Rooibos Was Sold as Healthy Before a Mother’s Colic Claim

On 8 April 1968, at the mid-morning feed, Annekie Theron poured warm rooibos from a freshly made pot into her daughter's bottle with the milk¹. Lorinda was fourteen months old and had been in pain all her life. Theron, born on 18 April 1929², was 38 and a mother of four.

1. The Rooibos Story, SA Rooibos Council
2. Obituary: Annekie Theron, founder of global rooibos company who built R80m business, Sunday Times

By Theron's account, the baby slept for three hours that morning and within a few weeks had stopped vomiting¹. Her Sunday Times obituary said she found that rooibos soothed her colicky baby on 'one sleepless night'². The date and the morning feed come from Theron's own 1992 book¹, Babies, Allergies, and Rooibos.

1. The Rooibos Story, SA Rooibos Council
2. Obituary: Annekie Theron, founder of global rooibos company who built R80m business, Sunday Times

Rooibos had been sold as healthy since at least 1907¹. Its reputation as a remedy for colic and allergy in babies began in 1968, with one mother's story of her baby. Theron wrote to the Rooibos Tea Control Board, which turned her account into a national campaign¹. The SA Rooibos Council's health page says that 'no formal studies have been done'³ on rooibos for infant colic.

1. The Rooibos Story, SA Rooibos Council
3. Health facts, SA Rooibos Council

The Council's health page says people have been talking and writing about rooibos's health benefits 'since the late 1960's'³. Its history of the industry, The Rooibos Story, quotes older claims. At the South African Exhibition in London in 1907, rooibos was hailed as having a 'soothing effect upon the system'¹. People with indigestion or 'nervous disorders', it was said, could drink it 'with impunity'.

3. Health facts, SA Rooibos Council
1. The Rooibos Story, SA Rooibos Council

In 1909 the trader James Hartley advertised rooibos¹ as 'a certain cure for indigestion and nervous disorders'. Dr Nortier, 'the father of cultivated rooibos', prescribed it¹ for heart ailments, insomnia, indigestion and high blood pressure. In 1949, specialists at the Fruit Research Station in Stellenbosch endorsed it as a wholesome tea substitute¹ for children and adults with 'digestive or heart troubles'.

1. The Rooibos Story, SA Rooibos Council

The Board, set up by proclamation in 1954¹, promoted rooibos at trade shows, women's organisations and tea clubs as an affordable and healthy substitute for Asian tea¹. Under Cecil Bergh, its chairman from 1965, the Board decided to do away with the drink's inferior image, and the industry aimed to reposition rooibos as a pure and natural health beverage¹.

1. The Rooibos Story, SA Rooibos Council

Theron's letter to the Board, dated 18 May 1968, offered to confirm her account 'even under oath'¹. She would give more detail, she wrote, 'so that your Board could start scientific testing of rooibos tea's effect on hyperallergic babies'.

1. The Rooibos Story, SA Rooibos Council

The Board passed her letter to James van Putten, who was involved in marketing rooibos. As the Council's history tells it, he saw that if her findings could be scientifically verified¹, rooibos would be a health drink, 'not just a budget alternative to Ceylon tea'. The Board's annual report for 1968 said her discovery had 'overnight changed Rooitea from its still stodgy existence to the most popular Wonder-health drink'¹.

1. The Rooibos Story, SA Rooibos Council

On 10 November 1968 the Afrikaans newspaper Beeld ran the story on its front page as 'Rooibostee dalk wondermiddel' (rooibos tea, perhaps a wonder remedy). Rooibos, its reporter wrote, could hold 'a solution to one of the worst problems in paediatrics'¹. The Board gave Theron a Volkswagen Variant estate car¹ as a present.

1. The Rooibos Story, SA Rooibos Council

In 1969, rooibos consumption rose by a third¹. Enquiries came in from overseas, followed by a 25 percent rise in exports within a year¹. The Board's own history of 1954 to 1975 said 'rooibos got a new status'¹, and 'the Cinderella-product of yesteryear finally cast off her stepmother's dress'.

1. The Rooibos Story, SA Rooibos Council

'It all started in 1968 when I discovered by chance that rooibos had therapeutic value'¹, Theron wrote, adding that until then 'nothing unusual about rooibos had been known'. The Council's history says she was mistaken. Rooibos had been used for stomach complaints in the rooibos heartland long before Lorinda's birth¹.

1. The Rooibos Story, SA Rooibos Council

Rooibos had no entry¹ in a 1966 compendium of South African folk medicine, Volksgeneeskuns in Suid-Afrika. Once Theron came forward, van Putten recalled in 2016, 'people in the rooibos-tea areas started telling the same story'¹. The Council's history credits Theron as 'the first to share her knowledge with the rest of the country'¹, through her essays, books and media appearances.

1. The Rooibos Story, SA Rooibos Council

Theron gathered other mothers whose infants had various ailments, and her claims widened from colic to 'a range of allergic symptoms such as dry and itchy skin, insomnia and hyperactivity'². She set them out in a book, Allergies: An Amazing Discovery⁴.

2. Obituary: Annekie Theron, founder of global rooibos company who built R80m business, Sunday Times
4. You Asked: What is rooibos tea? (Joe Schwarcz, 2017), McGill Office for Science and Society

In 1970 she started a company², Annekie Theron Entrepreneurs, followed in 1976 by Annique Health and Beauty, after which she was called Annique. The direct-marketing firm came to sell around 140 rooibos-infused beauty, skincare, slimming and anti-allergy products² in 25 countries. The Board registered Annique as a tea packer, with a quota, only in 1986¹. In 2010 the business sold for 80 million rand² (about US$11 million, at 2010's average of 7.32 rand to the dollar⁵).

2. Obituary: Annekie Theron, founder of global rooibos company who built R80m business, Sunday Times
1. The Rooibos Story, SA Rooibos Council
5. Historical rates for the South African rand (H.10), US Federal Reserve

In 1997, at the International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva, Theron received a gold medal¹ 'for her discovery of the therapeutic properties of rooibos'. She received another as the best woman inventor of the year.

1. The Rooibos Story, SA Rooibos Council

In January 1969 Brian Koeppen, head of food science at Stellenbosch University, disagreed that rooibos dealt with allergies¹, though he thought cases like Theron's should be investigated. The observed effects, he wrote, 'might be ascribed rather to a sedative action'. He added that 'a great deal of chemical and clinical work must still be done before anything definite can be stated'.

1. The Rooibos Story, SA Rooibos Council

In 1982 the South African Medical Journal published a test⁶ in which seven adults with asthma or hay fever drank 500 millilitres (about two cups) of rooibos on one day, with no separate comparison group. Their blood level of immunoglobulin E (IgE), an antibody raised in allergy, did not change, and neither did their skin reactions to 12 antigens. Their skin reactions to four other antigens, among them house dust and grass pollen, were larger on the tea day than on the control days.

6. Afrifa et al. (2023), review of human studies of rooibos tea, Journal of Public Health in Africa

In 2017 Joe Schwarcz, of McGill University's Office for Science and Society, wrote that there was 'nothing published in the scientific literature by any Annique Theron'⁴. A 2023 review of 18 human studies of rooibos, with 488 participants, said their number and sample sizes make it 'very difficult to either confirm or refute'⁶ a significant effect. The Council's health page says claims that rooibos relieves allergies, sleep disorders, digestive problems and headaches are 'not yet supported by scientific research'³.

4. You Asked: What is rooibos tea? (Joe Schwarcz, 2017), McGill Office for Science and Society
6. Afrifa et al. (2023), review of human studies of rooibos tea, Journal of Public Health in Africa
3. Health facts, SA Rooibos Council