standard, including income, education, housing, and life expectancy.
The Freedom Charter, adopted in 1955 by the Congress Alliance, demanded a non-racial society and an end to discrimination.
RepublicOn 31 May 1961, the country became a republic following a referendum in which white voters narrowly voted in favour thereof (the British-dominated Natal province rallied against the issue).[54] Queen Elizabeth II was stripped of the title Queen of South Africa, and the last Governor-General, Charles Robberts Swart, became State President. As a concession to the Westminster system, the presidency remained parliamentary appointed and virtually powerless until P. W. Botha's Constitution Act of 1983, which (intact in these regards) eliminated the office of Prime Minister and instated a near-unique "strong presidency" responsible to parliament. Pressured by other Commonwealth of Nations countries, South Africa withdrew from the organisation in 1961, and rejoined it only in 1994.
Despite opposition both within and outside the country, the government legislated for a continuation of apartheid. The security forces cracked down on internal dissent, and violence became widespread, with anti-apartheid organisations such as the African National Congress, the Azanian People's Organisation, and the Pan-Africanist Congress carrying out guerrilla warfare[55] and urban sabotage.[56] The three rival resistance movements also engaged in occasional inter-factional clashes as they jockeyed for domestic influence.[57] Apartheid became increasingly controversial, and several countries began to boycott business with the South African government because of its racial policies. These measures were later extended to international sanctions and the divestment of holdings by foreign investors.
In the late 1970s, South Africa initiated a programme of nuclear weapons development. In the following decade, it produced six deliverable nuclear weapons.
End of apartheid
The Mahlabatini Declaration of Faith, signed by Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Harry Schwarz in 1974, enshrined the principles of peaceful transition of power and equality for all, the first of such agreements by black and white political leaders in South Africa. Ultimately, F. W. de Klerk opened bilateral discussions with Nelson Mandela in 1993 for a transition of policies and government.
In 1990 the National Party government took the first step towards dismantling discrimination when it lifted the ban on the African National Congress and other political organisations. It released Nelson Mandela from prison after twenty-seven years' serving a sentence for sabotage. A negotiation process followed. With approval from a predominantly white referendum, the government repealed apartheid legislation. South Africa also destroyed its nuclear arsenal and acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. South Africa held its first universal elections in 1994, which the ANC won by an overwhelming majority. It has been in power ever since. The country rejoined the Commonwealth of Nations and became a member of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
In post-apartheid South Africa, unemployment has been extremely high as the country has struggled with many changes. While many blacks have risen to middle or upper classes, the overall unemployment rate of blacks worsened between 1994 and 2003. Poverty among whites, previously rare, increased. In addition, the current government has struggled to achieve the monetary and fiscal discipline to ensure both redistribution of wealth and economic growth. Since the ANC-led government took power, the United Nations Human Development Index of South Africa has fallen, while it was steadily rising until the mid-1990s. Some may be attributed to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and the failure of the government to take steps to address it in the early years.
HIV/AIDS pandemicIn May 2008, riots left over sixty people dead. The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions estimates over 100,000 people were driven from their homes.
The targets were mainly migrants and refugees seeking asylum, but a third of the victims were South African citizens. In a 2006 survey,
the South African Migration Project concluded that
South Africans are
more opposed to immigration than anywhere else in the world. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 2008 reported over 200,000 refugees applied for asylum in
South Africa, almost four times as many as the year before.[69] These people were mainly from Zimbabwe, though many also come from Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia. Competition over jobs, business opportunities, public services and housing has led to tension between refugees and host communities. While
xenophobia is still
a problem, recent violence has not been as widespread as initially feared.
The Afrikaander or Boer people of South-Africai.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/4/9/1428577579177/27992045-9557-4d8f-9482-ed557533daa6-2060x1236.jpeg?w=1200&h=630&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=crop&crop=faces%2Centropy&bm=normal&ba=bottom%2Cleft&blend64=aHR0cHM6Ly91cGxvYWRzLmd1aW0uY28udWsvMjAxOC8wMS8xOC90d2l0dGVyX2RlZmF1bHQucG5n&s=62c51afbd773a18e22539e95ec1a173cAfrikaans singer Sunette Bridges chains herself to a vandalised statue of Paul Kruger in Church Square
Boer, (Dutch: “
husbandman,” or “
farmer”),
a South African of
Dutch,
German,
Swiss or french
Huguenot descent, especially one of the early settlers of
the Transvaal and
the Orange Free State. Today, descendants of
the Boers are commonly referred to as
Afrikaners.
In 1652 the Dutch East India Company charged Jan van Riebeeck with establishing a shipping station on the Cape of Good Hope. Immigration was encouraged for many years, and in 1707 the European population of Cape Colony stood at 1,779 individuals. For the most part, modern Afrikaners have descended from this group.
The Dutch colony prospered to the extent that
the Cape Town market for agricultural produce became glutted. With market stagnation and with slaves providing most of the manual labour in the colony, there were few economic opportunities for the burgeoning white population. Eventually more than half of these people turned to the self-sufficient life of
the trekboeren (literally “
wandering farmers” but perhaps better translated as “
dispersed ranchers”).
The Boers were hostile toward
indigenous African peoples,
with whom they fought frequent range wars, and toward
the government of the Cape, which was
attempting to control Boer movements and
commerce.
They overtly compared their way of life to that of the Hebrew patriarchs of the Bible,
developing independent patriarchal communities based upon a mobile pastoralist economy.
Staunch Calvinists, they saw themselves as
the children of God in the wilderness,
a Christian elect divinely ordained to rule the land and the backward natives therein. By the end of the 18th century the cultural links between the Boers and their urban counterparts were diminishing, although both groups continued to speak
Afrikaans,
a language that had evolved from the admixture of Dutch, indigenous African, and other languages.
The Cape Colony became
a British possession in
1806 as a result of
the Napoleonic wars. Though at first accepting of the new colonial administration,
the Boers soon grew disgruntled with
the liberal policies of
the British,
especially in regard to the frontier and the freeing of slaves. Between
1835 and
1843 about
12,000 Boers left
the Cape in
the Great Trek, heading for
the relatively rural spaces of the high veld and southern Natal. In
1852 the British government agreed
to recognize the independence of the settlers in the Transvaal (later
the South African Republic) and in
1854 of those in
the Vaal-Orange rivers area (later
the Orange Free State). These new republics committed themselves to
apartheid,
a policy of strict segregation and discrimination.
In 1867 the discovery of diamonds and gold in southern Africa set the stage for the South African War (1899–1902). The conflict had its origins in British claims of suzerainty over the wealthy South African Republic and in British concern over the Boer refusal to grant civic rights to the so-called Uitlanders (immigrants, largely British, to the Transvaal gold fields and diamond fields). Supported by the Orange Free State and some of the Cape Dutch, the South African Republic waged battle against the British Empire for more than two years. Though brilliant practitioners of guerrilla warfare, the Boers eventually surrendered to British forces in 1902, thus ending the independent existence of the Boer republics.
Despite their reabsorption into
the British colonial system subsequent to the war,
the Afrikaners retained
their language and
culture and eventually
attained politically the power they had failed to establish militarily.
Apartheid was soon reestablished in
South Africa, remained key to the country’s public policies throughout most of the 20th century, and was abolished in the 1990s only after global censure.
Afrikaners in the early 21st century made up about
60 percent of the white population of
South Africa, approximately
2,600,000 people.
White South AfricansWhite South Africans are South Africans of European descent who regard themselves, or are not regarded as, not being part of another racial group (for example, as Coloured). In linguistic, cultural and historical terms, they are generally divided into the Afrikaans-speaking descendants of the Dutch East India Company's original settlers, known as Afrikaners, and the Anglophone descendants of predominantly British colonists. In 2011, 61% were native Afrikaans speakers, 36% were native English speakers, and 3% spoke another language as their mother tongue, such as Portuguese or German. White South Africans are by far the largest European-descended population group in Africa.
White South Africans differ significantly from other White African groups, because they have developed nationhood, as in the case of the Afrikaners, who established a distinct language, culture and faith in Africa.
HistoryThe history of European settlement in South Africa started in 1652 with the settlement of the Cape of Good Hope by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) under Jan van Riebeeck. Despite the preponderance of officials and colonists from the Netherlands, there were also a number of French Huguenots fleeing religious persecution at home and German soldiers or sailors returning from service in Asia. The colony remained under Dutch rule for two more centuries, after which it was annexed by Great Britain around 1806. At that time, South Africa was home to about 26,000 people of European descent, a relative majority of whom were still of Dutch origin.[8] However, beginning in 1818 thousands of British immigrants arrived in the fledgling Cape Colony, looking to join the local workforce or settle directly on the frontier.[8] About a fifth of the Cape's original Dutch-speaking white population migrated eastwards during the Great Trek in the 1830s and established their own autonomous Boer republics further inland.[9] Nevertheless, the population of European origin continued increasing at the Cape as a result of immigration, and by 1865 had reached 181,592 people.[10] Between 1880 and 1910, there was an influx of Eastern Europeans of various nationalities, especially a large Jewish community from the Baltic region.
The first nationwide census in South Africa was held in 1911 and indicated a white population of 1,276,242. By 1936 there were an estimated 2,003,857 white South Africans, and by 1946 the number had reached 2,372,690. The country began receiving tens of thousands of European immigrants, namely from Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Greece, and the territories of the Portuguese Empire during the mid to late twentieth century. South Africa's white population increased to over 3,408,000 by 1965, reached 4,050,000 in 1973, and peaked at 5,044,000 in 1990. The number of white South Africans resident in their home country began gradually declining between 1990 and the mid-2000s as a result of increased emigration.
Today, white South Africans are also considered to be the last major white population group of European ancestry on the African continent, due in part to the mass exodus of colonials from most other African states during regional decolonization. Whites continue to play a role in the South African economy and across the political spectrum. The current number of white South Africans is not exactly known as no recent census has been measured. Although the overall percentage of up to 9% of the population represents a decline, both numerically and proportionately, since the country's first multiracial elections in 1994. Just under a million white South Africans are also living as expatriate workers abroad, which forms the majority of South Africa's brain drain.
Apartheid eraUnder the 1950 Population Registration Act, each inhabitant of
South Africa was classified into one of several different race groups, of which White was one. The Office for Race Classification defined a white person as one who "in appearance is obviously a white person who is generally not accepted as a coloured person; or is generally accepted as a white person and is not in appearance obviously a white person." Many criteria, both physical (e.g. examination of head and body hair) and social (e.g. eating and drinking habits, familiarity with Afrikaans or a European language) were used when the board decided to classify someone as white or coloured. This was ventral extended to all those considered the children of two White persons, regardless of appearance. The Act was repealed on 17 June 1991.
Post-apartheid eraThe 1994 Employment Equity legislation propagates employment of black (African, Indian, Chinese, Coloured population groups as well as disabled people) South Africans. Black Economic Empowerment legislation further empowerers blacks as the government considers ownership, employment, training and social responsibility initiatives which empower black South Africans as important criteria when awarding tenders. However, private enterprise adheres to this legislation voluntarily.[15] Some reports indicate a growing number of whites suffering poverty compared to the pre-apartheid years and attribute this to such laws — over 350,000 Afrikaners may be classified as poor, with some research claiming that up to 150,000 are struggling for survival. This combined with a wave of violent crime has led to vast numbers of Afrikaners and English-speaking South Africans leaving the country.
Genocide Watch has theorised that
farm attacks constitute early
warning signs of genocide against White South Africans and has criticised
the South African government for its inaction on the issue, pointing out that the murder rate for them ("
ethno-European farmers" in their report, which
also included non-Afrikaner farmers of European race) is four times that of the general South African population. There are
40,000 white farmers in
South Africa. Since
1994 close to
three thousand farmers have
been murdered in thousands of farm attacks, with
many being brutally tortured and/or
raped.
Some victims have been burned with smoothing irons or had boiling water poured down their throats.
