I MAY HAVE left my heart in San Francisco, but I left my ass in South Africa. I've been back from Cape Town for a week, and I just keep thinking about Wednesday nights on the dance floor at Snap. I went clubbing in the Cape every night for two weeks, from high-end house 'dos like Sutra and Buddha Bar (why is there one of these in every town?) to electroclash venue Evol to Marvel, a hip-hop bar resembling an airier, more gently lit version of the Top. But Snap was the only place where I knew I wasn't in San Francisco.

The club is nothing special: two sparsely furnished rooms, two sound systems, and two bars selling lots of bottles of Carling Black Label, a beer that claims to be "America's lusty, lively import," despite the fact that I've never seen it before in my life. But it's the music and the dance floor – and the people – that were basically unlike anything I'd seen before. People dance until 5 a.m. in the middle of the week. Guys dancing with guys, girls dancing with girls, everyone dancing with everyone to every single song, and nearly every dance involving bouncing your butt all the way down to the floor and back up again without skipping a beat. I made the mistake of trying to look too bourgie in high-heeled boots and soon found out why everyone else was in Reeboks. My knees were as creaky as an 80-year-old's the next day.

Although 30 percent of the music at Snap is mainstream rap and dancehall, the majority of what resident DJs Pisce and Kenlou throw down is deep house and kwaito. Outside of African masks and good weed, kwaito is poised to be South Africa's greatest export. It's a form of mid-tempo house that clocks in a bit slower than average – at 110 bpm, it necessitates learning a whole new form of bump 'n' grind. Kwaito, like house, can go anywhere musically. Quite a bit of it has traditional African vocals and uplifting melodies similar to U.S. vocal garage, while a whole other segment of the genre is more raw and rap-influenced, with streetwise vocals and drums placed prominently in the mix rather than smoothed out. Sony is handing out contracts to kwaito artists left and right, and most of them are also TV stars in South Africa. My favorite, Mzekezeke, sounds not unlike Ol' Dirty Bastard or Lil' Jon and wears a balaclava mask and overalls everywhere he goes to hide his identity.

I didn't know I'd have to go all the way to South Africa to like deep house – after all, San Francisco's got its fair share of 4/4 flavors. But what really hyped me was hanging out with DJs and producers, like Johannesburg's Kaybee. Kaybee, a five-foot-five spark of drunken mayhem, spends as much time on the dance floor as he does in the studio. There's an immediacy to his music, and that of a lot of other kwaito artists, that American and European house is just now reclaiming. For too long house has been background music for fancy cocktail bars, when it should really be the domain of sweaty basement parties.

Many people probably see African music through the eyes of those world music CDs they sell at the Nature Company. I am happy to report that Afro-house from south of the equator can easily compete with Blaze, Osunlade, or Kenny Dope, and one day very soon, it will. As for myself, I'm not giving up on breakbeat quite yet. Broken drums will always be my first love – no matter how hot straight beats get. But, as a salute to S.F. expat and former Bay Guardian club columnist Amanda Nowinski, I vow to check out more house clubs in this coming year and to go back to Cape Town soon to find my ass.

Kompakt Records tour, with Reinhard Voigt, Michael Mayer, and Broker/Dealer, comes to town Fri/28, 10 p.m.-4 a.m., Club Six, 60 Sixth St., S.F. $12 ($10 in advance). (415) 863-1221.

True Skool four-year anniversary, with Crown City Rockers, Azeem, and Felonius takes place Fri/28, 9 p.m.-2 a.m., Milk, 1840 Haight, S.F. $15 ($12 in advance). (415) 387-6455.