Italian South Africans are South African-born citizens who are fully or partially of Italian descent, whose ancestors were Italians who emigrated to South Africa during the Italian diaspora, or Italian-born people in South Africa. They are primarily descended from Italians who emigrated to South Africa during the late 19th century and early 20th century.

The Italian diaspora is the large-scale emigration of Italians from Italy. There were two major Italian diasporas in Italian history. The first diaspora began around 1880, two decades after the Unification of Italy, and ended in the 1920s to the early 1940s with the rise of Fascist Italy. Poverty was the main reason for emigration, specifically the lack of land as mezzadria sharecropping flourished in Italy, especially in the South, and property became subdivided over generations. Especially in Southern Italy, conditions were harsh. From the 1860s to the 1950s, Italy was still a largely rural society with many small towns and cities having almost no modern industry and in which land management practices, especially in the South and the Northeast, did not easily convince farmers to stay on the land and to work the soil.