Much of the discontent among Afrikaners centers on their experiences in rural communities and tensions over land ownership that remain unresolved since the end of apartheid more than 30 years ago.
Many Afrikaners farm to make a living. During apartheid, the government denied Black South Africans the right to own prime agricultural land. That meant that almost all of the country’s large-scale commercial farmers were white, and that remains so to this day. Although white South Africans make up only 7 percent of the population, they own farmland that covers about half of the country. That is indicative of a broader prosperity gap, with white South Africans enjoying much higher employment rates, lower poverty rates and more lucrative wages than their Black counterparts.
