White South Africans
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 colonists, known as Afrikaners, and the Anglophone descendants of predominantly British colonists of South Africa. In 2016, 57.9% were native Afrikaans speakers, 40.2% were native English speakers, and 1.9% spoke another language as their mother tongue,[3][4] such as Portuguese, Greek, or German. White South Africans are by far the largest population of White Africans. White was a legally defined racial classification during apartheid.[5]
Total population
1,509,800
1,217,807
513,377
403,061
235,915
185,731
171,887
167,524
99,150
Most Afrikaners trace their ancestry back to colonists in the mid-17th century and have developed a separate cultural identity, including a distinct language. The majority of English-speaking White South Africans trace their ancestry to the 1820 British, Irish, and Dutch colonists. The remainder of the White South African population consists of later immigrants from Europe such as Greeks, Norwegians and Jews from Lithuania and Poland. Portuguese immigrants arrived after the collapse of the Portuguese colonial administrations in Angola and Mozambique, although many also originate from Madeira.[6][7][8]
Statistics[edit]
Historical population[edit]
Statistics for the white population in South Africa vary greatly. Most sources show that the white population peaked in the period between 1989 and 1995 at around 5.2 to 5.6 million. Up to that point, the white population largely increased due to high birth rates and immigration. Subsequently, between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s, the white population decreased overall. However, from 2006 to 2013, the white population increased.