Talk:Boer/Archive 2

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Language?

As an estimate (or an accurate figure knowing Ron7, lol) what percentage of the Boer population can speak a language other than Afrikaans?

82.12.236.241 20:57, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

This is not a forum, please see Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines. Furthermore, there is no longer exist such a thing as a "boer population". The term Boer has different meanings in different historical contexts. Please limit comments to details of the article. --Deon Steyn 07:28, 10 May 2007 (UTC)


There is a significant number among the White Afrikaans population which can speak a language other then Afrikaans -though there are also many who can only speak Afrikaans.

Deon is right about this not being a forum: if you would like to discuss the subject further, perhaps you should start a blog or a comment web page where I would be glad to continue the discussion.

There is indeed still such a thing as a Boer population. Even if one were to restrict the definition to the Afrikaans farming communities: there would still be a Boer population. Furthermore I find it odd that anyone would want to redefine the Boers out of existence. There are a people who are still called Boers to this day which is an independent expression of merely a political designation. After all: presuming that the Boers are right wing would be like presuming that the Tibetans are right wing for wanting to retain their culture independent of mainland China. To make a comparison: Just because a great number of French Canadians in Quebec call themselves Quebecois does not mean that they are not still the same sociological group that they were when they were still called les Canadiens. Which is basically my point concerning the Boers. While a number might no longer describe themselves strictly as Boers -due to the past influence of the Cape based Afrikaner nationalists- it does not automatically mean that there no longer exists a sociological Boer population.

The Cajuns in the United States still call themselves Cajuns even though most no longer even speak French. At least the Boer people still speak their language & have retained their customs. The Quebecois people have also somewhat intermarried with British people to a slight degree: yet they still speak French / have retained their customs & continue to exist as an independent & distinct sociological group.

The assertion the the Boers are now somehow now all Afrikaners is akin to asserting that the Acadians are now all French Canadians. While one can make the case the Acadians are a type of French speaking Canadian: the term French Canadian has historically referred to the French speaking residents of Quebec & Ontario as the Acadians are a distinct sociological group which was formed in the Maritimes region independently of the French Canadians. This is the point concerning the Boers. The sociological group once more widely referred to as Boers is a distinct sociological group which formed independently of those who remained in the Western Cape & would later usurp the term Afrikaner. Calling the Boers: Afrikaners muddies the waters as it is a disservice to the people who have been & continue to be a sociologically distinct entity from the Afrikaners. Presuming that the Boers are right wing is ironic when considering that it was right wing Afrikaners who co-opted the Boers into their designation in the first place. Therefore those who have continued to refer to themselves as Boers or who are reclaiming their designation are doing so based on cultural grounds not just political grounds.

An interesting point indeed Deon, it says something strange, perhaps the global influence of English- speaking countries has made them seem more desirable than the smaller Dutch- speaking nations like Belgium and Holland. However I think that in a way they aren't 'truly' African, hear me out, because it's funny how they don't look first for oppurtunity in their own continent, rather in other places, external immigration is usually only resorted to after trying life in a different part of your home continent.
81.107.213.136 19:58, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Well this is incorrect as there are a significant number of Boers who have emigrated to places such as Mozambique, Nigeria, the Congo, Zambia.

As blacks have assumed greater power in South Africa, Afrikaners like Baumgarten have soured on the country and lost the sense of security they had under white-minority rule.

``I watched the protesters on television. They'd say, `Kill the Boer! Kill the farmer!' " said Baumgarten. ``Well, I'm one of those farmers."

And so Baumgarten joined the vanguard of Afrikaners who are immigrating to neighboring black-ruled countries, nations that were once hostile to South Africa but now welcome the Boers and their agricultural skills.

While small groups of South African farmers have moved to other African countries such as Zaire, Zambia and Congo in recent years - not always successfully - the migration to Mozambique is potentially much larger.

The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Furthermore: the fact that a number of White Afrikaans people emigrate to Europe / Australia & North America is done for much the same reasons as any other people do including many Black Africans as well. Therefore the notion that they are not "truly African" for doing so is a ridiculous statement since many agonize & are tormented by the decision to leave. If this makes them not "truly African" then what does that make the Black Africans who emigrate to Europe & America as well. Furthermore: the European people who initially settled in North America certainly did not try to settle in a different place on the European continent but went straight to the new world.

Ron7 20:26, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I repeat again, currently there is no such thing as a "Boer population". There are farmers, there are Afrikaans speaking "whites", and there are Afrikaans speaking white farmers. These farmers aren't isolated, they live near towns go to the same schools and marry non-farmers, some stop farming while others are new to farming, in short they are fully integrated into society so how would they be unique??? The current Afrikaans speaking "white" farmers have absolutely no distinguishing feature be it genetic, language, culture, geography or otherwise, that sets them apart from any other white Afrikaans speaker. Please cite a reliable source that states otherwise. The discussions are once again straying from the article into the world of forums and original research (Wikipedia:Original research). --Deon Steyn 06:56, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Indeed

Can we not place an infobox for them, Ron7's obtained population information (1 million roughly), they have their own customs, their own language, and are to all intents and purposes as much a people as the Afrikaners.

They have had a period of history in which they were independent, I think all of this warrants an info box.

82.13.45.78 11:47, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

They were for a short period a distinct political – and to some extent genetic – grouping, but even then did not have a distinct language. Furthermore, this page describes the various uses of the term "Boer" as it does not represent one unique people, because it varies with historic context. --Deon Steyn 07:01, 14 May 2007 (UTC)


This is a most complicated matter. Though not as complicated as some people make it out to be. While the term Boer is considered "obsolete" or outdated by many it is still a term many others continue to use to describe themselves. The frontier Boers did in fact develop their own dialect which scholars have called Eastern Border Afrikaans. This dialect developed specifically among the Boers of the eastern Cape frontier. Hence its name / classification. Therefore: it appears the historical record disagrees with the notion that "they did not have a distinct language". Furthermore: the Boer designation has indeed referred to basically the same group of people or rather the same cultural group which started out among the Trekboers of the late 17th cent to the Grensboere on the edges of the frontier to the Voortrekkers who left the frontier to trek northwards & right up to their modern descendants. Their distinctiveness as a unique & separate cultural group was not just for a "short" period of time at all -but has been noted for hundreds of years. The frontier Boers who began trekking inland centuries ago have been a distinctive & unique sociological group which continues to exist. While one can argue that they might no longer be as distinct from the greater White Afrikaans population as they once were the fact of the matter is that this group is still intact -regardless of what they might call themselves- as it isn't even really important what they call themselves since they would still be a distinct group.

Ron7 18:33, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Your statements contradict themselves Ron7, you refer to "Eastern Border Afrikaans" as a dialect. Even today there are many dialects of Afrikaans, they aren't separate languages (nor do they denote a separate ethnic group/peoples/nation). This "group" does not exist, please cite a reliable source that states otherwise. You are compressing several ambiguous terms ("boer", "afrikaner") and several hundred years of history into a few easy terms and this is not correct. It would be akin to speaking of the "yankee nation" you might want to call yourself a yankee, but a nation that does not make! --Deon Steyn 06:01, 16 May 2007 (UTC)


This is not a contradiction in the least. The fact that the Boers developed their own dialect speaks to the inherent distinctiveness of their language. Which is what my point was. The Australians have a distinctive dialect of the English language they developed. The different parts of the United States have distinctive forms of the English language. Particularly in the region which was once called "Dixie" where the inhabitants have a most pronounced dialect / accent with their own lexicon. The people of Quebec have a distinctive form of the French language. You claim that the different dialects of Afrikaans does not denote a separate ethnic group/peoples/nation when in reality the 3 main supra dialects denote specific macro ethnic / national / cultural groups.

Orange River Afrikaans is spoken by the Griquas & a number of Khoisan people. Eastern Border Afrikaans is spoken mainly by the (formerly) frontier Boers & their descendants. West Cape Afrikaans is spoken mainly by the mixed race populations (such as the Cape Malay) at the Western Cape. Then of course their are the other sub dialects like Oorlans & others (spoken by distinctive groups) as well.

Now on to the contentious & erroneous notion that the Boers allegedly do not exist. It is just incredible to come across such denial in the face of the plethora of documentation of the existence of this group. No one denies that the Acadians exist even though they could just as easily be dismissed as "French speaking Canadians living in the past" as Acadia no longer exists -but their culture & language still does. This is my point concerning the Boers. Boer culture & language still exist. Hence their exists a de facto Boer population. The Acadians have their own flags / culture & language / dialect just as the Boers (or Boer descendants) have & have had as well. Therefore: referring to the Boers as being the same thing as Afrikaners or of being just part of a greater generic White Afrikaans population is as insensitive as referring the Acadians as French Canadians -who are understood to be the inhabitants of Quebec. The following excerpts are documentation of the existence of the Boer population.

By the 1770s the Dutch{1} nomads have penetrated as far as Graaff-Reinet, some 400 miles northeast of Cape Town. They become known as Trekboers (Dutch for 'wandering farmers'), a word subsequently often shortened to Boers. When they go on raids, to rustle the cattle of the tribes, the Trekboers form themselves into armed bands of mounted gunmen known as commandos.

A series of frontier wars between Boers and Xhosa begins in 1779. The Boers appeal to Cape Town but get little help. In their frustration, in 1795, they declare Graaff-Reinet an independent Boer republic.

The Boers are by now, both in their own estimation and in reality, a people different from the Dutch at the Cape. They call themselves Afrikaners{2}, proudly emphasizing their birth in Africa. Their language, Afrikaans, already differs from Dutch. Their fierce independence is accompanied by an equally uncompromising variety of Calvinism. But in the very first year of their new republic a wider conflict intervenes. In 1795 the British seize Cape Town.

History World.
Definitions of Boer, Afrikaner, South African Colonists, Settlers and Coloureds:

The authoritative Canadian journalist-author Noel Mostert, (who is a descendant of Afrikaners Huguenots who in 1947 had emigrated to Canada; and now lives in Morocco), draws a very clear distinction especially between Afrikaners and Boers, writing on page 1292 in " Frontiers", his comprehensive history of the Xhosa nation:

Afrikaner: "The word 'Afrikaner' has a long history among Dutch-speaking {3}; colonists, but its modern nationalistic associations are comparatively recent, starting around the 1870s but principally early in this century.

Boer: "The word Boer is used to describe Dutch-speaking {3} colonists both early and later in the nineteenth century, for the Cape Colony as well as Natal, the Orange Free State and Transvaal;. Trekboer, Voortrekker: "Trekboer" is used to describe the semi-nomadic Boers who moved outwards from the Cape of Good Hope into the interior between the end of the seventeenth century and around the end of the eighteenth.

" Voortrekker or " Trekker" is applied to those who moved in more or less mass emigration from the Cape frontier to the north at the end of the 1830s.

Colonist: "The word ' colonist ' has been used to describe all white colonials, but I have found it necessary to make some distinction between the (two varieties of Afrikaans-)Dutch speakers {3} in South Africa, as well as English speakers.

The term ' settler ' (in the South African connotation) therefore has been applied exclusively to English-speakers (in Mostert's book).

Coloured: A catch-all apartheid-era term used to officially register South Africa's large variety of creole peoples, including the Khoi-San descendants living in the Western and Eastern Cape; the millions of Afrikaans-speakers of Afrikaner-Malay-Khoi-San descent (such as the Boesaks); also English-speakers of Zulu-Scottish descent (the Dunns of KwaZulu-Natal);

ISBN 0-679-40136-9, publ. Alfred A Knopf, Inc. New York; Random

House Inc., NY.
These early Dutch farmers were joined by other Europeans and their populations grew. The Dutch East India Company imported slaves from Angola, Mozambique, Madagascar and other parts of the Dutch Empire to work on large plantations close to Cape Town. The semi nomadic Dutch farmers expanded their settlement further from the Cape and came into conflict over land with local African populations. Their contact with the local Dutch government became more and more tenuous and most of them lived hard rural lives, moving farmsteads frequently, and quite independent of government and education. By 1745 they were known as Trekboers, which means "wandering farmers," a term which was later shortened to Boers. They were unaware of the changing politics in Europe.
Bowdoin College.
These people have had so many different handles over the past 350 years that it's hard to keep track - and now they are being given another name, namely "Afrikaanses".

That particular latest handle was thought up by Mrs Elna Boesak and other like-minded people - and refers to all the people in South Africa who speak Afrikaans i.e. also Afrikaans-speaking people of colour.

President Mbeki meanwhile prefers to refer to everybody with a paler skin than his own with the racist nomer of "whites" - which he often uses as an insult during parliamentary debates.

Small wonder these people are confused about their own identity! A "trekBoer", a "grensBoer", a "Voortrekker" and a "Boer" all refer to exactly the same people who had founded and supported the Independent Boer Republics of Natalia, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal (ZAR) and who were independent citizens in their own democratic republics for about fifty years before the British destroyed them in their ethnic-cleansing campaign.

History records that the British, the Dutch, the Germans, the French, the Americans and indeed many other foreign governments during those years invariably referred to the voters of these republics as "Boers." After they were defeated, they suddenly weren't allowed to call themselves Boers any longer by the British victors -- and the elitists Afrikaans-speaking collaborators who had worked with the British to defeat them and who had always referred to themselves as "Afrikaners" - after the language they spoke -- then started calling the former, defeated voters of the Boer Republics "Afrikaners."

One can generally still identify people who call themselves Boers these days as those Afrikaans-speaking paler-skinned people in South Africa who are mainly descended from working-class Afrikaans-speakers; many of those were mineworkers and technical workers at the former State-owned companies such as Telkom, Sasol etc. It's actually amazing how many of these people still privately refer to themselves as Boers even though they are being derided and sneered at from all sides.

Former South African Journalist Adriana Stuijt.
There has always been a vast difference between the "trek-Boers", "Voortrekkers", "grensboere" and the socalled Afrikaners - who were the elitist collaborators with the British at the Cape, and who also collaborated on the British side to help defeat the independent Boer Republics. After the feat of the Boer Republics, its voters - who had always been known as Boers everywhere in the world - suddenly lost their identity because the elitist Afrikaners who started running things on behalf of the British, insisted that everybody be called "Afrikaner" and that everybody should be "reconciled."

Strangely back then, people who looked down on the defeated Boers were referred to in the news media such as The Star of Johannesburg as "racists" who should make an "effort at reconciliation". However most of the "reconciliation" came from the side of the defeated Boers who had to find a livelihood as working-class workers in the mines and factories of the cities. They were forced to relinquish their identity indeed as the Afrikaners of today are now being forced to start referring to themselves as "Afrikaanses" - people who speak Afrikaans, a term which was thought up by Mrs Elna Boesak.

See how history repeats itself?

Former South African Journalist Adriana Stuijt.
The majority of the original white settlers, known as Cape Dutch, or in frontier regions Boers, maintained a nominal loyalty to the Dutch Reformed Church.
Irving Hexham & Karla Poewe.
Trekboers certainly recognised the differences in language, religion, etc. between themselves and the British; they had certainly developed a way-of-life and a set of values that were distinctive, but they were also significantly different from people of Dutch descent in the western province areas of the Cape. The latter regarded the Trekboers as rather wild, semi-barbarous frontiersmen and the sense of common identity was limited and incomplete; the westerners followed the Trek with interest and probably with a good deal of sympathy, but they certainly did not see the trekkers as the saviours of some mystical ‘nation’.
Canadian Professor Wallace Mills.
Another point of grotesque confusion that we need to clear up, is that Boers are not "Afrikaners". None of your co-workers seem to have any understanding of this. All Boers are aware of the systematic subterfuge and distortion of "identity" that has been the result of the makings of the Broederbond and the National Party, based upon the then image of the British imperialist gentleman. This artificial identity was meant to wean away the Boers from their strong identify, from their history, from their nationalism, and thus weaken them.
Tobias Louw. Open Letter to the Institute for Security Studies.
IN RECENT YEARS, historians have commented that Afrikaners were far from being one people. It is misleading, they say, to speak of ‘the Afrikaner’ or the ‘volk’ as if white, Afrikaans-speaking people were one, uniform mass. For at least 150 years, Dutch-speaking South Africans were divided, scattered and unaware of national unity. It was only when a systematic effort was made that national consciousness became widespread. In the nineteenth century, for example, settled Boers and townspeople in the Western Cape, differed greatly from the Voortrekkers (who themselves were not a united movement — many parties had split up to trek in different directions). Even in the Boer republics there were divisions between rich and poor, landowners and bywoners.
Afrikaner Nationalism Captures the State.

Notes.

1. The Boers were of course not just of Dutch origins but of French / German & others as well.

2. As in African. The term Afrikaner was yet to be used in the fasion it would later be used by the Afrikaner Nationalists of the 20th cent.

3. The description Dutch speaking is erroneous since as noted elsewhere here the language had changed & developed early on to a form of what would later be called Afrikaans.

The Yankees were indeed a sort of nation (or tribe) as it was the original Puritan based Eastern Establishment of New England. Though the original Yankees were more analogous to the Cape Dutch in that they were both the European originated immigrant ruling aristocracies of their prospective regions. The Cape Dutch government attempted to control the frontier Boers in much the same way the Yankees attempted to control the other inhabitants of the North American continent.

Ron7 14:20, 17 May 2007 (UTC)


Fair enough Deon. You're hostile to me all over wikipedia, you watch me for God's sake! As I said you're an Afrikaner (or Boer, I didn't get it out of you), and I've just espoused admiration in it's purest and sincerest form for your people.

No offense but, I thought I'd found a friend in you, a firearms interested, Afrikaans, White South African. Until now I'd only met nice South Africans. Don't take it too personally. However, seriously, why do you watch me, I think wikipedia should consider removing that feature, it's legalised cyber- stalking.

82.3.81.225 21:05, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Once again, please see Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines, also Wikipedia:Assume good faith. Please sign (by logging in) and indent your comments. --Deon Steyn 07:50, 15 May 2007 (UTC)