Johannesburg – In a year that asks South Africa to pause and reflect on extraordinary milestones, two of the country’s most storied destinations are coming together around a shared table.
Sanctuary Mandela — the former Houghton home of Nelson Mandela, in Johannesburg — and Kruger Shalati: The Train on the Bridge, suspended above the Sabie River on the historic Selati Bridge in Kruger National Park, announce a landmark culinary collaboration: From Kruger’s Kitchen to Madiba’s Table: An Iconic Food Journey.
The collaboration brings together three creative voices: Sanctuary Mandela, Kruger Shalati and Chef Wandile Mabaso, one of South Africa’s most respected chefs in contemporary African cuisine.
Together, they invite guests to experience a six-course dinner that moves between Johannesburg and the Kruger, between memory and landscape, between the life of a man and the wildness of a continent.
“He understood that the country’s wild places were more than landscapes alone. They formed part of a shared national inheritance.”
The occasion
This year, Nelson Mandela would have turned 108.
It is also the centenary of Kruger National Park — a hundred years of conservation stewardship, ecological care and the quiet insistence that wild spaces must be protected for those who come after us.
These two milestones share a common thread: legacy. Not as monument or nostalgia, but as living responsibility.
Madiba spoke often of the importance of safeguarding Africa’s natural heritage.
He understood that the country’s wild places — the rivers, the fever trees, the open plains — were not merely the backdrop to history.
They were part of the inheritance every generation is asked to carry forward.
From Kruger’s Kitchen to Madiba’s Table: An Iconic Food Journey is an exploration of that inheritance — expressed through the most human of rituals: gathering around a table to share a meal.
It is also the first in the Motsamayi Chef Collaboration Series — a platform that unites the group’s properties and South Africa’s finest culinary talent in experiences that go beyond hospitality into something more lasting.
The experience
A dining experience unlike any other in Johannesburg this July.
On 17 and 18 July — the days surrounding what would have been Madiba’s 108th birthday on 18 July — guests are invited to take their place inside the house he called home.
Each evening opens with welcome drinks, canapés and a guided heritage tour of the property before moving to the table for six courses and wine pairing.
Guests are seated together at shared tables — the way meals were always meant to be taken in this house.
The menu – a culinary journey in six courses
Six courses. Each one inspired by one of the three collaborating voices — Sanctuary Mandela, Kruger Shalati and Chef Wandile Mabaso.
Each one rooted in a story worth sitting with.
The menu moves between bush and city, between the wild and the cultivated, between the dishes Madiba cherished and the landscapes that shaped who South Africa is.
It draws on indigenous ingredients, the memory of a kitchen in Houghton, the vast skies of the Lowveld and the creative language of contemporary African cuisine.
Wine pairing is included throughout, selected in partnership with Boschendal.
The details of each course are best discovered at the table.
The chefs
Chef Wandile Mabaso joins forces with two colleagues whose own kitchens carry the spirit of this collaboration forward: Chef Mordecai Brauns, Head Chef at Sanctuary Mandela’s in-house restaurant Insights, and Chef Vusi Mbatha, Executive Chef at Kruger Shalati.
The two properties are part of the same family — both belonging to the Motsamayi Tourism Group — which lends the collaboration an unforced sense of shared purpose.
At Insights — rated the highest restaurant in Gauteng on DinePlan with a 4.8 rating, and known for its Dine Like Madiba experience — Chef Mordecai crafts menus in a tradition established in this very kitchen, rooted in the specific tastes and preferences Madiba was known to appreciate.
He has been part of the Sanctuary Mandela kitchen since 2021, first as Sous Chef and now as Head Chef — a continuity that gives his cooking an intimacy with this house that cannot be manufactured.
At Kruger Shalati, Chef Vusi brings over a decade of progressive culinary leadership to a kitchen rooted in the landscape itself — his Kruger to Fork philosophy sources almost everything within thirty kilometres of the lodge, building menus around the indigenous ingredients and seasonal rhythms of the Lowveld.
Three chefs. Two iconic South African destinations. One table.
Tickets & Bookings
Tickets are priced at R2 500 per person, inclusive of the six-course menu, wine pairing, a welcome drink and a guided heritage tour of Sanctuary Mandela. Seating each evening is limited.
Bookings are open via DinePlan or directly through Sanctuary Mandela.
Three partners of this calibre. Two nights. One milestone year.
Book via DinePlan or contact Sanctuary Mandela directly: info@sanctuarymandela.com | +27 10 035 0368 | WhatsApp +27 78 641 6061 | sanctuarymandela.com
Skills development
Beyond the dining experience, From Kruger’s Kitchen to Madiba’s Table embraces one of Mandela’s most enduring convictions: that education is the most powerful tool available for creating change.
A dedicated skills development programme provides mentorship, training and hands-on learning opportunities for aspiring chefs and hospitality professionals — creating a platform for emerging talent to learn from industry leaders and gain exposure to world-class culinary and hospitality practice.
This dinner is more than it appears. As part of the Motsamayi Chef Collaboration Series, Kruger Shalati and Chef Wandile Mabaso are building toward something further — and guests at this dinner will be the first to hear what comes next.
About Sanctuary Mandela
Sanctuary Mandela is the former Houghton home of Nelson Mandela, located at 4 13th Avenue, Johannesburg.
A nine-room boutique hotel and living memorial, it has been a space of reflection, legacy and thoughtful hospitality — stewarded with the precision and care that the house, and the man who lived in it, deserve.
Its in-house restaurant, Insights, is open to in-house guests and the public alike. Sanctuary Mandela is part of the Motsamayi Tourism Group. sanctuarymandela.com
About Kruger Shalati
Kruger Shalati: The Train on the Bridge is unlike any lodge on the continent. Permanently stationed on the historic Selati Bridge above the Sabie River in Kruger National Park, it is a place where heritage, landscape and human connection converge — and where the team who bring it to life are as much a part of the experience as the view from the carriage window. Honoured with two MICHELIN Keys and voted South Africa’s Leading Safari Lodge at the 2025 World Travel Awards, Kruger Shalati continues to redefine what it means to encounter Africa. Kruger Shalati is part of the Motsamayi Tourism Group. krugershalati.com
About Chef Wandile Mabaso
Born and raised in Soweto, Chef Wandile Mabaso is one of South Africa’s most compelling culinary figures — a chef whose story is as extraordinary as the food he makes.
He cooked from the age of ten, began his career at hotel school, and found his way across Europe as part of the catering crew on a ship docked in Venice, spending nine months alongside Italian chefs and navigating the Mediterranean, western Europe and the Baltic.
He later moved to New York, arrived knowing no one, and worked his way into the kitchen of the Gascogne restaurant, where he first encountered his mentor, the legendary Alain Ducasse.
Ducasse invited him to Paris, where he trained at Le Meurice — a two-MICHELIN-starred restaurant — and was subsequently nominated by Ducasse as ambassador of French Cuisine to South Africa.
In 2018 he returned home and opened Les Créatifs in Bryanston, Johannesburg, where he combines rigorous French technique with indigenous South African ingredients.
Named Chef of the Year at the Luxe Restaurant Awards, he has cooked for world leaders including President Cyril Ramaphosa and at the BRICS summit.
His cooking is, at its heart, South African — rooted in where he comes from, expressed through where the world took him.
About Chef Mordecai Brauns
Chef Mordecai Brauns is Head Chef at Insights, the restaurant within Sanctuary Mandela, rated one of the highest-scoring restaurants in Gauteng on DinePlan with a 4.8 guest rating and ranked among the top 25 restaurants in South Africa in 2024.
He has been part of the Sanctuary Mandela kitchen since December 2021 — first as Sous Chef, progressing to Head Chef in May 2024 — and carries a deeper familiarity with this house, its history and the specific tastes it honours than almost anyone currently in its kitchen.
Trained at JHB Culinary & Pastry School with a Diploma in Patisserie, and with a professional career spanning fine dining environments including Miarestate Hotel & Spa in the Eastern Cape and La Cucina di Ciro in Johannesburg, Chef Mordecai brings both technical range and genuine institutional knowledge to this collaboration.
The Dine Like Madiba menu is built on the belief that food can preserve stories, connect people and create moments that linger long after the last bite — and on a deep respect for the authenticity of what was eaten and valued at this table.
About Chef Vusi Mbatha
Chef Vusi Blessing Mbatha is Executive Chef across the Kruger Station and Kruger Shalati precinct, providing executive culinary leadership across multiple venues within one of South Africa’s most celebrated safari hospitality environments.
A graduate of the International Hotel School with City & Guilds of London qualifications in professional cookery and culinary arts, he further completed a Management Development Programme at the University of Stellenbosch Business School in 2024.
Over more than a decade of progressive leadership in luxury hotels, boutique properties and destination dining, Chef Vusi has developed a culinary identity that is entirely his own: the Kruger to Fork philosophy, which sources almost everything within a 30km radius of the property, works with an on-site garden and local farmers, and draws indigenous ingredients such as morogo, imifino, amasi and Mongongo nuts into menus that are authentically South African and refined for a global stage.
His belief is simple: that a meal, like a game drive, should hold the same sense of discovery — and that flavour, landscape and community are, in the Lowveld, inseparable.
