[10] 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.

[12] 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.

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.

[8] Following decades of domestic unrest and international sanctions that resulted in bilateral and multi-party negotiations to end apartheid, South Africa held its first multiracial elections under a universal franchise in 1994.

[20] The term "Afrikaner" currently denotes the politically, culturally, and socially dominant and majority group[22][need quotation to verify] among white South Africans, or the Afrikaans-speaking population of Dutch origin.

[25] 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.

[34] 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.

[35] 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.

The earliest Afrikaner communities in South Africa were formed at the Cape of Good Hope, mainly through the introduction of Dutch colonists, French Huguenot refugees, and erstwhile servants of the VOC.

[8] We say, therefore, that the Honourable Company, by the formation of a fort or redoubt, and also of a garden of such size as may be practicable or necessary at the above-mentioned Cabo de Boa Esperanza, upon a suitable spot in Table Valley, stationing there according to your pleasure sixty to seventy as well soldiers as sailors, and a few persons acquainted with gardening and horticulture, could raise, as well for the ships and people bound to India as for those returning thence, many kinds of fruit, as will hereafter be more particularly demonstrated.Under recommendation from Jan van Riebeeck, the Heeren XVII authorised the establishment of a fort at the Cape, and this the more hurriedly to preempt any further imperial maneuvers by Britain, France or Portugal.

[46] VOC fleets bearing cargo from the Orient anchored in the Cape for a month, usually from March or April, when they were resupplied with water and provisions prior to completing their return voyage to the Netherlands.

[45] As the VOC's primary goal was merchant enterprise, particularly its shipping network traversing the Atlantic and Indian Oceans between the Netherlands and various ports in Asia, most of its territories consisted of coastal forts, factories, and isolated trading posts dependent entirely on indigenous host states.

[48] European employees were repatriated to the Netherlands upon the termination of their contract, unless they successfully applied for a vrijbrief, in which they were charged a small fee and registered as a vrijburger in a VOC record known collectively as the vrijboeken ('free(dom) books').

[34] If their application for vrijburger status was successful, the Company granted them plots of farmland of thirteen and a half morgen (equal to 2,000 to 10,100 square metres or 1⁄2 to 2+1⁄2 acres), which were tax exempt for twelve years.

[34] With time, these restrictions and other attempts by the VOC to control the settlers resulted in successive generations of vrijburgers and their descendants becoming increasingly localised in their loyalties and national identity, and hostile towards the colonial government.

Wagenaer was somewhat aloof towards the vrijburgers, whom he dismissed as "sodden, lazy, clumsy louts...since they do not pay proper attention to the [slaves] lent to them, or to their work in the fields, nor to their animals, for that reason seem wedded to the low level and cannot rid themselves of their debts".

[50] The VOC was persuaded to seek more prospective European immigrants for the Cape after local officials noted that the cost of maintaining gardens to provision passing ships could be eliminated by outsourcing to a greater number of vrijburgers.

[60] By the mid-eighteenth century the Boers had penetrated almost a thousand kilometres into South Africa's interior beyond the Cape of Good Hope, at which point they encountered the Xhosa people, who were migrating southwards from the opposite direction.

[14] By 1812, new attorneys-general and judges had been imported from England and many of the preexisting VOC-era institutions abolished, namely the Dutch magistrate system and the only vestige of representative government at the Cape, the burgher senate.

Many Boers, who had little love or respect for Britain, objected to the use of the "children from the concentration camps[clarification needed] to attack the anti-British Germans, resulting in the Maritz Rebellion of 1914, which was quickly quelled by the government forces.

[42] This demographic breakdown of the community just prior to the end of the Dutch administration has been used in many subsequent studies to represent the ethnic makeup of modern Afrikaners, a practise criticised by some academics such as Dr. Johannes Heese.

[32] Drawing heavily on Christoffel Coetzee de Villiers' Geslacht Register der Oude Kaapsche Familien, British historian George McCall Theal estimated an admixture of 67% Dutch, with a nearly equal contribution of roughly 17% from the Huguenots and Germans.

[93] As in other cases where large population groups have been propagated by a relatively small pool of progenitors, Afrikaners have also experienced an increase in the frequency of some otherwise rare deleterious ailments, including variegate porphyria[85] and familial hypercholesterolaemia.

[110] Significant concentrations of Afrikaners also exist in the East Rand/City of Ekurhuleni, Cape Town (especially the northern suburbs around Bellville and Strand in the Helderberg), the West Rand, Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein and the Vaal Triangle.

[126] On 7 February 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order, addressing South Africa's Expropriation Act 13 of 2024, which allowed land seizures targeting Afrikaner farmers.

From the late 17th century, the form of Dutch spoken at the Cape developed differences, mostly in morphology but also in pronunciation and accent and, to a lesser extent, in syntax and vocabulary, from that of the Netherlands, although the languages are still similar enough to be mutually intelligible.

[138] Afrikaners have a long literary tradition, and have produced a number of notable novelists and poets, including Eugene Marais, Uys Krige, Elisabeth Eybers, Breyten Breytenbach, André Brink, C. J. Langenhoven and Etienne Leroux.

The contemporary musical Ons vir jou ('Us for you'), dealing with the Second Boer War, featured a book by Deon Opperman and a score by Sean Else and Johan Vorster of the band Eden.

[146] Senior FF+ member Philip van Staden said that his party had grown significantly in the election due to the DA leader Mmusi Maimane's positions on race and ethnic identity resulting in the estrangement of many Afrikaans-speaking white voters.