Easter in South Africa is taken seriously. It’s a time for reflection and Christian religious observance, but also for eating highly unwise quantities of chocolate. It’s a time for long road journeys, but also for unapologetic, pyjama-clad laziness.
As a general rule, South Africans use the festival as a chance to get a few important things done—see their loved ones at home or in far-off places, ingest many calories, feel cozy, get some exercise, and renew their spiritual lives.
This guide gives you a snapshot of the culture of the Easter holiday in South Africa, from important dates to Easter cuisine and from local traditions to popular pastimes.
Easter in South Africa usually falls between late March and April, with the public holidays being Good Friday and Easter Monday. Easter Sunday, the day of Jesus Christ’s resurrection, is also a sacred remembrance for the country’s many practising Christians. South Africans of other faiths and the non-religious also make the most of the long weekend to travel, unwind and connect with their extended families.
A sombre date for many Christians, who remember the crucifixion of Jesus Christ nearly 2000 years ago.
A day of quiet preparation—leading up to the uplifting significance of Easter Sunday. It’s typically devoted to cooking, watching TV, shopping and decorating.
The religious centrepiece of the weekend is marked with church services, lavish family meals, and the keenly awaited Easter egg hunt.
A uniquely South African public holiday—a compensation for the fact that Easter Sunday is not a public holiday. A time to travel home again from a getaway, step out into nature, or just sit on one’s backside and digest the Sunday lunch.
Easter in South Africa is not for the hardcore dieter. It’s all about confectionery, roasted meat and general indulgence—often featuring a scrumptious mix of European and indigenous South African cuisines.
These fruit-studded buns—spiced with cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg and decorated with a cross—are a classic Easter treat in many countries, and South Africa is no exception. Heat them up and lavish them with butter. Their aroma as they emerge from the oven sends many people back to a wonderland of childhood memories.
Oven-roasted cuts of good-quality meat are the typical main course on Easter Sunday menus. Lamb is often served with mint sauce and red wine. Beloved South African veggies like butternut, gemsquash, pumpkin and creamed spinach often feature as side dishes.
A distinctively South African Easter dish, served particularly in the Cape Malay community. Usually snoek or hake, it is pickled in a spicy vinegar sauce and served cold on Easter weekend. An unusually healthy seasonal dish.
Once the tummy is full of lamb, it’s time to top it up with decadent South African desserts. Milk tart is a wobbly, custardy baked affair, dusted with cinnamon or nutmeg. Koeksisters are twisted, deep-fried, syrup-soaked pastries that are essentially an ongoing national research project to establish the maximum amount of fat and sugar that can be packed into a small object.
A relaxed alternative to the traditional Easter feast, often grilled outdoors on a Weber or similarly fancy free-standing barbecue. The menu typically features lamb chops, steaks, boerewors (a beloved spicy sausage) and marinated chicken pieces. Another favourite is the sosatie—kebab-style meat cubes roasted on a skewer stick, often alternating with a brightly coloured sequence of vegetable slices. Butternut, potatoes and corn on the cob are also roasted on the coals, and wrapped in foil.
In a country that is marked by strong Christian faith, Easter is a deeply significant time for millions. While many South Africans manage to combine fun and spiritual reflection, others opt for one of the two.
Some 85% of South Africans describe themselves as Christian, and many millions of those will attend church services at Easter time to reflect on the resurrection of Christ.
The country’s biggest denomination is the Zion Christian Church, commonly known as the ZCC, which brings African spiritual traditions into the Christian faith. It has over six million adherents—and at least a million of those travel to the town of Moria, the ZCC’s spiritual centre, in Limpopo every Easter. This annual pilgrimage and outdoor service is the biggest annual religious gathering in Africa.
Other churches hold Good Friday and Easter Monday services in cathedrals and local churches.
The egg hunt is an epically important institution in the lives of many South African kids. Being a country blessed with many big gardens and neighbourhood green spaces, it offers ample opportunity for the ingenious stashing of eggs. Many parents and older siblings love to devise challenging maps, riddles and landmark clues to make the hunt a bit more exciting for the “laaities” (an SA slang term for kids, meaning the ones who don’t weigh very much).
While Christmas is the biggest holiday period for family gatherings, Easter ranks a close second. Often, families will make a beeline for the coast or a game park. But many will simply rustle up a lamb roast lunch or a laidback braai (barbecue) at home—with in-laws, grandparents, close friends and cousins all in attendance.
In larger cities, choral Easter classics such as Handel’s Messiah or Bach’s St John’s Passion are often performed by large amateur choirs, as are traditional gospel pieces sung in isiXhosa, isiZulu and seSotho (three of the major Indigenous languages).
South African retail chains are very savvy when it comes to lavish seasonal marketing, and they go big on the décor and merchandising at Easter time. Shops often start selling Easter eggs many weeks ahead of the weekend itself.
Design themes range from conventional pastel-coloured displays to locally inspired shopfronts that refer to the country’s Indigenous art traditions.
Unlike in the northern hemisphere, Easter arrives with the onset of autumn evening coolness in South Africa, but the days are usually still sunny and balmy by the standards of colder countries. So the great outdoors calls.
Parks and beaches are alive with picnicking families, especially on Easter Saturday. Concerts are often staged in public spaces at Easter time.
Many schools will host rugby festivals to mark the start of the competitive rugby season, while millions will seize play or watch their favourite sports over the weekend. There is also a low-key frenzy of hiking, surfing, watersports, biking and cross-country running.
South Africans don’t need any invitation to stroll outside, light a fire and throw some chops on it—and Easter is a big invitation. Families and friends get together, either at home or out in a natural setting, to braai, make salads, shoot the breeze, and feast.
Many people seize on the long weekend as a chance to get out of the big city rush—heading to the coast, or to the Drakensberg, Waterberg or Boland mountains, or to the rural platteland (literally “flatland” in Afrikaans) towns that their families originally came from. This means highway traffic is intense on many major routes—it’s a time to drive very carefully.
Its origins are shaped by spiritual gratitude, and for much of the country, the Easter weekend remains so. But for many others, it’s also a time for a more general appreciation of family, of free time, of nature, of good food, of community and of cultural heritage.
If you're planning to visit South Africa at Easter time, or if you are already based in South Africa, this is a chance to get into that special spirit. Join a family or community gathering if you can, scoff a koeksister, sing a song, and find an egg.
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