Talk:Afrikaners

Global Presence

Neither the Netherlands nor Belgium offer working holiday opportunities to South Africans, and with the UK's immigration laws that also changed, none of the Commonwealth nations offer working holiday permits to South Africans any more.

Maybe the section on Global presence be changed to reflect this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wimc (talk • contribs) 10:36, 2008 December 23 (UTC)

South Africa Census information needs to be updated and certain aspects of the Afrikaner definition should be clarified

South Africa conducted a census in 2022 and published the results in October 2023. This new census data should be incorporated into this article. Currently, this article contains subsections on the results of censuses only up to 2011. I have edited the second paragraph of the introductory section to include information about the Afrikaans language available in the 2022 census.

Also, the subsection "2011 Census" only includes information on "white South Africans who speak Afrikaans as a first language." Is this group synonymous with Afrikaners? The "Nomenclature" section defines Afrikaners as "the majority group among white South Africans" and "the Afrikaans speaking population of Dutch origin." Does not the latter group also include members of the Coloured community? The definition as it is currently written seems contradictory. Further, the section goes on to mention "the word Afrikaner is thought to have first been used to classify Cape Coloureds, or other groups of mixed-race ancestry." If indeed members of the Coloured community could be considered Afrikaners, then only providing information about "white South Africans who speak Afrikaans" may be misleading to a reader. I suggest that someone knowledgeable in this area either change how the information is presented, or provide additional context. JosiahRFoster (talk) 20:56, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Reversion of the lead/infobox to last stable revision as of February

The most recent revision of the lead and infobox have included a number of problematic changes mostly introduced by IP editors in the past three months. These include the repeated addition of references to an Afrikaner population in the Netherlands that is not backed up by the census data cited, an original research claim that Afrikaners are also commonly known as "Dutch South Africans", conflation of "Afrikaner" with "Boer" (the distinction between the two terms is clearly made in the body of the article which the IP contributors apparently failed to read, as well as the Cape Dutch article, backed up by ample reliable sources), an attempt to bypass the very explicit consensus reached some years ago to describe Afrikaners in the lead as a Southern African ethnic group (as opposed to a Germanic, "Dutch", or European ethnic group in South/Southern Africa; the latest revision attempts to skirt this by framing Afrikaners as a "West Germanic-speaking ethnic group in South Africa", in language suspiciously similar to that in the lead which led to the previous discussion and consensus), and the redundant addition of numerous progenitor nationalities to the opening paragraph of the lead which are already covered in detail in proceeding paragraphs.

Due to this recent wave of disruptive edits that have ignored past consensus and reads mostly like original research, I have reverted the lead to the last stable revision as it looked in February 2025, with one exception - the addition of the "Vryheidsvlag" to the infobox as the recognised flag of the Afrikaner people by UNPO. I question the need for the flag's presence in the infobox, but its recognition by UNPO is backed by seemingly reliable footnotes and I think its inclusion or exclusion merits a discussion on its own.

Thanks Katangais (talk) 02:15, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

Major problematic changes have again appeared in the lead, namely the removal of all footnotes in the name of brevity. I have reverted the lead to the last revision with footnotes. I'm frankly quite puzzled by the footnotes' removal, as there are a number of bold claims in the lead which need references to avoid being consistently challenged and removed. --Katangais (talk) 07:23, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

Origins

Afrikaners are not only dutsh descending.

They are scandinavians, dutch and french.

Why it's not wrote ? Thanks SwaxawS (talk) 10:09, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

It's very clearly stated here and here. --Katangais (talk) 03:56, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Oorlam and Boers

Des Vallee, I'm concerned about the repeated addition of this sentence: "The term "Afrikaner" originally described mixed-race nomadic people in Southern Africa similar to Basters across Namibia and South Africa. Such groups include the Oorlam people under Oude Ram Afrikaner and Jager Afrikaner in the early 1700s, with many Oorlam continuing to use the term Afrikaner to describe themselves today. The term was later adopted by Boers in the late 19th century to describe themselves via a connection to Africa." Did you bother to read my edit summary for tweaking this information? You used one inappropriate self-published source for your edit, and claimed the term was later adopted by Boers in the late 19th century, which is deeply problematic for a number of different reasons. You'll note that later in the "Nomenclature" section it's clearly stated that in 1707 Hendrik Biebouw used the term "Afrikaner", and the Cape Dutch article clearly notes it was this subgroup (through its formation of the Afrikaner Bond) which popularised the term, not the Boers.

Furthermore, the information about the use of the term by Oorlam and Basters was included in a later summary describing the use of the term by Coloured groups at the Cape. This clarified Biebouw was not the first to use the term, and it was in fact used among Coloureds first. You inexplicably made this clarification redundant. The information about the use of the term by Coloured groups belongs there, where the historical context is being discussed, rather than at the top of the "Nomenclature" section where modern usage of the term is being discussed prior to your revision. Katangais (talk) 00:59, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

@Katangais: That is not a self-published source it is a primary source of the Oorlam tribe, which is a reliable source showing the term is still in use by the Oorlam. Secondly the reference to Hendrik Biebouw is not in reference to an ethnic group, it just meant "African," as he did not want to leave Africa. It did not denote a specific ethnic group, structure or people, while in the Oorlam it did. It is well known that the first usage of the term "Afrikaners" in reference to Boers occurred long after the Great Trek after Dutch rule ended in 1836, specifically to refer to Cape Boers migrating to the west, over a hundred years after the formation of the Oorlam. Des Vallee (talk) 01:17, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

@Des Vallee: The key problem here is not with the information that the Oorlam and Basters used the term itself, but its addition to the top of the section (which discusses modern use of the term to refer to white Afrikaans speakers) making it needlessly redundant to the historical context discussed with Biebouw and the later summary of Coloured identification below. This information needs to be consolidated, as the current revision makes the section extremely disorganised. It opens with a discussion of the Coloured historical context, discusses the modern context, then inexplicably returns to the historical context of Biebouw and the Coloureds again.

The second problem here is that the Cape Dutch are not Boers. Two separate groups within the greater white Afrikaans speaking population that you seem to have mixed up. The Cape Dutch popularised the term "Afrikaner" by the formation of the Afrikaner Bond. Therefore, the fragment about "Boers" co-opting the term "Afrikaner" in the late eighteenth century is not accurate. There is no evidence cited in this article or the Cape Dutch/Boer articles that the Boers called themselves "Afrikaners" before the twentieth century.

Thirdly, if the information about the Boers identifying as Afrikaners is addressed in the self-published Oorlam source, then that is an extraordinary claim made about a third party (in this case Boers) rather than the primary subject of the Oorlam people, which should be discouraged, per the section I linked to above. --Katangais (talk) 01:29, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

@Katangais: At the time "Boer" referred to the entire population of white Dutch speakers in Africa, the term white Dutch speakers can be used instead for a more accurate modern description. The source is entirely reliable, the Oorlam people never went any where they have contentiously used the term "Afrikaner" as a surname and subgroup of the Oorlam since the early 1700s. The source is reliable, this is standard of articles on people such as articles on the Inuit. Des Vallee (talk) 20:42, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

@Des Vallee:: I am not questioning the reliability of the source as a primary source about self-identification of the Oorlam people. I am questioning the reliability of the source as a self-published work that makes an extraordinary claim about another party that is not the Oorlam people, per WP:ABOUTSELF: "Self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, usually in articles about themselves or their activities, without the self-published source requirement that they are established experts in the field, so long as: The material is neither unduly self-serving nor an exceptional claim; It does not involve claims about third parties..." It would be appropriate to write the Oorlam used the term "Afrikaner" to describe themselves, citing a self-published Oorlam source. It would not be appropriate to write that white Dutch speakers (a third party) did not adopt the term "Afrikaner" until the late nineteenth century, citing a self-published Oorlam source. Do you see the difference? --Katangais (talk) 16:59, 15 October 2025 (UTC)