Its pulsing dance beat evolved from styles such as mbaqanga and dancehall, as well as house and disco.

Kwaito has been called the music that defines the generation who came of age after apartheid. As a result, kwaito has also been known as the expression of this new freedom, and many anti-apartheid chants have been used as lyrics for kwaito songs.

Newfound freedom gave South African musicians easier access to international works and a greater ability to freely express themselves. However, it was only after 2001 that kwaito artists and music have found their way to Europe and the United States. Arthur Mafokate, Oskido, Boom Shaka, and Mdu Masilela were among the first artists to produce a huge kwaito hit and popularize it in and outside of the Black townships. This spread northward, where, in the mid 1990s, the genre was becoming popular in Johannesburg clubs such as 4th World, and local artists fused its sound with that of South African music. House music arrived in Cape Town in the early 1990s at raves such as the World Peace Party and in the original venue Club Eden, and later Euphoria and DV8. One of the first Kwaito singles to become a hit in South Africa was the song ' Kaffir' by artist Arthur Mafokate, which illustrated the freedom of expression resulting from political liberation in South Africa. The removal of the political and economic sanctions greatly transformed the South African music industry. In the backdrop of a transforming South Africa, Kwaito took shape in the township Soweto at the same time Nelson Mandela took office as the first democratically elected president of South Africa. The popular Kwaito artist and producer Arthur Mafokate describes the relationship between Kwaito and gangsterism as music revolving around ghetto life. M'du Masilela, a pioneering Kwaito artist, said, 'When house music got popular, people from the ghetto called it Kwaito after the Afrikaans slang word kwai, meaning those house tracks were hot, that they were kicking.' Another Isicamtho word derived from the Afrikaans word kwaai is amakwaitosi, which means gangster. Despite the fact that the Afrikaans language is associated with the apartheid regime and racial oppression, Afrikaans words are often drawn into the Isicamtho vocabulary, reshaped and used in a related or new context. Kwaito led a post-Apartheid township subculture into the mainstream. The word originates from the Afrikaans kwaai, which when used as a slang term is the equivalent of the English term hot.

The word kwaito is an Isicamtho term from the Gauteng townships and encompasses styles that range from guz, d'gong, and isgubhu to swaito.

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