The Cape Dutch never cut ties to Europe & looked down on the anti-colonial emerging Boers who wanted independence & freedom on the African continent. The Boers are from the Trekboers who lived as nomads & became part of the landscape & considered themselves Africans. The Boers even established a number of their own Boer Republics before they were conquered by the British after the second Anglo-Boer War.
The British then politically merged the larger Cape Dutch with the smaller Boers & called them all Afrikaners: a dispossessing term which had its roots in the region used to describe anyone born in Africa - White / mixed race or other - who spoke the patois later called Afrikaans. The Boers were marginalized under the Afrikaner designation as they were the smaller segment. Thus when they tried to restore the Boer Republics in 1914 / 1940s / 1990s etc. the Afrikaner establishment organized against them & prevented the Boers from regaining self determination.
Listen for more at: Verwoerd was not a friend of the Boer Nation.
The late Boer patriot Fritz Meyer noted in an open letter that the British imported signs stating "European" & "non-European" to the region & Hennie Barnard noted in an article about the concentration camps the British used against Boer civilians that the Boers never regarded themselves as European. The notion that all of the local White peoples were "Europeans" was promoted by the British who conquered the region.