Eating in South Africa
A bratwurst in South Africa?
The colorful country with a colorful population naturally also has a diverse cuisine to offer. Traditional local cuisine likes to mix with Dutch, Indian and English influences. Every province and region offers its own cuisine.
Incidentally, German cuisine has even made its mark in South Africa. If you order Boerewors here, you will be offered the good old bratwurst. Boerewors are always rolled up on the grill. It is heavily seasoned.
“Meat is my vegetable” and what is braai?
There are also boerewors at the braai. But what is that supposed to be? Braai comes from Afrikaans, the language of the Boers. At a braai you sit comfortably together, grill meat and eat it in huge quantities. This tradition also comes from the Boers.
Meat and fish are also often smoked and thus preserved. Meat is particularly popular in Cape cuisine. But also in rural regions in the hinterland. Meat is served everywhere with pleasure. It comes from breeding animals, but also from wild animals, depending on where you live. Black South Africans tend to eat white meat, i.e. poultry, while the rest also eat red meat.
And what is biltong?
Another well-known dish in South Africa is called biltong. This is also meat, but dried. The meat comes from native wild animals such as springbok or kudu. Ostrich meat is also popular, but South Africans prefer chicken. To get more information on South Africa and Africa, check cancermatters.
There is a lot of fish on the coast. The hake is the most common here. Inland there is lamb and many stews that are often cooked for hours. Pumpkin is a good vegetable, but also carrots, beans or corn. In some areas the strong influence of Indian cuisine is noticeable.
Wine and a very special tea
By the way, wine is a popular drink in South Africa, not for children of course, but a lot of wine is grown on the South African coast. Here the French influence becomes noticeable again, because the French promoted the development of viticulture.
A typical drink for South Africa is roibos tea, also known as roibos tea. This tea is also a remedy and helps against stomach ache. We often have roibos tea with a flavor like vanilla or raspberry, i.e. an artificial taste. The South Africans do not know that, they drink the tea pure without additional flavorings.
Colonial Influences
Jams and preserves are a legacy of the Huguenots. Dried fruit cakes come again more from British cuisine. Just like the varied meat pies or the scones popular in England, this is a type of pastry.
French fries are also served with salt and vinegar. Ketchup and mayo are left out here, which is again typically British. The so-called Cape Malay, whose ancestors come from the East Asian colonies, also had a great influence on South African cuisine. This way of cooking was not without influence.
The original cuisine of South Africa
The black South Africans didn’t eat so internationally. Corn porridge with potato slices or a bit of meat to make it taste like something belongs to her kitchen. Milipap – the corn porridge – is also eaten for breakfast, then sometimes mixed with sour milk.
Education
Africans should become Christians
At the time of colonial rule, education primarily meant proselytizing. So missionaries came to the country who worked to teach Christian values to the local population. For them it was important to civilize the Africans, whom they mostly regarded as “savages”. So they wanted to teach them how to live godly. In the process, many learned to read and write, as a “waste product” so to speak, because they should learn to read the Bible. Schools of missions were founded in South Africa and attended by many South Africans, and their number increased over time.
Bantu education
The children learned a little to be prepared later for their work in the household (the girls) or in the fields and in the mines (the boys). So with luck they learned to read and write a bit. This “upbringing” and non-education is still noticeable today in the older generation, so many people had no real chance of even receiving an appropriate education.
What is “Bantu” education?
For a very long time the black children of South Africa were excluded from any higher education. Especially after 1948, when apartheid policy officially determined life and thus school life, black children had little chance of getting a good education. Depending on the color of their skin, children received their education. Black children also went to school, but here the classes were much larger and the lessons worse. This was called Bantu education.
Student revolt
So there was a student uprising in Soweto in 1976. The trigger was the plan to introduce Afrikaans as the language of instruction. And Afrikaans was the language of the Boers, the children didn’t want that as the language of instruction. Primarily school pupils and students protested against this project. But the uprising was put down by the government with arms.
It was not until 1994 – the year apartheid was abolished – that school policy should change. But the consequences of a centuries-long separation policy cannot and could not be changed overnight.
