Diabetes mellitus (DM) is one of the leading causes of mortality in South Africa, which is impelled by people’s consumption of unhealthy diets and lifestyles, negligence about an individual’s health status, and increased urbanization. DM can be linked to several human diseases and thus, making it an important public health issue in the South African health sector. Therefore, it is necessary to assess the level of research that has been conducted in the country on diabetes, in a quest for solutions against the deadly disease. Hence, the present study aimed to map diabetes-related research in South Africa from 2010 to 2019. Data on the subject was retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) and bibliometrix package in Rstudio statistical software was used to analyze the data while VOSviewer was explored for data visualization networks. Our analysis revealed that the annual growth rate of publication trends was 23.2%. The authors per document were 23.3 with a collaboration index of 23.4. From the 416 articles analyzed, Islam MS (n = 34) was the most prolific author and the top active institution was University of KwaZulu-Natal (n = 165) and the top journal was Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice (n = 20). Findings from this study reveal that the quantity of research on diabetes has significantly increased over the decade, and the outcomes of this scientific progress can guide future research and substantially provide the basic needs for improving management procedures for diabetes in the country.

糖尿病（DM）是南非的主要原因之一，其原因是人们不健康的饮食和生活方式、对个人健康状况的忽视以及城市化进程的加快。糖尿病可能与多种人类疾病有关，因此使其成为南非卫生部门的一个重要公共卫生问题。因此，有必要评估该国对糖尿病的研究水平，以寻求针对这种致命疾病的解决方案。因此，本研究旨在绘制 2010 年至 2019 年南非糖尿病相关研究的地图。该主题的数据取自 Web of Science 核心合集（WoSCC），并使用 Rstudio 统计软件中的 bibliometrix 软件包来分析数据，同时VOSviewer 被探索用于数据可视化网络。我们的分析显示，出版趋势的年增长率为23.2%。每个文档的作者为 23.3，协作指数为 23.4。在分析的 416 篇文章中，Islam MS (n = 34) 是最多产的作者，最活跃的机构是夸祖鲁纳塔尔大学 (n = 165)，顶级期刊是 Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice (n = 20)。这项研究的结果表明，十年来，关于糖尿病的研究数量显着增加，这一科学进步的成果可以指导未来的研究，并为改善我国糖尿病管理程序提供基本需求。