South African women spending up to R100K to make their bums bigger

The rise of social media - and Kim Kardashian - has led to a surge in South African women getting so-called "Brazilian butt lifts", says doctor Dirk Lazarus, a plastic surgeon in Cape Town.

The procedure costs anything between R75,000 and R100,000 in South Africa and entails taking fat from a different part of the body and injecting it into the bum to enlarge it.

Local kwaito star Mshoza (Nomasonto Maswanganyi) recently made headlines when she said she has "the biggest implants in South Africa".  

Lazarus says younger women are especially seeking the treatment, which has a recovery time of up to three weeks, after seeing their favourite celebrities with enlarged bums.

"It is [however] regarded as a very risky procedure," Lazarus told Business Insider South Africa.

A statement by American Society of Plastic Surgeons, among others, earlier this year revealed that 1 in 3,000 Brazillian Butt Lift patients die, typically when fat is injected in the wrong places.

This makes the Brazillian Butt Lifts the most deadly aesthetic procedure in the US, according to the institution.

Anelda Botha, a surgical consultant who works with the plastic surgeon Dr Nerina Wilkinson in Cape Town, says patients are typically able to return to work a week after the procedure, but it takes up to six months for the procedure to fully heal and settle.

All patients are screened before the operation and, in certain cases, patients are rejected when they do not have enough fat to perform the grafting to buttocks, Botha says.

"The best candidates are patients who are physically healthy, psychologically stable, and realistic in their expectations," Botha says.