By PHAKAMISA MAYABA
While the twitterati were bogged down on Wanatu, the controversial ‘Afrikaans uber’, I had a dinner to prepare for a friend from another mother and culture, who was – thankfully, and with no offence intended – not vegan. His request was, on first thoughts, pretty base: ‘Just something from your culture, preferably with a dead animal in it.’ About as lenient and amenable a request as I’ll ever hear.
The only snag was that this was a first-class goodfella, never too busy to take the 4 am phone calls or go out of his way for a needy friend, so I figured some reciprocal Michelin Star cooking – African style – was more than a fair price to pay. With the help of the search engines, I’d soon have whatever it is that counts as Afro fine dining on my phone before assiduously working the flat-top and the fire outside.
But ruffling through our mainstream print media’s culinary offerings, I was hard-pressed to find anything vaguely resembling the indigenous pot. That is to say, anything distinctly catering to the ethnic palates of rural South Africa and her urban cousins in the townships. Although a few came hopefully close, they turned out to be a deconstructed masala of Euro and Western cooking tussled with elementary African logics before being dubiously passed off as the real makoya. In essence, no more than the standard dishes you’ll find in the arriviste diner or the domestic worker’s quarters – delectable, but everywhere.
No avant-garde recipes for mageu, the enduring beverage of sustenance made from watered down mealie meal. No what-what a la umfino, the wild spinach that grows freely in the veld and, next to tripe, often takes pride of place on the African dinner table. Even less is said of the blood of a slaughtered animal that is flash-cooked in a cast iron pot, and there was virtually nothing on crustaceans and how these might have been considered in the historic setting of the thatched African hut.
If you’re able to convince the refined of the civilized world that raw fish eggs (a.k.a. caviar) are a delicacy that deserve to fetch top dollar, surely anything could make the grade, right? Not quite, as it seemed I’d have to abandon my audacious designs for something that you could just as easily pick up at the grocer’s deli: grilled meat, pap, creamed spinach and chakalaka.
Even more disappointing, I’d have to settle for store-bought dessert because the online literature was dead silent on the ancestors having anything to do with pudding. Instead, the recommended top-shelf restaurants my search turned up were a catalog of mostly Italian foods – so much ravioli and risotto you’d swear you were in the heart of Rome rather than somewhere deep in the Kalahari.
Where the ‘South African culinary tradition’ seemed to come alive was through the cuisines of foreign arrivals — indentured Indians, Asian slaves at the Cape, as well as European settlers –which have ostensibly been blended into a richer and more diverse food culture. This secures impressive ratings for our domestic efforts on foodie websites and amongst scores of YouTubers who prowl the flourishing digital tourism arena.
But most importantly, they come with names and nuggets of written history. Biltong, bunny chow, koeskoes, kota – not exactly what I had in mind for my visitor, but also not entirely without some sentimental significance. For example, both the African kota and the Indian ‘bunny’ – both both made from a quarter loaf of bread stuffed with myriad fillings – seem to be an ode to the manual labourer of those repressive years. Simple, accessible hand food that personified the man’s social standing – he who has no extenuating need for luxuries such as cutlery; he eats wherever he toils.
The ubiquitous bunny chow … like the kota, it started out as simple fare for manual labourers.
Anyway, as I flipped through the local magazines (many of which are dying fast) or online publications, the recipes seemed to mostly fetishize all that is de rigueur everywhere else except in our own backyard. On TV, the indigenous (and I use the term very loosely) chef is mostly an obscure personality, relegated to back-end satellite channels or otherwise left to try his or her luck in the non-traditional media space.
This may sound like a trivial tangent on pap, but you’ll remember that the anarchist Peter Kropotnik once wrote: ‘Whether the leaders belonged to the middle or the working classes, it was always middle-class ideas which prevailed. They discussed various political questions at length, but forgot to discuss the question of bread.’
Kropotnik may have been pondering the class economics of food, but my interest more with the history and linguistics. For instance, might the reason the amaXhosa call samp umngqusho have something to do with that the act of crushing mielies with a pestle and mortar was referred to as ‘ukungqusha’? Is there an unsung fable between this tribe calling the three-legged cast iron pot ‘unopotyi’ and the Afrikaners’ potjiekos, famously cooked on such a pot itself? What unexplored gems lie hidden in open sight in our languages that might connect the dots of our shared commonalities?
The validity of these questions found further credence when it dawned on me that my guest who’s called South Africa home for many decades knew no other isiXhosa words outside of the simple greetings. It is, I soon realised, somewhere in these small questions that etymology – the genesis of words – might tell us far more about our history than we might otherwise expect. The more one reads the history and compares some words, the more one finds just how interwoven the country’s history is.
Celebrity chef Lorna Maseko’s SAA gig has tongues wagging. Image: Lorna Maseko Facebook page.
When it was announced a week or so ago that the celebrity chef Lorna Maseko had partnered with SA Airways to curate the national carrier’s menu, the nation went into a frenzy. Among those who derided Maseko’s cooking capabilities were those who felt that she couldn’t have landed the gig without formidable connections. Amid the online mudslinging, the issues of merit and a perverted, corrupt elite acting as gatekeepers for key positions came to the fore. Against this backdrop, further important questions arose as to whether the corporate and academic landscape have the sorts of programmes in place that would earnestly change the fortunes of Africa.
Maseko is depicted as a proud Tswana whose cooking embodies various styles, supposedly with ‘a South African twist.’ She has been the host of Top Chef SA, a Top Billing presenter, Homegrown Tastes South Africa on BBC Lifestyle (DStv channel 174), amongst others, but this didn’t stop detractors construing her as a token black woman who’s ‘allowed in’ purely based on her looks and the big names she knows.
Viewed from the Karoo, Maseko might as well be on the other side of the planet. There is, however, an accomplished chef to turn to for his take on these matters. For over two decades, Anele Mphemba has been serving gourmet dishes in some of the country’s finest restaurants. He’s earned the diploma and certificates, and the chef’s jacket hangs neatly behind the kitchen door at his Eyethu Shisanyama. The joint – built in an upstart township with no power – on the edge of Kuyasa didn’t look like it would survive long. At one point there were no roads, eletricity or sanitation. But a few years down the dine, music hums from the sound system, customers are trickling in, and the man is huddled over the fryers.
Mdopi (as the okes call him) may be a qualified sous chef but for now it’s simply a matter of giving customers what they want. Yes, he could whip up some pretty impressive African dishes but his clientele prefer the usual kasi suspects. The kota, russian and chips move quickly and are cost-effective. Elaborate curries and slow-cooked lamb shanks with pap and veggies will require effort and upping the prices. This, he suspects, will not go down well with his loyal customers, so best keep things simple for now.
Anele Mphemba busy in his kitchen. Image: eParkeni.
In the long term, when he’s able to train and take on staff, that would be a viable option. In fact, it’s something he’s always wanted to do when the time was right. To my question about whether African fine dining is even a credible concept, he says yes, yes of course. ‘If,’ he continues, ‘qualified chefs are given some funding and support, definitely.’ More than money, he laments how youngsters often take a dim view of the hospitality sector.
‘Everybody,’ he says, ‘wants to be a doctor or an accountant. Mention the word “chef” to them and they think you’re mad.’ As for traditional dishes in a high-end contemporary setting, he believes there’s a need for higher education programmes that invest in developing this area of study.
Having had a kota, stuffed with chips, russian, cheese, eggs and a whole lot of greasy goodies, many of my questions remained unanswered and Mdopi had to get back to work. Well, I thought, today I’d have to settle for something reflective of the country around me. I bit my tongue, tossed some lamb chops on the braai, and booked samp and beans on the stove. My guest ended up having seconds.
Featured image: SA Tourism on Flickr.
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This is an edited version of an article that firs appeared on Phakamisa Mayaba’s website, eParkeni. Used with permission.