In the heart of a Gqeberha township, Phumeza Dolo has turned her backyard into a hub of herbal innovation. As founder of ISthebe Kitchenette, she blends culinary skills with medicinal farming to bridge traditional wisdom and modern entrepreneurship, one teabag at a time.
Born and raised in Gqeberha, in the Eastern Cape, Dolo attended eBhongweni Primary School. About 20 years ago, she moved to Cape Town to finish high school. After school, she entered the corporate world, working as a salesperson and debt collector at a credit bureau.
However, a latent passion for food eventually led her to Infinity Culinary Training. This transition into the kitchen, serving as a chef in various restaurants and a Demo Chef for Rialto Foods at Woolworths, provided the foundation for her understanding of flavour, health, and the transformative power of ingredients.
Finding new ambitions
Just weeks before the global Covid-19 pandemic, Dolo took a leap of faith, leaving formal employment to launch her NPO, ISthebe Kitchenette. Operating in Philippi, in the Western Cape, she served soup to between 500 and 700 people, funded by a small bakery where she sold pies, samoosas, and corndogs.
“That experience taught me the power of food as a tool for healing, empowerment, and community upliftment,” she recalls.
The pivot to the soil arrived in 2023. Having returned home to the Eastern Cape, Dolo found herself in a very difficult season of her life.
During a moment when she had run out of salt at home, she travelled to a river in Motherwell to harvest it naturally. On her return, a patch of wild chamomile flowers in the bush caught her eye. It was a spark of inspiration that led her to begin planting chamomile in her family yard and experimenting with herbal infusions. Using her river-harvested salt, she developed a signature rosemary-flavoured health salt.
“This was the beginning of my farming journey, born from resilience and creativity,” she says.
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The birth of a farming dream
With the R350 from her Sassa unemployment grant, Dolo purchased seeds and empty teabags. She also continued planting and harvesting around 80 large cabbages, which she dried and blended with herbs to create her first medicinal tea bag for ulcers.
She officially launched her company under the name ISthebe Kitchenette Company, famously known as Isitya Sam, which means backyard garden in Gqeberha.
“The name reflects where everything started – from home, using the space and resources we had.”
Today, every inch of the family plot has been maximised. Dolo has cultivated a dense medicinal garden featuring mint, fennel, sage, chamomile, castor tree, amaranth, and other medicinal herbs.
Inside her home, she converted one of the rooms into a dedicated workshop for drying, processing, blending, and packaging. From this domestic factory, she manufactures an array of wellness products, including tonic drinks, rubbing ointments, antacids, bath salts, and eye drops.
She also developed two tonic drinks focused on hormonal imbalance and fertility, which is now one of her best-selling products.
Job-creation and accolades
Dolo’s success has helped her provide work for four people: two permanent staff and two casual workers. “Even on a small scale, creating jobs in my community has been a major achievement,” she says with pride.
The impact of Dolo’s backyard workshop has resonated far beyond the township gates, garnering professional accolades and significant investment. She won second place and R30 000 at the Nelson Mandela University Standard Bank SME Exhibition.
Further support followed from the Small Enterprise Development Agency (SEDA), which provided marketing materials and around R60 000 in funding for South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) product testing.
Her breakthrough into wider markets came through exhibiting with Agri5, which opened doors to provincial exhibitions. Recently, she won R10 000 for Best Young Producer at the Department of Agriculture Show and is now booked to travel across four provinces with Agri5 for upcoming exhibitions.
Growing toward a larger horizon
Yet, even with these wins, challenges persist. Limited space, resources, and funding remain her biggest hurdles. “I mitigate these by maximising every inch of my backyard, reinvesting profits, and leveraging partnerships like Agri5. I focus on high-value crops and value-added products to grow sustainably despite constraints.”
The future of ISthebe Kitchenette is moving toward a much larger scale as Dolo works to secure a municipal farm in Kariega (former Uitenhage). The land represents the next chapter of her journey.
“I just need to sign the agreement and begin working the land. This will allow me to expand production and grow more crops,” she explains. Her long-term goal is to establish a fully operational factory.
For aspiring farmers, her advice is grounded in her own experience: “Start with what you have, even a small backyard can produce food and income. Be patient, creative, and willing to learn. Focus on high-value crops and products you can manage, and reinvest profits. Lastly, stay resilient. Challenges are part of the journey, but determination can turn a small plot into a thriving farm and business.”
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