Free Burghers in the Dutch Cape Colony
Free Burghers were early European colonists in the 18th century who had been released of their service contracts to the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and had become full citizens (burghers). The introduction of Free Burghers to the Dutch Cape Colony is regarded as the beginning of a permanent settlement of Europeans in South Africa. The Free Burgher population eventually devolved into two distinct segments separated by social status, wealth, and education: the Cape Dutch and the Boers.
Settlement of the first Free Burghers
Cape Wagons were built by the burghers, the wagons were adjusted to accommodate for the rough Cape landscape
French Huguenots building a house at the Cape
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe. It evolved from the Dutch vernacular of South Holland spoken by the predominantly Dutch settlers and enslaved population of the Dutch Cape Colony, where it gradually began to develop distinguishing characteristics in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Obelisks of the Afrikaans Language Monument near Paarl
Standard Dutch used in a 1916 South African newspaper before Afrikaans replaced it for use in media
"Dit is ons erns" ("This is our passion"), at the Afrikaans Language Monument
The side view of the Pretoria Art Museum in Arcadia, Pretoria, with its name written in Afrikaans, Xhosa and Southern Ndebele.