On any given weekend in South Africa there’s the smell of shisa nyama — the Zulu term for traditional barbecues — wafting across cities, townships and rural locations. But the cost of the typical fare that makes up a shisa nyama is rising faster than official inflation, highlighting the stark reality that low-income earners are suffering the most in South Africa — one of the world’s most unequal nations.
Read: Sarb ratchets repo rate by another 75bps “For 10 kilograms of onions I now pay R120, where it used to be between R39 and R50 and I don’t know why, it’s not like they’re coming from Russia,” said Oyama Ndaliso, who owns Papa Ron’s Shisa Nyama in Woodstock, a low-income suburb in Cape Town. “In the store, I now have to have two sizes of stews for sale because people can’t afford as much, so they’re going for smaller portions.