[4] Most Afrikaners trace their ancestry back to colonists in the mid-17th century and have developed a separate cultural identity, including a distinct language.

[9] 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.

[11] However, the Dutch settlers grew into conflict with the British government over the abolition of the slave trade and limits on colonial expansion into African lands.

[12] Beginning in 1818 thousands of British settlers arrived in the growing Cape Colony, intending to join the local workforce or settle directly on the frontier.

[11] Ironically most of the farms failed due to the difficult terrain, forcing the British settlers to encroach on African land in order to practise pastoralism.

[12] 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.

Recent immigrants from the Levant region of Western Asia were originally classified as Asian, and thus "non-white", but, in order to have the right to purchase land, they successfully argued that they were "white".

The main reason being that they were Caucasian and from the lands where Christianity and Judaism originated from, and that the race laws did not target Jews, who were also a Semitic people.

[15] 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.

[18] 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.

Many criteria, both physical (e.g. examination of head and body hair) and social (e.g. eating and drinking habits, a native speaker of English, Afrikaans or another European language) were used when the board decided to classify someone as white or coloured.

[19] Some reports indicate a growing number of whites in poverty compared to the pre-apartheid years and attribute this to such laws – a 2006 article in The Guardian stated that over 350,000 Afrikaners may be classified as poor, and alluded to research claiming that up to 150,000 were struggling for survival.

Between 1995 and 2005, more than one million South Africans emigrated, citing violence as the main reason, as well as the lack of employment opportunities for whites.

The report also found that residents in wealthy suburbs in Gauteng were not only at more risk of being targeted but also faced an inflated chance of being murdered during the robbery.

Charles Luyckx, CEO of Elliot International and a board member of the Professional Movers Association, stated in December 2008 that emigration numbers had dropped by 10% in the six months prior.

The initiative offered millions of hectares from 22 African countries that hoped to spur development of efficient commercial farming.

[38] In February 2018, the Parliament of South Africa passed a motion to review the property ownership clause of the constitution, to allow for the expropriation of land, in the public interest, without compensation,[39] which was supported within South Africa's ruling African National Congress on the grounds that the land was originally seized by whites without just compensation.

However, the financial crisis has slowed the rate of emigration and in May 2014, the Homecoming Revolution estimated that around 340,000 white South Africans had returned in the preceding decade.

The high undercount rate was reported as an issue of concern as it raised questions about the accuracy of the number of white, Indian, foreign-born and homeless people recorded in the census.

"[55] Prior to 1994, a white minority held complete political power under a system of racial segregation called apartheid.