Afrikaner

Afrikaners are white South Africans of predominantly Calvinist Dutch, German, French Huguenot, Friesian and Walloon descent who speak Afrikaans. Afrikaners are also sometimes referred to as Boers, but many Afrikaners now view this as a derogatory term.

Afrikaner versus Boer.

There is a significant number who have continued to refer to themselves as Boers as there were many who were not co-opted or assimilated into the emerging Cape based Afrikaner identity which began emerging after the Anglo-Boer War and the subsequent establishment of the South African State created by the British. The indigenous Boer identity was internationally recognized with the Sand River Convention (which created the Transvaal Republic), the Bloemfontein Convention (which created the Orange Free State), the Pretoria Convention (which re-established the independence of the Transvaal Republic), the London Convention (which granted the full independence of the Transvaal Republic) and the Vereeniging Peace Treaty which formally ended the Anglo-Boer War on May 31, 1902 culminating in the British conquest of the Boer Republics.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Afrikaner designation (label) was used beginning in the 1930s as a means of "unifying" (politically at least) the white Afrikaans speakers of the Western Cape with their estranged Boer cousins of Trekboer and Voortrekker descent (whose ancestors began migrating eastward during the 1690s and throughout the 1700s and later northward during the Great Trek of the 1830s) in the north where the Boer Republics were established.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

These un-reconstructed Boers of Voortrekker descent have tended to view the Afrikaner designation as an artificial political label which usurped their history and culture turning Boer achievements into "Afrikaner" achievements. The western Cape based Afrikaners ? whose ancestors did not trek eastwards or northwards and had ridiculed the Great Trek of the frontier Boers ? took advantage of the republican Boers' destitution following the Anglo-Boer War and would later attempt to assimilate the Boers into a new politically based cultural label as: Afrikaners. A feature which distinguished the trekking Boers from those who remained in the Western Cape was the Boers' resistance to colonialism (both Dutch and later British) and their determination to be independent while the Cape Dutch (as they were called) - those who did not trek inland- tended to be loyal to the colonial powers.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~