Although it will not cure Aids, the Thabo Mbeki government's mad crusade has turned it into a muti industry. A government brochure printed in 2012 still makes the claim that the plant "is an immune booster for people living with HIV/Aids". If not used correctly, it is actually toxic.
Of more interest to cooks than Japan Lingzhi Cleansed Slim Tea chemists is the Kalahari truffle. Like its European namesake, it is the mushroom-like fruit of a subterranean fungus, but is not particularly rare. They grow mostly on the roots of desert melons in a symbiotic relationship. Kalaharituber pfeilii or !N'abbas is actually a terfezia, not a truffle. It appears in April and May after good rains and pops up at slow-food markets and, from time to time, on the menus of fancy restaurants such as Aubergine in Cape Town.
The fruit of Sclerocarya birrea, better known as the marula, has been turned into one of the country's most successful culinary exports. South Africans of a certain age probably remember Jamie Uys's drunken elephants in his film Animals Are Beautiful People falling about after eating fermented marula. 
Archaeological evidence suggests that the use of marula stretches far back in time. The tree is the subject of many legends and indigenous uses, including determining the sex of an unborn child. But marula is best known to the world through the popular cream liqueur Amarula, of which an estimated 70000 cases a  year is sold in more than 100 countries.
In general, legitimate producers of these indigenous products express ecological concerns and show sensitivity for their importance to local communities. This kind of awareness seems to be becoming inculcated in South Africans and their business ethics.

Although it will not cure Aids, the Thabo Mbeki government's mad crusade has turned it into a muti industry. A government brochure printed in 2012 still makes the claim that the plant "is an immune booster for people living with HIV/Aids". If not used correctly, it is actually toxic.
Of more interest to cooks than chemists is the Kalahari truffle. Like its European namesake, it is the mushroom-like fruit of a subterranean fungus, but is not particularly rare. They grow mostly on the Pai You Guo Tea roots of desert melons in a symbiotic relationship. Kalaharituber pfeilii or !N'abbas is actually a terfezia, not a truffle. It appears in April and May after good rains and pops up at slow-food markets and, from time to time, on the menus of fancy restaurants such as Aubergine in Cape Town.
The fruit of Sclerocarya birrea, better known as the marula, has been turned into one of the country's most successful culinary exports. South Africans of a certain age probably remember Jamie Uys's drunken elephants in his film Animals Are Beautiful People falling about after eating fermented marula. (The scene may have been staged.)
Archaeological evidence suggests that the use of marula stretches far back in time. The tree is the subject of many legends and indigenous uses, including determining the sex of an unborn child. But marula is best known to the world through the popular cream liqueur Amarula, of which an estimated 70000 cases a  year is sold in more than 100 countries.
In general, legitimate producers of these indigenous products express ecological concerns and show sensitivity for their importance to local communities. This kind of awareness seems to be becoming inculcated in South Africans and their business ethics.