They call themselves Saffas. You will not find that on any street sign along Roswell Road, and Sandy Springs has no Little Cape Town to point a tourist toward. But step into the back room at Biltong Bar on a Saturday morning during the Rugby Championship, listen for the long vowels of Johannesburg English drifting over a beer, and you will know exactly where you are.
From the early 1980s onward, this stretch of north Atlanta quietly absorbed one of the largest South African communities in the United States. Coca-Cola brought some. Delta’s Johannesburg flight brought more. The rest came the way diasporas always come, one cousin pulling the next across.
Sandy Springs, The Place
Sandy Springs sits in north Fulton County, just outside the I-285 perimeter and a twenty-minute drive from downtown Atlanta. It is bordered by Buckhead to the south, Dunwoody to the east, and Roswell to the north, and the three neighbouring cities together form the spine of South African Atlanta.
The streetscape is suburban American at first glance. Wide boulevards, leafy subdivisions, the glass-and-steel office towers known as the King and Queen Buildings rising above Perimeter Center. Roswell Road, the city’s commercial spine, runs north from Buckhead and carries the highest concentration of expat businesses.
The MARTA Red Line stops at Sandy Springs station, but most residents drive. Sandy Springs incorporated as a city only in December 2005, after a forty-year campaign led by Eva Galambos, making it the youngest major municipality in the metro.
How Atlanta Became South African
Before the South Africans
For most of the twentieth century, the land north of Atlanta was farmland and Methodist church country. Sandy Springs took its name from a natural freshwater spring on land donated by Wilson Spruill in 1851 for the founding of Sandy Springs United Methodist Church.
The transformation came in the 1960s. I-285 looped around the city in 1969 and the first phase of Georgia 400 followed shortly after. Corporate Atlanta pushed north, dropping its glass headquarters onto former pastureland, and the suburbs grew up around them.
By the late 1970s, Sandy Springs was a prosperous unincorporated stretch of north Fulton, populated mostly by white-collar transplants from the rest of the South and the Midwest. Then a different kind of transplant arrived.
The South Africans Arrive (1980s to mid-1990s)
The first significant wave came during the dying years of apartheid. Between 1980 and the early 1990s, escalating township violence, states of emergency, international sanctions, and mandatory military conscription for white men pushed tens of thousands of skilled South Africans out of the country.
Most were professionals. Doctors, engineers, accountants, IT specialists, with English as a first language and a corporate CV that translated easily into the American job market. The South African government recorded an annual emigration peak of 13,711 people in 1986 alone.
Atlanta was not the obvious destination. New York and Los Angeles had the marquee names. But Atlanta had two things Saffas wanted. Coca-Cola, headquartered downtown, was deeply invested in South Africa and recruited heavily from Johannesburg and Cape Town. And the climate was familiar. Summers humid and electric with afternoon storms, winters mild enough that the kids could play outside in July, which is to say December back home.
Chain migration did the rest. One family settled in Sandy Springs because the schools were good and the houses, by Johannesburg standards, were extraordinary value. The next family followed because the first one was already there. By 1990, the community had a centre of gravity.
Peak Atlanta (1998 to the 2010s)
Two events transformed the community from a loose network into something the rest of the city could see.
The first was the opening of 10 Degrees South in 1998. Justin Anthony, a former pro soccer striker who had played briefly for the Atlanta Ruckus, opened the restaurant on Roswell Road at the southern edge of Sandy Springs with his parents Derek and Diane in the kitchen. It was, by Anthony’s own account, the first dedicated South African restaurant in the United States. The dining room smelled of garlic prawns and ostrich fillet, and on big rugby weekends it became, in effect, the Saffa town hall.
The second event was Delta’s direct flight. In June 2009, Delta Air Lines began nonstop service between Hartsfield-Jackson and OR Tambo International in Johannesburg, eventually flying the Airbus A350 on what is one of the longest scheduled routes on the planet. The flight collapsed the distance between Atlanta and home in a way no other US city could match.
Through the 2000s and 2010s, the community kept growing. New arrivals came for safer streets, for the schools, for jobs in fintech and logistics and at the airline itself. The 2021 American Community Survey counted roughly 123,000 South African-born residents in the United States. Metro Atlanta is consistently cited as one of the three or four largest concentrations, alongside the Los Angeles area, San Diego, and South Florida.
Anthony’s restaurant group, True Story Brands, kept expanding too. Yebo Beach Haus opened in Buckhead in 2012. Cape Dutch followed in 2015. Biltong Bar arrived at Ponce City Market in 2016. Each new opening was a small civic event for the community, the kind of place where strangers in the queue would clock each other’s accents and end up trading stories about Sea Point or Sandton.
The Change (2020s)
The community is still arriving. If anything, the past five years have accelerated the flow, with persistent load-shedding, rand weakness, and crime concerns pushing another wave of skilled emigration out of Gauteng and the Western Cape.
What has changed is who is coming. The early waves were heavily white, mostly English-speaking, with a meaningful Afrikaner contingent and a small but tightly knit South African Jewish community. The newer waves are more diverse. More Black South Africans on H-1B visas in tech and healthcare. More Indian South Africans, particularly from the Tamil and Gujarati communities of KwaZulu-Natal. Coloured South Africans from the Western Cape.
South Africa is a nation, not an ethnicity, and the Atlanta community is finally beginning to look like that on the ground.
The Landmarks of South African Atlanta
10 Degrees South (4183 Roswell Road NE, Buckhead). Founded 1998 by Justin Anthony, Derek and Diane Anthony. The first South African restaurant in the United States and the unofficial clubhouse of the Atlanta community for a quarter century. The original ownership sold the freestanding building in early 2024, but the address itself, just south of the Sandy Springs line, remains the address that built the community’s public identity.
Biltong Bar (Ponce City Market, 675 Ponce de Leon Avenue NE). Justin Anthony’s 2016 follow-up. Beef jerky, properly air-dried in the South African style, served on butcher paper with a craft beer list. On match days, the place becomes a small piece of Newlands.
Yebo Beach Haus (3719 Roswell Road NE, Buckhead). The 2012 Anthony opening, all whitewashed Cape Cod boards and Indian Ocean blues. The boerewors sandwich on a hoagie roll with tomato and onion relish is the kind of thing that makes a homesick Capetonian misty over lunch.
The South African Store at Beef Snacks USA (Sandy Springs). One of the small import shops where the community gets the things it cannot bring back from a Delta carry-on. Mrs Ball’s chutney, Ouma rusks, Romany Creams, Bovril, Aromat, the proper boerewors made to a Karoo recipe.
Atlanta Old White RFC (227 Sandy Spring Place NE, Sandy Springs). Founded 1965, one of the oldest rugby clubs in the American South. Not exclusively Saffa, but the membership has carried a heavy South African accent for decades, and the club’s Saturday socials are one of the places newcomers find their first Atlanta friends.
Cafe I Am (Sandy Springs). A European-Mediterranean cafe whose menu quietly carries South African and Portuguese inflections, the kind of cross-cultural cooking that mirrors the Cape Malay layering of the homeland.
The Facebook group “South Africans in Atlanta, GA”. Not a building, but as much a community institution as any of the above. Where braai recipes get traded, where new arrivals ask which school district to aim for, where the rugby viewing parties get organised, where the funerals get announced.
Where the Atlanta South Africans Came From
The Atlanta diaspora is overwhelmingly urban in origin. The largest single source is Gauteng, which means greater Johannesburg and Pretoria. Sandton, Randburg, Bryanston, Pretoria East. The names that come up at any Sandy Springs braai are the leafy northern suburbs of Joburg, the engine rooms of South African corporate life.
The Western Cape is the second source, with Cape Town itself sending a steady current of English-speaking professionals, Coloured Capetonians, and the small but influential community of South African Jews whose roots run through the Atlantic Seaboard and Sea Point. KwaZulu-Natal sends a quieter but distinctive flow, including a meaningful slice of the Indian South African community from Durban and Pietermaritzburg.
Smaller numbers come from the Free State, the Eastern Cape, and the Garden Route. Most arrive with English as a first or fluent second language, with Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, or Gujarati at home.
Sandy Springs Today
Sandy Springs in 2026 is not visibly South African to a casual visitor. There is no equivalent of Woodside’s Irish pubs, or Bensonhurst’s Italian bakeries, or a single street where the accents pile up on a Saturday. The community lives in the suburbs the American way, in pockets, behind front lawns and double garage doors, organised by WhatsApp group and Facebook event.
But it is there, and it is still growing. Heritage Day on 24 September brings braais to backyards from Sandy Springs to Roswell to Alpharetta, the smoke of boerewors curling above three-car driveways. The Springboks’ 2023 Rugby World Cup win, their fourth, lit up bars in Buckhead and pubs in West Midtown with the green and gold. Direct Delta flights leave Atlanta every evening for the fifteen-hour run to Johannesburg, full of grandchildren going to meet grandparents, of professionals heading back for a wedding, of one-way tickets in both directions.
The community is layered now in a way it was not in 1998. Three generations in some families. The first wave arriving as anxious young engineers in their late twenties are now grandparents themselves. Their American-born children speak with no accent at all, but they know what koeksisters taste like at Christmas, and they know which uncle to ask about the meaning of the word lekker.
The journey from Joburg to Sandy Springs is no longer a single moment of leaving. It is a continuous, doubled, multigenerational thing, with planes flying both ways and a culture that is recognisably American and recognisably South African at the same time.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did South Africans settle in Sandy Springs and Atlanta?
South Africans began arriving in Atlanta in significant numbers in the 1980s, drawn by Coca-Cola’s deep South African ties, a familiar climate, excellent suburban schools, and housing that was extraordinary value compared to Johannesburg. Sandy Springs in particular offered the corporate jobs and family-friendly suburbs the early professional emigrants were looking for, and chain migration did the rest. Delta’s nonstop Atlanta to Johannesburg flight, launched in 2009, cemented the city as the most connected American hub for the community.
Is Sandy Springs still a South African expat hub today?
Yes. The South African community in Sandy Springs, Dunwoody, Roswell, and adjacent Buckhead continues to grow, with new waves arriving through the 2020s driven by load-shedding, economic pressure, and crime concerns back home. The community is more diverse now than in its early years, including more Black South African, Indian South African, and Coloured arrivals alongside the historically dominant white English-speaking and Afrikaner emigrants.
What are the most famous South African landmarks in Atlanta?
The most visible landmarks of South African Atlanta are the restaurants founded by Justin Anthony: 10 Degrees South on Roswell Road, opened in 1998 as the first South African restaurant in the United States, Yebo Beach Haus in Buckhead, and Biltong Bar at Ponce City Market. Atlanta Old White RFC in Sandy Springs has long carried a strong South African contingent, and the Facebook group South Africans in Atlanta, GA functions as a virtual community centre.
Where in South Africa did the Atlanta South Africans come from?
The Atlanta South African community is heavily weighted toward urban Gauteng, meaning greater Johannesburg and Pretoria, with significant numbers from the Western Cape, especially Cape Town, and a notable contingent from KwaZulu-Natal, including Indian South Africans from Durban. Smaller numbers come from the Free State and the Eastern Cape. Most are English-speaking, with Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa, and Gujarati spoken at home in particular households.
When did South Africans first arrive in Atlanta?
The first significant wave of South Africans arrived in Atlanta in the early to mid-1980s, during the late apartheid era, fleeing political instability, sanctions, and military conscription. A second wave followed the end of apartheid in 1994, and a third, more diverse wave has accelerated through the 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s, sustained by Delta’s nonstop Johannesburg flight and the city’s continuing corporate pull.
If your family’s story passed through Sandy Springs, or any of the suburbs north of Atlanta the South Africans made home, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From the leafy northern suburbs of Johannesburg, or Sea Point, or Durban North, to Sandy Springs, to wherever you are now.