Dutch Cape Colony in the context of "Cape Malays"

Afrikaans is a West Germanic language spoken in South Africa, Namibia, and to a lesser extent Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and also Argentina, where a group in Sarmiento speaks a Patagonian dialect. It evolved from the Dutch vernacular of South Holland (Hollandic dialect) spoken by the predominantly Dutch settlers and enslaved population of the Dutch Cape Colony, where it gradually began to develop distinguishing characteristics in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Although Afrikaans has adopted words from other languages, including German, Malay, and Khoisan languages, an estimated 90 to 95% of its vocabulary is of Dutch origin. Differences between Afrikaans and Dutch often lie in the more analytic morphology and grammar of Afrikaans, and different spellings. There is a large degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages, especially in written form.

Khoisan (/ˈkɔɪsɑːn/ KOY-sahn) or Khoe-Sān (pronounced [kʰoɪˈsaːn]) is an umbrella term for the various indigenous peoples of Southern Africa who traditionally speak non-Bantu languages, combining the Khoekhoen and the Sān peoples. Khoisan populations traditionally speak click languages. They are considered to be the historical communities throughout Southern Africa, remaining predominant until Bantu and European colonisation. The Khoisan have lived in areas climatically unfavourable to Bantu (sorghum-based) agriculture, from the Cape region to Namibia and Botswana, where Khoekhoe populations of Nama and Damara people are prevalent groups. Considerable mingling with Bantu-speaking groups is evidenced by prevalence of click phonemes in many Southern African Bantu languages, especially Xhosa.

Many Khoesan peoples are the descendants of an early dispersal of anatomically modern humans to Southern Africa before 150,000 years ago. (However, see below for recent work supporting a multi-regional hypothesis that suggests the Khoisan may be a source population for anatomically modern humans.) Their languages show a limited typological similarity, largely confined to the prevalence of click consonants. They are not verifiably derived from a single common proto-language, but are split among at least three separate and unrelated language families (Khoe-Kwadi, Tuu and Kxʼa). It has been suggested that the Khoekhoe may represent Late Stone Age arrivals to Southern Africa, possibly displaced by Bantu expansion reaching the area roughly between 1,500 and 2,000 years ago.

Khoikhoi (/ˈkɔɪkɔɪ/ KOY-koy) (or Khoekhoe in Namibian orthography) are the traditionally nomadic pastoralist indigenous population of South Africa. They are often grouped with the hunter-gatherer San (literally "foragers") peoples, the accepted term for the two people being Khoisan. The designation "Khoikhoi" is actually a kare or praise address, not an ethnic endonym, but it has been used in the literature as an ethnic term for Khoe-speaking peoples of Southern Africa, particularly pastoralist groups, such as the Inqua, Griqua, Gonaqua, Nama, Attequa. The Khoekhoe were once known as Hottentots, a term now considered offensive.

The Khoekhoe are thought to have diverged from other humans 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. In the 17th century, the Khoekhoe maintained large herds of Nguni cattle in the Cape region. They mostly gave up nomadic pastoralism in the 19th to 20th century.

The Cape Colony (Dutch: Kaapkolonie), also known as the Cape of Good Hope, was a British colony in present-day South Africa named after the Cape of Good Hope. It existed from 1795 to 1802, and again from 1806 to 1910, when it united with three other colonies to form the Union of South Africa, then became the Cape Province, which existed even after 1961, when South Africa had become a republic, albeit temporarily outside the Commonwealth of Nations (1961–94).

The British colony was preceded by an earlier corporate colony that became an original Dutch colony of the same name, which was established in 1652 by the Dutch East India Company (VOC). The Cape was under VOC rule from 1652 to 1795 and under rule of the Napoleonic Batavia Republic from 1803 to 1806. The VOC lost the colony to Great Britain following the 1795 Battle of Muizenberg, but it was ceded to the Batavia Republic following the 1802 Treaty of Amiens. It was re-occupied by the British following the Battle of Blaauwberg in 1806, and British possession affirmed with the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814. The Cape of Good Hope then remained in the British Empire, becoming self-governing in 1872.

South Africa is a Christian majority nation with Islam being a minority religion, practised by roughly 2% of the total population. Islam in South Africa has grown in three different phases. The first phase brought the earliest Muslims as part of the involuntary migration of slaves, artisans, political prisoners, and political exiles from the Dutch East Indies to the Cape Colony from 1652 to 1800. The second phase was the arrival of indentured labourers from British India to work in the sugar-cane fields in Natal from 1860 to 1911. Of the approximately 176,000 Indians of all faiths who were transported to the Natal province, almost 7–10% of the first shipment were Muslims.

The third phase has been marked by a wave of African Muslims following the end of apartheid in 1994. Recent figures put the number of these immigrants at approximately between 75,000 and 100,000. In addition, a considerable number of Muslims from South Asia have also arrived as economic migrants. Although the majority of Muslims are Sunni, smaller numbers are Shia, particularly in Cape Town.

Coloureds (Afrikaans: Kleurlinge) are multiracial people in South Africa, Namibia and to a smaller extent Zimbabwe and Zambia. Their mixed heritage descends from the interracial mixing that occurred between Europeans, Africans and Asians. Interracial mixing in South Africa began in the 17th century in the Dutch Cape Colony where the Dutch men mixed with Khoekhoe women and female slaves from different parts of Africa and Asia, creating mixed-race children. Eventually, interracial mixing occurred throughout South Africa and the rest of Southern Africa with various other European nationals (such as the Portuguese, British, Germans, Irish, French etc.) who mixed with other African tribes leading to more mixed-race children, whose descendants would later be officially classified as 'Coloured' under the Population Registration Act, 1950 during Apartheid.

The majority of Coloureds are found in the Western Cape, but are prevalent throughout the country. According to the 2022 South African census, Coloureds represent 8.15% of people within South Africa, while they make up 42.1% of the population in the Western Cape and 41.6% in the Northern Cape, representing a plurality of the population in these two provinces of South Africa. In the Western Cape, a distinctive Cape Coloured and affiliated Cape Malay culture developed. Genetic studies suggest the group has the highest levels of mixed ancestry in the world.