Afrikaner
| The touchy subject of |
| Key concepts |
| Racism and racists |
“”So, if you're from Africa...why are you white?.
|
| —Karen, Mean Girls |
Afrikaners are the largest white ethnic group in South Africa. Afrikaners are descended primarily from Dutch settlers (though French Huguenots and other Protestants appear in the mix as well) who colonized the Cape of Good Hope in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; likewise, their language, Afrikaans, is a descendent of the Dutch language, with which it is mostly mutually intelligible.
Afrikaners have historically dominated South Africa's politics, economy, and society. Afrikaner nationalist politicians were responsible for South Africa's policy of apartheid (literally, apart-hood), a legally codified system of racial segregation which became the defining feature of South Africa's modern history. Since the country's first multiracial elections in 1994, the vast majority of Afrikaners have integrated into South Africa's multiracial society, but their status as the historical "oppressors" has made their legacy a touchy subject. A portion of the Afrikaner population is politically aligned with the ruling and highly corrupt African National Congress, but most vote with the Democratic Alliance, a very moderate center-left party also popular among South Africa's other non-black ethnic groups and some blacks, and the only party other than the ANC to hold a majority in any state legislature. A tiny (but very vocal) minority of Afrikaners continue to espouse white nationalism, supremacism, or separatism, embodied by the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging ("Afrikaner Resistance Movement"), a far-right militia led by Eugene Terre'Blanche.
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