Do black South Africans understand Afrikaans?

Most black South Africans do not speak Afrikaans, although many learn it at school. For older generations, the language still symbolises the brutality of apartheid regime and a time they would rather forget.

What is the difference between Dutch and Afrikaans?

Unlike Dutch, Afrikaans has no grammatical gender, and therefore only has one form of the definite article die, while standard Dutch has two (de for both masculine and feminine nouns and het for neuter ones) and Dutch dialects in the Southern Netherlands have a third, den, used for masculine nouns.

Who ended up controlling South Africa?

Increased European encroachment ultimately led to the colonisation and occupation of South Africa by the Dutch. The Cape Colony remained under Dutch rule until 1795 before it fell to the British Crown, before reverting back to Dutch Rule in 1803 and again to British occupation in 1806.

Is Afrikaans black?

Afrikaans is a southern African language. Today six in 10 of the almost seven million Afrikaans speakers in South Africa are estimated to be black. Like several other South African languages, Afrikaans is a cross-border language spanning sizeable communities of speakers in Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe.