Die voorval het vanaand gebeur.

Die is the Afrikaans definite article, meaning the.

A very learner-friendly feature of Afrikaans is that die does not change for grammatical gender. In other words, you do not have to learn separate forms like in some other European languages.

So:

• die voorval = the incident
• die man = the man
• die vrou = the woman
• die kinders = the children

The same form die is used very widely for both singular and plural nouns.

Voorval usually means something like incident, occurrence, or event.

It often suggests that something specific happened, and very often something notable, unexpected, or possibly unpleasant. So incident is often a very good English match.

Compared with a broad word like event, voorval can sound a bit more specific and concrete.

This is one of the most important grammar points in Afrikaans.

Afrikaans usually talks about completed past actions with a perfect construction:

subject + het + rest of sentence + main verb at the end

So here:

• Die voorval = the incident
• het = auxiliary verb
• vanaand = tonight / this evening
• gebeur = happened / occurred

So Die voorval het vanaand gebeur is the normal Afrikaans way to say that the incident happened tonight.

Unlike English, Afrikaans does not normally use a simple past form for most verbs in everyday language.

Because in a normal Afrikaans main clause with het, the finite verb het takes the second position, and the main verb goes to the end.

So the structure is:

• Die voorval = first element
• het = second-position finite verb
• vanaand = time expression
• gebeur = main verb at the end

This is very typical Afrikaans word order.

Good question. In Afrikaans, many past participles are formed with ge-, but some verbs do not take an extra ge-.

Gebeur is one of those verbs. Its infinitive and its past-participle form look the same:

• infinitive: gebeur = happen
• past participle: gebeur = happened

So:

• Dit gebeur nou. = It is happening now.
• Dit het gebeur. = It happened.

You do not say gegebeur.

Vanaand can cover both this evening and tonight, depending on context.

It refers to the evening/night of the current day. English often splits this into two choices, but Afrikaans uses vanaand quite naturally for both.

So depending on context, it could be translated as:

• this evening
• tonight

In your sentence, tonight is a very natural translation.

Yes. Afrikaans allows some movement for emphasis, but the word order changes in predictable ways.

The neutral version is:

Die voorval het vanaand gebeur.

You can also front the time expression:

Vanaand het die voorval gebeur.

That puts extra focus on vanaand. Notice that het still stays in second position, and the subject comes after it.

A version like Die voorval het gebeur vanaand is possible in some contexts, but it sounds less neutral and more like an afterthought.

Here, het is being used as an auxiliary verb, not with the full meaning to have.

In this sentence, it helps form the past tense:

• het gebeur = happened

So you should think of het here as part of the past-tense structure rather than as a separate word meaning possession.

You normally cannot leave it out in standard Afrikaans.

Not if you want the same meaning.

Die voorval het vanaand gebeur means:

• the incident happened tonight

But Die voorval was vanaand would mean something more like:

• the incident was tonight

That sounds more like you are identifying when it took place on the schedule, not describing the fact that it happened.

So het ... gebeur is the right choice for happened.

Yes. It is a completely normal and natural sentence.

It follows a very common Afrikaans pattern for a completed past event:

subject + het + time expression + main verb at end

So as a learner, this is a very useful model sentence to remember.