South Africa 101

Everyone has perceptions and assumptions of a country and tend to associate it with a single thing. 


Germany - Hitler (although I think they are making a come back after the Audi)
Switzerland - chocolate
Australia - kangaroos
Holland - tulips is it?
Jamaica - weed



Since living overseas I have met loads of foreigners and really live for exchanging stories about our relative home countries. In Argentina, people are shocked , but excited to hear that I am from South Africa. In most cases their response is  "but you are white?" or "but you are not black?". In some cases it is "waka waka world cup" and in rare cases I get asked if apartheid is still going on. As far as expats go, they usually ask about crime and politics in my country. Everyone who I have met speaks of Mandela and that never fails to make me cry with pride. 


The facts...


South Africa is beautiful 

Cape Town

We don´t have lions in our gardens or streets


We do however have amazing wildlife parks where you can see the BIG 5 - lion, African elephant, cape buffalo, leopard, and rhinoceros

The Big 5

Our flag looks like this

not this... 

I say this becuase I have a handbag with a South African flag on it and when asked where I was from, after pointing to the bag the man responded with
" REALLY?! JAMAICA?!" 


Our favorite places to eat

Wicked burgers, ribs and salad

A braai (said like brrrr when you are cold with an eye on the end - like brrrrreye)

The best burgers and chip salt 

African people luuurve their chicken

We have 11 official languages


Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, Swazi, Tswana, Tsonga, Venda, Xhosa and Zulu.


This is me singing a song in Zulu to some ladies at a night club back home and serenading a bride to be in Argentina. 

This is how it´s really done...

Our team is the Springboks (not the Pumas) We also like soccer

We got talent

and some music legends

The vuvu-zela comes from South Africa not Venezuela 

Some SAFFA slang


befok  -  really cool
ag man  -  something we say when we are annoyed or see something cute (you need to sound like you are bringing phlegm up from your throat when you say the g)
bablaas  -  hangover. Said bub-ah-lus.
boet  -  it means brother. It´s like buddy. 
poes  -  is a vagina and is used as a curse word. People might say "jou ma se poes" which means "your mothers vagina"
kak  -  is poo. Pronounced cuk. Can use it for anything. Kak cool, kak bad, this is kak, you talk kak, you´re in kak. 
kwaai  -  is cool or phat.
stompie  -  is a cigarette butt
sis - grose
isit - we use this one a lot. I suppose it means "did you really?" or "is that so?" . If someone says "I went downtown today." We would say "isit?"
just now - this never fails to confuse people. ´just now´means not immediately but in the near future. " I´ll see you just now"
now now - comes after ´just now´ . It is in the even nearer future. "yes, I said I´m on my way. I´ll see you now now" 




Our favorite word is YA!
Sounds like car. We use this for everything. For yes, when we are confirming we understand something, when we are in disbelief (ya?) like seriously? We also say ya/no. It means yesno, which one would think doesn't make sense, but it does in SA and we use it when we mean to say sort of or kind of.


We like eachother