Mzansi boasts many unnoticed champions like Mama Ntombomzi Bashuru. She not only manages a soup kitchen but also tends to an organic food garden, offering hope in the face of poverty. As the visionary behind the Masibonelaneni Initiative in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, she is feeding her community and changing perspectives.
Food For Mzansi assistant editor Duncan Masiwa caught up with Bashuru at the 2023 African Agri Investment Indaba. She speaks passionately about her food garden project and how it is making a positive contribution to the lives of people in her community.
“I started the garden in 2021. [Food] was very expensive at that stage, so I decided to start a garden at the back of my house,” she explains.
The reason for all of this is that Bashuru had a running soup kitchen which she funded out of her own pocket. Here and there people and organisations would make donations, but it was never enough.
Heart of gold
In the episode, she also reveals the origin of her passion for nurturing others and recounts how, as a child, she observed her mother always welcoming and caring for people in need.
“My mother died when I was 10 years old, so my aunts and grandmother raised me. My father was a pastor, so our house was always full of people,” she explains.
In this episode, Bashuru also discusses:
- How her food garden operates and the number of people it feeds;
- Where she sources her agricultural inputs; and
- Challenges she faces in running the garden.
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