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South African cuisine reflects the diverse range of culinary traditions embodied by the various communities that inhabit the country. Among the indigenous peoples of South Africa, the Khoisan foraged over 300 species of edible food plants,^[1] such as the rooibos shrub legume,^[2] whose culinary value continues to exert a salient influence on South African cuisine. Subsequent encounters with Bantu pastoralists facilitated the emergence of cultivated crops and domestic cattle, which supplemented traditional Khoisan techniques of meat preservation.^[3] In addition, Bantu-speaking communities forged an extensive repertoire of culinary ingredients and dishes, many of which are still consumed today in traditional settlements and urban entrepôts alike.

History

The San peoples were hunter-gatherers, who mostly depended on foods like tortoises, crayfish, coconuts and squash. Agriculture was introduced to South Africa by the Bantu peoples, who continue in the cultivation of grain, starch fruit and root tubers — in the manner of maize, squash and sweet potatoes, following their introduction in the Columbian exchange, displacing the production of many Old World food crops. Mabele (red sorghum) and madumbe (cocoyam, taro, or arrowroot) also continue to be widely cultivated.

By the 17th century, Dutch and British foodways brought via European immigration resulted in further culinary diffusion. The Cape Malay community founded a distinctive diasporic cuisine, derived largely from Southeast Asian culinary traditions, while Afrikaner voortrekkers further inland adapted Dutch, Khoisan, Cape Malay and Bantu foodways to accommodate their peripatetic lifestyle. In addition, French Huguenot refugees, many of whom settled in Franschhoek, played an instrumental role in developing South Africa's viticultural industry.

During the period of British colonial rule, immigrants from Asia, many of whom arrived as indentured laborers in the 19th century, further enriched the culinary oeuvre of South Africa. In particular, Indian South Africans brought a wealth of spices, seasonings and dishes, historically associated with KwaZulu-Natal, although Indian cuisine is currently widely available across South Africa and consumed by all ethnic groups.

Disinvestments and sanctions imposed on South Africa during apartheid stifled the country's culinary output. At this time shebeens, situated in urban townships, became very popular and often served as non-formal community centers, especially for black South Africans who pursued their cultural and culinary traditions. Following the end of apartheid, South African cuisine witnessed a renaissance, with diverse culinary options available in most of the country's major cities catering to tourists, expatriates and local residents. In addition, South African ingredients and dishes have attained greater visibility worldwide, owing to the burgeoning South African diaspora.

Indigenous cookery

In the precolonial period, indigenous cuisine was characterised by the use of a very wide range of foods including fruits, nuts, bulbs, leaves and other products gathered from wild plants and by the hunting of wild game. The introduction of domestic cattle and grain crops by Bantu speakers who arrived in the southern regions from north-east Africa since 200 AD and the spread of cattle keeping to Khoisan groups enabled products and the availability of fresh meat on demand.

The pre-colonial diet consisted primarily of cooked grains, especially sorghum and millet, fermented milk (somewhat like yogurt) and roasted or stewed meat. At some point, maize replaced sorghum as the primary grain, and there is some dispute as to whether maize, a Central American crop, arrived with European settlers (notably the Portuguese) or spread through Africa before white settlements via Africans returning from the Americas during the era of the slave trade.^[4]

People also kept sheep and goats, and communities often organised vast hunts for the abundant game, but the beef was considered the absolutely most important and high-status meat. The ribs of any cattle that were slaughtered in many communities were so prized that they were offered to the chief of the village.^[5]^[6]

In many ways, the daily food of South African families can be traced to the indigenous foods that their ancestors ate. A typical meal in a Bantu-speaking, South African household is a stiff, fluffy porridge of maize meal (called pap, and very similar to American grits) with a flavorful stewed meat gravy. Traditional rural families (and many urban ones) often ferment their pap for a few days—especially if it is sorghum instead of maize—which gives it a tangy flavour. The Sotho-Tswana call this fermented pap, ting.^[7]^[8]

Vegetables used are often some sort of pumpkin, varieties of which are indigenous to South Africa, although now many people eat pumpkins that originated in other countries. Rice and beans are also very popular although they are not indigenous. Another common vegetable dish, which arrived in South Africa with its many Irish immigrants, but which has been adopted by South Africans, is shredded cabbage and white potatoes cooked with butter.

For many South Africans meat is the center of any meal. The Khoisan ate roasted meat, and they also dried meat for later use. The influence of their diet is reflected in the common Southern African love of barbecue (generally called in South Africa by its Afrikaans name, a braai) and biltong (dried preserved meat). As in the past, when men kept cattle as their prized possession in the rural areas, South Africans have a preference for beef.

Today, South Africans enjoy not only beef, but mutton, goat, chicken and other meats as a centerpiece of a meal. On weekends, many South African families have a braai, and the meal usually consists of pap en vleis, which is maize meal and grilled meat. Eating meat even has a ritual significance in both traditional and modern South African culture.

In Bantu culture, for weddings, initiations, the arrival of family members after a long trip and other special occasions, families will buy a live animal and slaughter it at home, and then prepare a large meal for the community or neighbourhood. Participants often say that spilling the blood of the animal on the ground pleases the ancestors who invisibly gather around the carcass. On holiday weekends, entrepreneurs will set up pens of live animals along the main roads of townships—mostly sheep and goats—for families to purchase, slaughter, cook and eat. Beef being the most prized meat for weddings, affluent families often purchase a live steer for slaughter at home.

Non-indigenous cookery

During the pioneering days of the 17th century, new foods such as biltong, droëwors and rusks evolved locally out of necessity.

British cookery

South Africa was a colony of the British Empire and has strong influences from United Kingdom. As British people settled in South Africa they brought their cuisine, which influenced South African cuisine.

Sunday roast is as popular in South Africa as Australia, Canada and New Zealand where there are influences from the UK. In South Africa, Yorkshire pudding is replaced by gravy sauce and rice.

Fish and chips are also popular in South Africa. Fish and chip shops have dynamic ways to sell such as vendors or vans. Typically fried fish are hakes and snoeks.

Cape Dutch and Cape Malay cookery

A very distinctive regional style of South African cooking is often referred to as "Cape Dutch". This cuisine is characterised mainly by the usage of spices such as nutmeg, allspice and chili peppers. The Cape Dutch cookery style owes at least as much to the cookery of the slaves brought by the Dutch East India Company to the Cape from Bengal, Java and Malaysia as it does to the European styles of cookery imported by settlers from the Netherlands, and this is reflected in the use of eastern spices and the names given to many of these dishes.

The Cape Malay influence has brought spicy curries, sambals, pickled fish, and a variety of fish stews.

Bobotie is a South African dish that has Cape Malay origins. It consists of spiced minced meat baked with an egg-based topping. Of the many dishes common to South Africa, bobotie is perhaps closest to being the national dish, because it is not commonly found in any other country. The recipe originates from the Dutch East India Company colonies in Batavia, with the name derived from the Indonesian bobotok. It is also made with curry powder, leaving it with a slight tang. It is often served with sambal, a hint of its origins from the Malay Archipelago.

South African yellow rice, a sweet dish made with turmeric, raisins, cinnamon and sugar, also has its origins in Cape Malay cookery, and is often referred to as Cape Malay yellow rice.^[9]

French cookery

French Huguenot refugees brought wines as well as their traditional recipes from France.^[10]

Indian cookery

Curried dishes are popular in South Africa among people of all ethnic origins; many dishes came to the country with the thousands of Indian indentured labourers brought to South Africa in the nineteenth century. South African Indian cuisine has contributed to South African cooking with a wide variety of dishes and culinary practices, including a variety of curries, sweets, chutneys, fried snacks such as samoosas, and other savoury foods.

Bunny chow, a dish from Durban ("the largest 'Indian' city outside of India"^[12]), consisting of a hollowed-out loaf of bread filled with curry, has been adapted into mainstream South African cuisine. In the townships surrounding Pretoria, the capital, and Johannesburg, this sandwich is often referred to as a spatlo.^[13]

Beverages

Beer has been an important beverage in South Africa for hundreds of years among indigenous people long before colonisation and the arrival of Europeans with their own beer drinking traditions. Traditional beer was brewed from local grains, especially sorghum. Beer was so prized that it became central to many ceremonies, like betrothals and weddings, in which one family ceremoniously offered beer to the other family.

Unlike European beer, South African traditional beer was unfiltered and cloudy and had a low alcohol content. Around the turn of the 1900s, when white-owned industry began studying malnutrition among urban workers, it was discovered that traditional beer provided crucial vitamins sometimes not available in the grain-heavy traditional diet and even less available in urban industrial slums.

When South Africa's mines were developed and black South Africans began to urbanise, women moved to the city also, and began to brew beer for the predominantly male labour force—a labour force that was mostly either single or who had left their wives back in the rural areas under the migrant labour system. That tradition of urban women making beer for the labour force persists in South Africa to the extent that informal bars and taverns (shebeens) are typically owned by women (shebeen queens).

Today, most urban dwellers buy beer manufactured by industrial breweries that make beer that is like beer one would buy in Europe and America, but rural people and recent immigrants to the city still enjoy the cloudy, unfiltered traditional beer.

Comparable to an American or western European diet, milk and milk products are very prominent in the traditional Black South African diet. As cows were considered extremely desirable domestic animals in precolonial times, milk was abundant. In the absence of refrigeration, various kinds of soured milk, somewhat like yogurt, were a dietary mainstay. A visitor to any African village in the 1800s would have been offered a large calabash of cool fermented milk as a greeting.

Because milk cows allowed women to wean their children early and become fertile more quickly, local cultures had a number of sayings connecting cattle, milk and population growth, such as the Sotho-Tswana saying, "cattle beget children."

Today, in the dairy section of South Africa's supermarkets, one will find a variety of kinds of milk, sour milk, sour cream, and other modern versions of traditional milk products.

Restaurants and outlets

South Africa can be said to have a significant "eating out" culture. While there are some restaurants that specialise in traditional South African dishes or modern interpretations thereof, restaurants featuring other cuisines such as Moroccan, Chinese, West African, Congolese, and Japanese can be found in all of the major cities and many of the larger towns.^[14] There are also many home-grown chain restaurants, such as Spur and Dulce Café.

There is also a proliferation of fast-food restaurants in South Africa. While some international players such as Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald's are active in the country, they face stiff competition from local chains such as Nando's, Galito's, Steers, Chicken Licken, Barcelos, Fat Cake City and King Pie. Many of the restaurant chains originating from South Africa have also expanded successfully outside the borders of the country.^[15] Also, Starbucks is present in the country.

Typical South African foods and dishes

Savoury

Boerewors roll
A large braai in process
Freshly prepared springbok goulash
A spatlo, popular street meal in all provinces

Game and meats

Afrikaans

Biltong—dried meat (typically seasoned with coriander seeds and salt). Although the meat used is most commonly beef, different variants also exist using springbok, kudu, eland, chicken and ostrich.
Boerewors—a sausage that is traditionally braaied (barbecued).
Droëwors—translates to dried sausage and is made like boerewors, but park meat is left out. It is dried the same way as biltong is.
Frikkadels—usually baked, but sometimes deep-fried, meatballs.
Bokkoms—whole, salted and dried mullet.
Skilpadjies—lamb's liver wrapped in netvet and braaied over hot coals.
Smoked or braaied snoek—a regional gamefish.
Sosatie—kebab, grilled marinated meat on a skewer.
Amanqina—chicken feet, cow feet, pig feet, lamb feet and sheep feet, usually consumed with pap or as a delicacy.
Chicken feet—grilled or deep-fried chicken feet and head. Another dish is a cooked pig’s head known as a "smiley", most popular in townships and sold by street vendors, sometimes in industrial areas with high concentrations of workers.
Ostrich—an increasingly popular protein source, as it has low cholesterol content, used in a stew or filleted and grilled.

Meals

Tsonga and Venda

Mashonja/matamani—made from mopani worms

Afrikaans

Gesmoorde vis—salted cod or snoek with potatoes and tomato sauce, sometimes served with apricot, grapes or moskonfyt.
Hoenderpastei—chicken pot pie, traditional Afrikaans fare.
Kaiings—made from lamb tail or lamb flank cut into small cubes, and cooked in a cast-iron pot over a slow fire. Kaiings resemble cracklings, though the skin is not as puffy and crispy as a crackling, and a small piece of protein is usually left on the skin and fat. They are a chewy traditional Boer delicacy often served as a topping over pap or with honey.
Mielie-meal—a staple food, often used in baking but predominantly cooked into pap or ugali
Oepsies—a starter made on a braai. Similar to the American devils on horseback but exclusively made with cherries wrapped in bacon and battered with barbeque sauce.
Paptert—a tart used as a side dish for a braai. Made from pap, cheese, canned tomatoes and bacon. Both modern and traditional.
Potjiekos—a traditional Afrikaans stew, made with meat and vegetables and cooked over coals in cast-iron pots.
Tomato bredie—a lamb and tomato stew.
Waterblommetjiebredie (water flower stew)—meat stewed with the flower of the Cape pondweed.

Indian

Biryani—a traditional rice and red meat/chicken or vegetable dish originating from the Muslim community of the Indian subcontinent.
Bunny chow—curry stuffed into a hollowed-out loaf of bread, often called kota by the locals (usually those of African descent) who sometimes, instead of curry, fill the bread with slap chips (French fries), a slice of polony (bologna), cheese, and atchar (South Asian pickle) and other fillings and spices.
Durban curry—more spicy than the Cape Malay version due to the use of masala. Usually mutton/lamb is used and the most common spice mixture used is ground cayenne pepper, paprika, cinnamon, cumin and fennel. Potatoes and carrots are sometimes added.
Lamb chop chutney - fried lamb chops placed in a tomato chutney with green chillies

Malay

Bobotie—a dish of Malay descent, is like meatloaf with raisins and with baked egg on top, and is often served with yellow rice, sambals, coconut, banana slices, and chutney.
Cape Malay curry—a curry most often made with chicken and spiced with mild masala. Spices include cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, cayenne pepper, coriander, garlic, turmeric, bay leaves, and fenugreek.
Sotok
Indomie

Zulu, Xhosa and Sotho

Dombolo—dumplings, flour mixture usually steamed in a pot.
Isidudu—soft porridge made from ground corn known as "mealie meal".
Mala mogodu—a local dish similar to tripe, usually eaten with hot pap and spinach.
Iinkobe—summer salad made with boiled corn.
Sigwaqani—boiled beans mixed with mealie-meal.
Mqhavunyeko—wet corn mixed with beans.
Trotters and beans—from the Cape, made from boiled pig's or sheep's trotters and onions and beans.
Ugali—maize porridge in South Africa, traditional porridge/polenta and a staple food of the African peoples
Umngqusho—a dish made from white maize and sugar beans, a staple food for the Xhosa people.
Umphokoqo—an African salad made of maize meal.^[16]
Umvubo—sour milk mixed with dry pap, commonly eaten by the Xhosa.
Inhloko/Smiley—a boiled stew of a cow or sheep's head, usually served with phuthu.

Breads

Afrikaans

Braaibroodjie—a sandwich consisting of two slices of bread with a filling of sliced tomato, cheese, onion, South African peach chutney (traditionally Mrs. H.S. Balls) seasoned with salt and pepper. The braaibroodjie is placed in a folding braai grid (gridiron) and slowly grilled over medium-hot coals until the cheese melts and the bread is browned.
Gatsby—a sandwich popular in Cape Town, a long roll with fillings of anything ranging from polony (bologna) to chicken or steak and hot chips.
Potbrood (pot bread or boerbrood)—savoury bread baked over coals in cast-iron pots.

Indian

Samosa, or samoosa—a savoury stuffed Indian pastry that is fried.
Kota, —a sandwich, quarter-loaf of bread usually stuffed with polony (bologna), cheese, atchar (South Asian pickle) and chips (French fries).

Relishes

Chakalaka—a spicy South African vegetable relish.
blatjang, or Mrs Balls Chutney, a sweet sauce made from fruit that is usually poured on meat.
Monkey gland sauce—made of chopped onion, garlic and ginger, with a combination of chutney, soy sauce, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, and wine (there are no monkeys involved.)

Fruits and plants

Makataan—a wild fruit that grows in the Kalahari desert. It is soaked in limewater overnight (to remove the bitter taste) before processing into a jam known as Makataan konfyt.^[17]
Marula—the yellow fruit of a local tree. This fruit is eaten and beloved by both the people and animals. Amarula liqueur is made from this fruit. The ripe fruit lying on the ground is processed into jams, wine and beer. Many local communities depend on this fruit for extra income. The jam is enjoyed with roosterkoek and on venison steaks, such as kudu.
Morogo—spinach-like wild plant sometimes seen as a weed. Traditionally boiled and served with pap, or dried in small lumps for extended shelf life. The traditional Afrikaner/Boer preparation usually incorporates onion, potato, or both.

Sweet

Bar One sauce—usually poured over vanilla ice-cream, made from melted Bar One chocolate and cream.
Hertzoggie—a tartlet with an apricot jam filling and dried coconut meringue topping.
Koeksisters—come in two forms and are a sweet delicacy among all South Africans. Afrikaans koeksisters are twisted pastries, deep fried and strongly sweetened. Koesisters found in the Cape Flats are sweet and spicy, shaped like large eggs, and deep fried.
Malva pudding—a sweet spongy apricot pudding of Dutch origin.
Melktert—a milk-based tart or dessert.
Melkkos—a traditional South African dish. Served as a standalone dish for supper and for lunch in some instances. (Famous traditional cookbooks such as the "Kook en Geniet" don't refer to this a dessert though).
Mealie-bread—a sweet bread baked with sweetcorn.
Mosbolletjies—a sweet bun made with aniseed and a grape juice leavening agent from the wine-making region of South Africa. Baked twice to make mosbeskuit.
Pampoenkoekies (pumpkin fritters)—flour has been supplemented with or replaced by pumpkin. Some variants are patatkoekie (sweet-potato fritter), aartappelkoekie (potato fritter), ryskoekie (rice fritter), where pumpkin is replaced with either sweet potato, potato or rice.
Peppermint crisp tart—a traditional fridge tart made with peppermint crisp chocolate, caramel treat, Tennis biscuits and fresh cream.
Rusks—a rectangular, hard, dry biscuit eaten after being dunked in tea or coffee; they are either home-baked or shop-bought (with the most popular brand being Ouma Rusks).
Vetkoek (fat cake, doughnut, Amagwinya《 in isiXhosa 》)—deep-fried dough balls, typically stuffed with meat or served with snoek fish or jam.

Drinks

Amasi—fermented milk.
Boeber—a traditional Cape Malay sweet milk drink, made with vermicelli, sago, sugar, and flavoured with cardamom, stick cinnamon and rose water.
Mafi—fermented milk, often consumed with pap or by itself.
Mageu—a drink made from fermented mealie pap.
Rooibos—a herbal tea indigenous to South Africa.
Umqombothi—a type of beer made from fermented maize and sorghum.

Footnotes

^ Arnold, T. H.; Wells, M. J.; Wehmeyer, A. S. (1985), Wickens, G. E.; Goodin, J. R.; Field, D. V. (eds.), "Khoisan food plants: taxa with potential for future economic exploitation", Plants for Arid Lands: Proceedings of the Kew International Conference on Economic Plants for Arid Lands held in the Jodrell Laboratory, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, England, 23–27 July 1984, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 69–86, doi:10.1007/978-94-011-6830-4_6, ISBN 978-94-011-6830-4
^ Ives, Sarah (2014). "Farming the South African "Bush": Ecologies of belonging and exclusion in rooibos tea". American Ethnologist. 41 (4): 698–713. doi:10.1111/amet.12106. ISSN 1548-1425.
^ Erasmus, Sara Wilhelmina; Hoffman, Louwrens Christiaan (1 October 2017). "What is meat in South Africa?". Animal Frontiers. 7 (4): 71–75. doi:10.2527/af.2017.0449. ISSN 2160-6056.
^ "Sorghum and millet in human nutrition". Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 1995. Archived from the original on 1 October 2018. Retrieved 7 January 2012.
^ Bettencourt, Elisa Maria Varela; Tilman, Mário; Narciso, Vanda; Carvalho, Maria Leonor da Silva; Henriques, Pedro Damião de Sousa; Bettencourt, Elisa Maria Varela; Tilman, Mário; Narciso, Vanda; Carvalho, Maria Leonor da Silva; Henriques, Pedro Damião de Sousa (March 2015). "The Livestock Roles in the Wellbeing of Rural Communities of Timor-Leste". Revista de Economia e Sociologia Rural. 53: 63–80. doi:10.1590/1234-56781806-94790053s01005. hdl:10174/16209. ISSN 0103-2003.
^ Bernie (4 April 2017). "Indigenous cookery of South Africa – Linksfontein Safari Lodge | Northern Cape | South Africa". Retrieved 25 May 2020.
^ "South African Food | Eating Cape Town". Easy Recipe Tips. 27 May 2019. Retrieved 24 May 2020.
^ "Ting ya Mabele - Arca del Gusto". Slow Food Foundation. Retrieved 25 May 2020.
^ "Cape Malay Yellow Rice Recipe". Group Recipes. Retrieved 29 January 2019.
^ "SA wine history: On the Impact of the French Huguenots". winemag. 30 October 2018. Retrieved 28 August 2021.
^ Jaffrey, Madhur (2003). From Curries to Kebabs: Recipes from the Indian Spice Trail. p. 184. ISBN 9780609607046. Retrieved 28 September 2015.
^ "Durban largest 'Indian' city outside India - Times Of India". 12 May 2013. Archived from the original on 12 May 2013. Retrieved 4 June 2021.
^ "24 of the world's best sandwiches". CNN. 11 May 2022.
^ "Cooking Tour | Cape Town". Rufaro. Retrieved 25 May 2020.
^ Dezius, Andreas. "South Africa Foods". The Riseing Southernstar of Africa. Retrieved 25 May 2020.
^ "Umphokoqo – crumbly mealie pap with amasi". Food & Home Entertaining. 14 July 2017. Retrieved 25 May 2020.
^ "Ark of Taste - Makataan". Slow Food. Retrieved 17 July 2021.

References

Citations

Coetzee, Renata, 1977. The South African Culinary Tradition, C. Struik Publishers, Cape Town, South Africa.
Leipoldt, C. Louis, 1976. Leipoldt's Cape Cookery, Fleesch and Partners, Cape Town, South Africa.
Van Wyk, B. and Gericke, N., 2000. People's plants: A guide to useful plants of Southern Africa, Briza, Pretoria, South Africa.
Wylie, D., 2001. Starving on a Full Stomach: Hunger and the Triumph of Cultural Racism in Modern South Africa, University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville, VA., United States of America.
Routledge Encyclopaedia of Africa – Farming