Amasi

Amasi in South African culture

• Traditionally, Zulus believe that amasi makes a man strong, healthy, and desired. During "taboos", the affected person must abstain from amasi. Milk is hardly ever drunk fresh, but it is sometimes used to thin amasi which has gone too thick to be used.
• The Zulu expression kwafa igula lamasi translates to "the calabash of sour-milk broke", i.e. our last hopes were dashed.
• Nelson Mandela mentions how he cautiously left a comrade's apartment—his hiding place in a "white" area when he was wanted by the apartheid government—after he overheard two Zulu workers comment that it was strange to see milk on the window sill because whites seldom drank amasi.
• It is also popular in South African Indian cuisine where it is used similarly to curd.