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. White South Africans are by far the largest population of White Africans. White was a legally defined racial classification during apartheid.

White settlement in South Africa began with Dutch colonisation in 1652, followed by British colonisation in the 19th century, which led to tensions and further expansion inland by Boer settlers. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, waves of immigrants from Europe and continued to grow the white population, which peaked in the mid-1990s. Under apartheid, strict racial classifications enforced a legal and economic order that privileged the white minority. Post-apartheid reforms such as Black Economic Empowerment had the goal of redistributing business opportunities and market access to previously disadvantaged groups, prompting reports of newfound economic vulnerability among some white South Africans as material advantages and disadvantages were beginning to be brought to light. Since the 1990s, a large number of white South Africans have emigrated, due to concerns over crime and employment prospects, with a number returning in subsequent years. The white population in South Africa peaked between 1989 and 1995 at around 5.2 to 5.6 million due to high birth rates and immigration, then declined until the mid-2000s before experiencing a modest increase from 2006 to 2013.

As of the 2022 census, white South Africans make up 7.3% of the population, predominantly speak Afrikaans (61%) or English (36%), mostly identify as Christian (87%), and are unevenly distributed with the highest concentrations in Western Cape and Gauteng provinces. Former South African leaders have made controversial statements about Afrikaners’ identity and race relations, while apartheid enforced white minority rule and granted “honorary white” status to certain Asian immigrants and some African Americans. In South Africa, the legacy of apartheid continues to shape racial and economic dynamics. While some white South Africans report perceived discrimination, or resentment in the post-apartheid era, these narratives often emerge in response to reforms aimed at addressing deep historical inequalities. Despite isolated cases of white poverty, the white minority retains a disproportionate share of wealth and land. Notably, demographic health statistics, such as HIV prevalence, are sometimes cited in unrelated contexts, though they offer little insight into broader structural realities.

The majority of Afrikaans-speaking (Afrikaners) and English-speaking White South Africans trace their ancestry to the 17th and 18th-century Dutch colonists or the 1820 British colonists. Other colonists included Huguenots who emigrated from France, and Walloons who emigrated from present-day Belgium. The remainder of the White South African population consists of later immigrants from Lebanon, and Europe such as Greeks and Norwegians. Portuguese immigrants arrived after the collapse of the Portuguese colonial administrations in Angola and Mozambique, although many also originate from Madeira.