All Afrikaans passive constructions are periphrastic and combine auxiliaries with lexical verbs to form passive clauses. The auxiliaries used to form passives are word become for present tense, as in (8a), and is was for past tense, as in (8b). The verb is may sometimes express the pluperfect, as in (8c), while was may be used for an explicit pluperfect, as was geverf had been painted in (8d). In (8e), however, was geverf only has past tense reference. Verb clusters like geverf is/was are sometimes replaced by more extended clusters such as geverf geword het and geverf gewees het in clause-final usage, cf. (8f).

While passive auxiliaries convert the verbs they select into passive participles (which do not differ in form from past participles), they also combine with two or more base forms of lexical verbs, of which the first may be prefixed by ge-.

The word and is auxiliaries can be extended to the periphrastic perfects geword het and gewees het, respectively. With geword het the dynamic aspect of the passive is retained in the past tense (see (11a)). Although geword het and gewees het are used much less often than is, one of them must be used in clusters containing modal verbs, as in (11b)(also see (8f) above).

Afrikaans differs from Dutch and is more similar to English, in as far as the indirect rather than the direct object of a ditransitive verb is promoted to subject of a passive clause:

While passives are usually formed on the basis of transitive verbs, they may also be formed with intransitive verbs (cf. (13a)) or prepositional object verbs (cf. (13b)). These are the so-called impersonal passives are usually employed to express purposeful human actions or enterprises. The action expressed in (cf. (13c)) is human but not purposeful and therefore marked, while (cf. (13d)) is unacceptable because of a non-human agent.

The verb kry to get, which is often employed as an active auxiliary in Afrikaans, as in (14a), is also used in a passive function, as in (14b):

Non-lexical verbs, such as modals and auxiliaries, appear at the beginning and end of the clause-final verbal complex. This cluster includes modal particles, lexical verbs (non-main followed by main verb) and auxiliary verbs. In this representation, movement into verb second (and first) positions and leftward movement of participles are assumed not to have taken place.

Note that a passive with geword het become.PST.PTCP have.AUX as perfect auxiliary retains the dynamic or activity force of a word be.AUX.PASS.PRS passive in the past, while an is be.AUX.PASS.PST or gewees het be.PST.PTCP have.AUX passive is relatively stative in meaning.

The past participle of a main verb, or a set of lexical verbs, may move to the beginning of the clause-final cluster, unless governed by the auxiliary het has, have. Thus in (15a) gesing (or probeer sing) may move, but gewees is inseparable from the auxiliary het.

The following clause is fully ambiguous between a perfect passive with past reference (see 16a), and a copula with a departicipial adjective expressing a state in the present, as predicate (see 16b).