These two groups of people are often confused as one ethnic group or nation. They are as different as the Germans from the Austrians. Although they share their anchestery, religion and language, they are very different in culture which were determined by their different histories over the past 300+ years.
This differences was best illustrated during the anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) when the Boers (The Zuid Africhaanse Republic and the Republic of the Orange Free State) defended their republics against the brittish imperialism and greed for the rich goldfields of the Transvaal (ZAR). The Afrikaner (afrikaans speaking setlers that stayed in the Cape Colony and to a certain extend Natal) took up arms with the brittish to fight against the Boers and even helped the brittish in their Scorched Earth Policy where the whole of the ZAR and Free State were burned to the ground, the capture of Boer women and children from their farms and put into concentration camps where 26 000+ died. This might not look like a large number of people that died, but take in concideration the size of the Boer nation and it can easily compared to the jewish holocaust during WW2. At the end of the Boer war there was no Boer child under the age of 5 years alive and 25% of all women died in that camps because of malnutrition, exposure to the elements and lack of medical attention and proper sanitation.
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