Afrikaans is a West Germanic language spoken mostly in South Africa and Namibia. It was originally known as “Cape Dutch” or “Kitchen Dutch”. True to the name, its roots lie in the Dutch language, but also found some of its words in German, English, Khoisan (also native to South Africa) and several other languages.

Thus, if a more formal form of Afrikaans is spoken with a Dutch person, there might be a very good mutual understanding, though they are still two different languages. Afrikaans originally stemmed from the 17th century Dutch dialects but started to develop on its own, also adding words from several other languages.
Though it is a beautiful, if somewhat difficult, language, it is starting to die a slow death in South Africa; as the government wants to change all schools from Afrikaans to English. And most businesses now are run with English based workers, documents, etc.