Updated September 25, 2026 at 7:58 AM CDT
PRETORIA, South Africa — To mark the national public holiday known as Heritage Day in South Africa, thousands of people participated in an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the biggest-ever braai on Thursday.
At a rugby stadium in the capital Pretoria, the charcoal was lit as the braai-masters excitedly gathered at their stations.
There was great fanfare as the event's emcee counted down to the start of the challenge: "Ladies and gentlemen, happy heritage day… let's be a part of history, today we break the record for the biggest braai in the world. Nobody braais like South Africans, guys."
Braaiing _— an Afrikaans word meaning to grill — is like barbecuing, but there's strictly no gas allowed. All meat must be cooked on an open flame on wood or charcoal.
According to a Guinness World Records adjudicator overseeing the attempt, the rules were strict: participants had to barbecue simultaneously for at least five minutes to be counted.
Kian Boshoff, 26, took part with friends. He says he braais at home most weekends and "wors" and a "lekker piece of steak" will always be on the menu.
Boerewors, or boerie or wors for short, is a kind of spicy sausage and is a traditional food of Afrikaners, white descendants of Dutch and other European settlers. But now it's beloved by everyone, and often eaten in a bread roll.
Tlhongi Kgopa, also manning a braai station, says there are some must-have side dishes at any good South African braai.
"I like chakalaka...and pap, you have to have pap," the 25-year-old says.
Pap is a staple food in large parts of Southern Africa, made of maize meal and used to soak up the meaty gravy. Chakalaka is a kind of spicy side salad, made of carrots, peppers, and beans — it has a kick!
But don't come to a South African braai hungry, it's often a whole day affair, with plenty of banter and booze before any food is served.
"You don't know how many brandies, how many beers, how many glasses of wine is going to first happen before that Braai starts," says Boshoff, laughing. "So if they say the braai starts at 11 in the morning, you know for a fact you're going to braai ten at night."
As the wors sizzles, the emcee asks the crowd who's present at the stadium, naming each ethnic group: "I want to know, are there any Zulu people here? Are there any Xhosa people…? Any Afrikaners?"
The crowd cheers wildly after each.
Great unifier or "day of forgetting"?
So how did Heritage Day become dubbed "Braai Day"?
It started as a media and marketing gimmick in the mid-2000s and gained momentum after late South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu threw his weight behind the initiative.
Tutu said braaiing was a great unifier in a country with many diverse groups that had only recently emerged from the racist system of apartheid.
Not everyone's on board with the idea, however. South African journalist T.O. Molefe wrote in a column in 2014 that Braai Day was in fact "the white supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy's day of sponsored forgetting."
But most people across racial lines who've turned out at the Pretoria event don't seem to feel that way. Instead several say Nelson Mandela's famous "Rainbow Nation" is on full display.
Many people are in traditional dress with men in Zulu animal skin headbands, women in patterned shwe-shwe cloth and beaded jewellery, Afrikaners in veldskoen shoes, and people from every race sporting regalia from the beloved national rugby team, the Springboks.
"So Heritage day is beautiful because it just shows how diverse we are in South Africa, like we have so many different cultures… and braais something we all do in South Africa at Christmas, New Year's day," says Kgopa.
"We love meat, I think we're a nation that really loves meat, so that's something we share across cultures. It can bring us together."
Another participant, Leo Moloele, agrees that the event shows a united country. "We've got 12 or 11 official languages, everyone coming together as one, but showcasing their different cultures, their different heritages," Moloele says.
"You look at everyone, the colours, represents all the different colours of our South African flag."
As for whether they broke the record? The result is still cooking, with the verdict expected to be announced Friday.
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