Rooibos

Rooibos (Afrikaans for "red bush"; also marketed as Red Bush) is a caffeine-free herbal tea made from the shoots of Aspalathus linearis, a shrub in the legume family (Fabaceae). The plant grows wild only in a small part of South Africa's Western Cape and Northern Cape provinces, and the tea made from it is a major export of that region.^[1:1][2:1]

Most rooibos is oxidized after harvest in a step the industry calls "fermentation", which turns the leaves red-brown and gives the infusion its sweet flavor. A smaller share is sold unoxidized as "green" rooibos.^[1:2] In 2025, production was estimated at about 15,000 tonnes.^[3:1]

The familiar story that the Khoisan peoples of the Cederberg have drunk rooibos as tea for centuries is not supported by the documentary record. Researchers who reviewed the historical sources found no mention of rooibos tea before the late 19th century, and the often-cited 1772 account by Carl Thunberg concerned a different plant.^[4:1][4:2] What is documented is that the plant's tea use grew out of the colonial-era Cape tea trade and that Khoi-descended communities of the Cederberg were harvesting and processing it by the late 1800s.^[5:1][4:3]

Rooibos has had its name protected in the European Union since 2021, and since 2019 the industry has paid a levy to San and Khoi communities as recognition of their traditional knowledge.^[6:1][7:1] Laboratory studies show antioxidant activity in rooibos compounds, but evidence for health benefits in people is limited.^[8:1]

Plant and habitat

Aspalathus linearis is a strict endemic: it occurs naturally only in the Cederberg mountains of the Western Cape and the southern Bokkeveld plateau of the Northern Cape, within the Cape Floristic Region. It grows in fynbos, a fire-prone shrubland on nutrient-poor soils.^[2:1]

Wild populations differ in how they survive fire. Cederberg plants are "reseeders", which die in a fire and regrow from seed. Northern Cape plants are "resprouters", which regrow from an underground woody swelling (a lignotuber) after the above-ground plant burns.^[2:1] Wild plants also vary in leaf color, size, branching and stem thickness.^[2:1]

History

Disputed indigenous origin

Many popular and industry accounts say that the Khoisan peoples made rooibos tea long before European settlement. The South African Rooibos Council's own history page begins its timeline with Thunberg in 1772.^[9:1]

Two scholarly reviews reach a different conclusion. Botanist Ben-Erik Van Wyk and historian Boris Gorelik traced Thunberg's July 1772 note about tea made at Paarl. It named Borbonia cordata (now Aspalathus cordata), a relative of rooibos, and gave no common name. They describe the anecdote as "sometimes uncritically cited and erroneously associated with rooibos tea".^[4:1] The same review found rooibos tea absent from the early literature, with no Khoi or San name for it ever recorded, and first mentioned in the late 19th century.^[4:2]

Gorelik's longer study for the South African Rooibos Council separates the plant from the tea. He found that archaeological evidence suggests the plant may have been used tens of thousands of years ago, but that "no direct evidence of utilisation of the rooibos plant by pastoralists or hunter-gatherers in precolonial times is known to exist". If precolonial people did make infusions, their purpose is unknown, and drinking them for pleasure was unlikely.^[5:2] He concludes that making rooibos into a "tea" appears to be a product of the global tea trade: settlers valued it as a local substitute for expensive imported Asian tea, and no evidence shows which community first prepared it.^[5:1]

The two sets of claims are therefore not fully contradictory. Van Wyk and Gorelik confirm that rooibos is a traditional drink of Khoi-descended people in the Cederberg, but could not trace that tradition earlier than the last quarter of the 19th century.^[4:3] The open question is whether indigenous knowledge of the plant before colonization led to the tea. Finding earlier written records, or archaeological residue showing the plant was boiled, could settle it.

Commercialization and cultivation

Shops in the Cederberg stocked rooibos from at least the 1890s, although archival records suggest it sold in small volumes.^[5:3] Benjamin Ginsberg, an immigrant from the Russian Empire who began peddling goods in the area around 1903, is credited with promoting rooibos consistently beyond the Cederberg, and he created the oldest surviving packaged brand, Eleven o'Clock.^[5:3]

Harvesting from wild stands depended on burning the veld to stimulate regrowth, which caused erosion. In the early 1930s Pieter Lefras Nortier, the Clanwilliam district surgeon, began experiments to cultivate rooibos. His cultivated variety, grown from seed gathered with the help of local Coloured labourers (including Hans and Tryntjie Swart, who found seed stores in ant nests), became the mainstay of the industry.^[5:3]

Processing

Rooibos is harvested in the hot summer and early autumn, from January to April, by cutting the bush back to about 45 cm. The shoots are shredded, wetted and bruised, then piled in heaps for roughly 12 to 14 hours at 38 to 42 °C. Plant enzymes oxidize the polyphenols (a large class of plant compounds), the leaves turn red-brown, and the sweet aroma develops. The heap is then spread out to dry in the sun, sieved and steam-pasteurized.^[1:2]

Green rooibos skips the oxidation step. The first commercial green rooibos was produced in 2001 to meet demand for a product with higher antioxidant activity, and it made up about 1% of global sales at the time of the 2008 review that reported this.^[1:1] The Rooibos Council's history dates green rooibos to 1995, which most likely refers to its development at the Agricultural Research Council rather than first commercial sale.^[9:1]

Production and trade

In 2025 production was estimated at about 15,000 tonnes, equal to more than 10 billion cups. South Africa's Deputy Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Nomalungelo Gina, wrote that the industry supports about 8,000 workers and that Japan accounted for 33% of exports.^[3:1]

Sources differ on the reach of exports. Gina gives more than 50 markets, while a July 2026 trade article gives more than 60 countries.^[3:1][10:1] The excerpts of these sources reviewed do not state how markets or countries were counted.

Composition

Rooibos contains no caffeine and is low in tannin (the astringent compounds that make black tea bitter). The tannin content of the fermented leaf is about 3.2% to 4.4%, well below the level in tea from Camellia sinensis.^[1:1]

The best-studied compound is aspalathin, a flavonoid. Oxidation during processing destroys most of it: less than 17% remains in the processed product.^[11:1]

Health evidence and safety

Most research on rooibos compounds comes from cell and animal experiments. A review of aspalathin and diabetes found that these experiments show several mechanisms, but that human absorption is poor: in one study, 0.74% of the aspalathin in a green rooibos infusion appeared in urine over 12 hours, and the authors describe human evidence as preliminary.^[11:1]

One often-cited human study followed 40 adults at risk for cardiovascular disease who drank six cups of fermented rooibos daily for six weeks. Compared with a control period, they showed lower markers of lipid peroxidation (damage to fats by oxidation), lower LDL cholesterol and triacylglycerols, and higher HDL cholesterol, although plasma antioxidant capacity did not change. The study had no placebo group, which limits what it can show.^[12:1]

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center's monograph describes human studies as "very limited". It lists case reports of liver toxicity or raised liver enzymes after large daily intakes, advises caution for people with hormone-sensitive cancers, and notes a possible interaction with drugs cleared by the CYP3A liver enzymes, including one transplant patient whose tacrolimus levels fell after drinking more than 2 liters daily.^[8:1]

Legal protection and benefit sharing

Protected designation of origin

In 2021 the European Union registered Rooibos/Red Bush as a protected designation of origin, the first African food to receive that status in the EU register. Only 100% pure Aspalathus linearis, cultivated or wild-harvested in designated municipalities of the Western and Northern Cape, may carry the name.^[6:1][10:1]

Rooibos Benefit Sharing Agreement

On March 25, 2019, representatives of the San and Khoi peoples, the rooibos industry and the South African government signed the Rooibos Benefit Sharing Agreement. Its authors describe it as the first comprehensive industry-wide benefit-sharing agreement under the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Nagoya Protocol. It sets a levy of 1.5% of the farm gate price, collected by processors and divided equally between San and Khoi trusts.^[7:1]

The first payment, about R12.2 million, was split equally between the Khoi-Khoi Peoples Biodiversity and Rooibos Trust and the Andries Steenkamp ABS Trust.^[13:1]

The agreement rests on the San and Khoi being recognized as holders of traditional knowledge about the plant, and the research on its history bears on that basis. The documentary record shows Khoi-descended communities harvesting and processing rooibos by the late 19th century, but does not show precolonial tea drinking.^[4:3][5:2]

Analysis

This section gives Agpedia's own assessment and is not drawn from a single source.

Two strengths and one gap stand out. The historical record is better than the popular story: the 1772 claim is traceable to a misattribution, and correcting it does not remove the documented role of Cederberg communities in building the trade. Readers weighing claims about "ancient" use should check whether a source discusses the plant, the infusion or the tea.

On health, the evidence in people is thin relative to the volume of marketing claims. The best-supported statements are modest: rooibos has no caffeine and little tannin, and its main compound is poorly absorbed. People who take medicines cleared by CYP3A enzymes, or who have liver or hormone-sensitive conditions, have a concrete reason to ask a clinician before drinking large amounts regularly.^[8:1]

The benefit-sharing levy gives communities that hold traditional knowledge a continuing, legally defined share of an industry built partly on that knowledge. Whether the sums reach the people they are meant for, and whether they widen real options for them, is a question for later payment records and independent evaluation, which this article has not reviewed.