Not Yet Uhuru: The Colonised South Africa Plate

Not Yet Uhuru: The Colonised South Africa Plate: Meat holds profound cultural significance in South Africa, symbolising community, status, and tradition. The “braai (barbecue) is celebrated as a unifying national ritual” in the post-apartheid era, transcending racial and class divisions as people gather around the grill. In seeking solutions to reduce meat consumption, we must review all aspects of our lives, including our relationship with food. However, this effort requires recognising and acknowledging the role of South Africa’s National Braai Day, which this paper argues is exploited by corporate South Africa to position meat consumption as central to the South African plate. This, in turn, reinforces the narrative of daily meat consumption as a component of the cultural heritage of Black South Africans prior to colonisation.