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| 1652–1795 |  Dutch Cape Colony: the Cape of Good Hope waystation of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), founded by Jan van Riebeeck in 1652; the Prince's Flag, orange-white-blue, was the flag of the VOC at the Cape (the Batavian Republic held the Cape again in 1803-1806) |
| 1806–1910 |  Cape Colony: occupied by Britain in January 1806 and confirmed to it by the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814, self-governing from 1872; Natal was a second British colony, and the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony became British colonies in 1902 |
| 1910–1928 |  Union of South Africa (Unie van Zuid-Afrika), a British dominion formed on 31 May 1910; the Union Jack was the national flag, and the Red Ensign with the shield of the South African arms was also flown |
| 1928–1961 |  Union of South Africa: its own flag, orange-white-blue with three small flags, first hoisted on 31 May 1928; Afrikaans replaced Dutch as an official language in 1925, and legislative independence from the United Kingdom came on 11 December 1931 |
| 31 May 1961 | the Republic of South Africa is constituted on 31 May 1961 under an act of the Union Parliament of 24 April 1961, and the Union of South Africa (formed on 31 May 1910 from the Cape, Natal, the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony) ends the day before |
| 1961–1994 | Republic of South Africa (Republiek van Suid-Afrika), constituted on 31 May 1961; the flag of 1928 was kept |
| 1994– |  Republic of South Africa under the Constitution of 1993; the present flag was adopted on 27 April 1994 |
South Africans brewed long before any European arrived: the Sotho, Zulu and Xhosa made sorghum beer, and umqombothi, from the Nguni languages, is still made from maize, maize malt, sorghum malt, yeast and water. Beer in the European style came with the Dutch East India Company, which settled the Cape in 1652. Jan van Riebeeck's diary records a trial brew on 16 February 1657, on the instructions of the company's directors, and on 4 October 1658 the ensign Jan van Harwarden was brewing; the beer did not keep for more than four or five weeks, and casks sent to Batavia and Holland were judged "fairly drinkable". In the same year a man named Visagie started a second brewery on the Liesbeek River. Hops imported in Van Riebeeck's time failed, and they were first recorded as grown successfully in 1829, near George.
In the 19th century the Cape breweries gathered at Newlands, under Table Mountain. Jacob Letterstedt built the Mariendahl Brewery there in 1859, and its brewhouse still stands. Anders Ohlsson, who had come out in 1864 as an importer of Swedish goods, bought land at Anneberg in 1881 and brewed there, leased Mariendahl in 1888 and bought it in 1896, which gave him all the Newlands breweries as Ohlsson's Cape Breweries, the makers of Lion Lager. The gold rush made Johannesburg the next beer market: Charles Glass's Castle Brewery served the miners, and sources date its start between 1886 and 1894. In 1895 the company that became the South African Breweries was formed around Castle; it was the first industrial company on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in 1897 and listed in London in 1898.
SAB moved its headquarters from London to South Africa in 1950. A heavy beer tax in 1955 cut demand, and in 1956 SAB bought its two main rivals, Ohlsson's and Chandlers Union Breweries, and took the name South African Breweries; the Ohlsson's name stayed on a beer until the late 1990s. By 1998 it held about 98 per cent of the home market. It made London its main listing in 1999 and bought Miller of the United States in 2002 to form SABMiller, which Anheuser-Busch InBev took over on 10 October 2016; SAB now brews Castle Lager, Castle Lite, Carling Black Label, Hansa Pilsener and Castle Milk Stout in seven breweries. A real rival came only after 2004, when Diageo, Heineken and Namibia Breweries formed Brandhouse. In March 2007 the 40-year agreement under which SAB brewed Amstel ended, and Heineken built the Sedibeng brewery south of Johannesburg, 75 per cent its own and 25 per cent Diageo's, launched in March 2010. Heineken bought the craft breweries Stellenbrau in March 2017 and Soweto Gold in September 2017, and on 26 April 2023 it took over Distell and Namibia Breweries to form Heineken Beverages.
The first microbrewery was Mitchell's in Knysna, started in 1983 by Lex Mitchell with Forester's Lager and Bosun's Bitter; a group of shareholders bought it in 2011, and by 2019 its beer was brewed in Cape Town under contract by Signal Hill Products. The craft boom followed: Jack Black's began as a contract brand in 2007, Devil's Peak started in Somerset West around 2011-12, the Cape Brewing Company brewed its first beer at the Spice Route estate in Paarl at the end of 2012 with the Swedish family brewery Abro, and Noon Gun began in Muizenberg in 2015-16. The number of breweries almost doubled from 86 in 2014 to 154 in 2016 and reached about 220 before 2020, with some 60 contract brands. By 2025 a long-time keeper of the craft brewery list counted about 130 physical breweries and no more than 30 contract brands; Mad Giant, a favourite, announced its closure in April 2025.
The big craft names have been drawn into larger groups. Heineken bought a minority stake in Jack Black's in February 2018, and in July 2024 the founders sold their remaining shares; the brewery in Diep River, opened in 2016, is now run by a Heineken manager. Devil's Peak, which could brew about 1.33 million litres a month at Epping in 2022, belongs to Signal Hill Products. In July 2025 that company said it was building a 1 billion rand brewery at Midrand, with a capacity of 200 million litres a year, to start packing in August 2025; it holds licences for Miller and Bavaria and the Strongbow cider licence that Heineken had to give up to win approval for the Distell takeover.
