page_title: White people
section_title: South Africa
hierarchical_section_title: White people / Census and social definitions in different regions / South Africa
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Olive Schreiner (1855-1920)
context_page_description: White people is a racial classification and skin color specifier, used mostly and exclusively for people of European and Western Eurasian descent; depending on context, nationality, and point of view. The term has at times been expanded to encompass persons of Middle Eastern and North African descent, persons who are often considered non-white in other contexts, and at times excluded people of Southern European descent. The usage of "white people" or a "white race" for a large group of mainly or exclusively European populations, defined by their light skin, among other physical characteristics, and contrasting with "black people", Amerindians, and other "colored" people or "persons of color", originated in the 17th century. It was only during the 19th century that this vague category was transformed in a pseudo-scientific system of race and skin color relations.
  The concept of a unified white race did not achieve universal acceptance in Europe when it first came into use in the 17th century, or in the centuries afterward. Nazi Germany regarded some European peoples such as Slavs as racially distinct from themselves.
context_section_description: White Hollanders first arrived in South Africa around 1652. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, some 2,000 Europeans and their descendants were established in the region. Although these early Afrikaners represented various nationalities, including German peasants and French Huguenots, the community retained a thoroughly Dutch character.
  The British Empire seized Cape Town in 1795 during the Napoleonic Wars and permanently acquired South Africa from Amsterdam in 1814. The first British immigrants numbered about 4,000 and were introduced in 1820. They represented groups from England, Ireland, Scotland, or Wales and were typically more literate than the Dutch. The discovery of diamonds and gold led to a greater influx of English speakers who were able to develop the mining industry with capital unavailable to Afrikaners. They have been joined in more subsequent decades by former colonials from elsewhere, such as Zambia and Kenya, and poorer British nationals looking to escape famine at home.
  Both Afrikaners and English have been politically dominant in South Africa during the past; due to the controversial racial order under apartheid, the nation's predominantly Afrikaner government became a target of condemnation by other African states and the site of considerable dissension between 1948 and 1991.
  There were 4.6 million whites in South Africa in 2011, down from an all-time high of 5.2 million in 1995 following a wave of emigration commencing in the late 20th century.
caption: South African author, anti-war campaigner and intellectual Olive Schreiner
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