page_title: White South Africans
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: White South Africans / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Boer guerrillas during the Second Boer War Français&#160;: Guérilla de Boers pendant la Deuxième Guerre des Boers
context_page_description: White South Africans are South Africans of European descent. 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 2016, 57.9% were native Afrikaans speakers, 40.2% were native English speakers, and 1.9% 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 can trace their ancestry back to the mid 17th century and have developed a separate cultural identity, as in the case of the Afrikaners, who established a distinct language, culture and faith.
context_section_description: The history of White 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 Cape Colony remained under Dutch rule for two more centuries, after which it was annexed by the United Kingdom 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. However, beginning in 1818 thousands of British immigrants arrived in the growing Cape Colony, looking to join the local workforce or settle directly on the frontier. 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. Nevertheless, the population of European origin continued increasing in the Cape as a result of immigration, and by 1865 had reached 181,592 people. Between 1880 and 1910, there was an influx of immigrants arriving from Eastern Europe, including many Lithuanian Jews. Similarly, an influx of Arabs, particularly Lebanese, began arriving to South Africa in the late 19th century. Though originally considered non-white, their white status was affirmed in 1913 after Moses Gandur, a Maronite from Syria, sued the South African government, as he was initially denied the right to purchase land in Johannesburg due to being classified as a non-white. Gandur's lawyers successfully argued that because Lebanese and Syrians originated from the Canaan, the birthplace of Christianity and Judaism, they could not be discriminated under South Africa's race laws which heavily targeted non-believers
  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 colonialists from most other African states during regional decolonisation. 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 non-racial 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.
caption: Boer guerrillas during the Second Boer War
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