White South Africans

White South Africans

Wit Suid-Afrikaners (Afrikaans)
Proportion of White South Africans in each municipality according to the census
Total population
4,504,252 (2022 census)[1] 7.3% of South African population
Regions with significant populations
Throughout South Africa, but mostly concentrated in urban areas. Population by provinces, as of the 2022 census:
Gauteng	1,509,800
Western Cape	1,217,807
KwaZulu-Natal	513,377
Eastern Cape	403,061
Free State	235,915
Mpumalanga	185,731
North West	171,887
Limpopo	167,524
Northern Cape	99,150
Languages
Majority: Afrikaans · English Minority: German · Italian · Portuguese[citation needed]
Religion
Christianity Atheism
Related ethnic groups
White Zimbabweans, White Namibians, Afrikaners, French Huguenots, Germans, Coloureds, British diaspora in Africa, South African diaspora, other White 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,^[2][3] 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.^[4]

The majority of Afrikaans-speaking 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.^[5][6][7]