Free Burghers were primarily Dutch employees of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) who were released from company service in its overseas colonies and granted the rights of free citizens (burghers). The introduction of Free Burghers to the Dutch Cape Colony is regarded as the beginning of a permanent settlement of Europeans in South Africa. The Cape's Free Burgher population eventually devolved into two distinct segments separated by social status, wealth, and education: the Cape Dutch and the Boers.