Former MasterChef contestant Onezwa Mbola has opened up about her life in rural Eastern Cape and cooking food she's grown and raised herself. Picture: @onezwambola/ Instagram
It’s a Thursday morning and I sit in one of our conference rooms, staring at the laptop waiting for Onezwa Mbola to join the Zoom meeting.
I’m a tad nervous about whether she’ll have sufficient internet connection to join as she has previously spoken about how remote the place is where she stays, in one of her Instagram videos.
Mbola was part of MasterChef season four in 2022 but over the last few years she has grown an ardent following through her Instagram page where she cooks food she’s grown, raised or foraged herself.
This has come with much curiosity about the life she lives.
My wait isn’t too long… I accept her request to join. After the standard pleasantries, I ask her what the proper term is for where she resides.
“People find it weird if you say rural, if you say bundus, I don’t know. I just call it ezilalini (rural areas in Xhosa),” she says, still undecided about the politically correct term.
“Remote is more acceptable, off the beaten track is more acceptable… I don’t know what the problem is. It is rural.”
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Mbola was born and bred in the coastal village of Willowvale, in the Eastern Cape. This is where she currently resides. Mbola says she is 50 km from the nearest town.
“It feels like 100km because our roads are so so bad. It takes me about two hours to two and a half hours to drive to town,” she says.
Her daily vlogs of her cooking are not only entertaining but are helpful to hopeless cooks life myself. But Mbola has not always been as good as she is today.
Cooking is a way of keeping her mother’s memory alive, who she lost in 2014.
“My mother was my biggest inspiration. Firstly, I wanted to recreate the food she made for me, one dish in particular that actually started this whole journey. My mother used to cook this cabbage and potato thing, I believe the English call it bubble and squeak,” she said.
“So when I set out to cook, I wanted to cook this particular dish because the potatoes were so fluffy, but they weren’t mashed and had the sweet and sour flavour to it. So I really wanted to recreate that.”
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Having grown up in rural Eastern Cape, cooking food she’s grown herself has always piqued her interest.
“One of the things that I really wanted was to cook with food that I’ve grown. I wanted to say I was involved in the whole process from growing the food to then cooking it, to then enjoying it. I wanted to be in touch with the whole process,” said the former MasterChef contestant.
Being in touch with the earth is said to have restorative effects for humans – earth’s natural electric charge is believed to stabilise the physiology at the deepest levels, reduce inflammation, pain, and stress, improve blood flow, energy, and sleep, and generate greater well-being.
When it comes to food, Mbola believes that by connecting with the land, it’s easier to respect the food that one makes.
“So by working the land that my ancestors work, I then get to eat the food that they ate. It makes me feel a lot more connected to them,” she said.
“So I needed to grow the things that I wanted to cook with. So that was the other reason why I got into it. But mostly it was just to provide my family and myself with food that I knew was nutritious, free of chemicals.”
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Mbola’s daily routine involves waking early in the morning.
“I wake up at five, my body clock is 5am. It’s not intentional. And the first thing I do I during the first hour of my morning is basically my praying and meditating. I’m a very spiritual person. And then from six to seven is my tea hour,” she shared.
She plans out her day while sipping on her tea and will proceed to feeding her animals, starting with her chickens.
“I then check if there are any eggs that I can get, because I’m always looking for eggs. And then the next thing would be the pigs. They are very hungry in the morning.”
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Pastoral life has had an impact on Mbola’s upbringing but she has a national diploma in maritime studies and for some time, worked as a navigational officer in the navy.
Her job came with a lot of travelling, something the average rural girl doesn’t get to experience.
Mbola’s dichotomous experiences have influenced her approach to how she sees and interacts with the world.
She only moved back to Willowvale in 2020 to follow her dream of growing her own food.
“I was a marine navigator and I worked on container ships, so I travelled a lot. China was one of those places that I travelled to quite often, which is why I’m very familiar with the food and Asian cuisine in general,” she says.
Her travels made her realise the resemblances in people’s way of living, more than their differences.
“There are so many similarities in our food, and the way we prepare food and the way [we are] in community through food.
“I am a person who loves to explore in general. And when it comes to food, I’m very curious, I want to know what other people are eating. I want to know the stories behind the food that they’re eating, I want to learn their techniques… and travelling really opened my mind.”
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Mid-interview Mbola asks to be momentarily excused as her son, Phods, needs her attention.
The four-year-old often appears in his mother’s videos, where they cook together.
“My son is attached to me. He does everything I do. If I’m in the garden, he’s in the garden, if I’m feeding the animals, he’s there. But the one thing that I really enjoy is cooking together,” said Mbola while giggling.
“I also wanted my child to experience the life that I grew up in because I found it to be enriching. I have the experience of a rural life and I have experience of a city life,” she said.
“I don’t know if it’s a Virgo thing, but he’s very meticulous. He’s very neat. He’s very careful when he’s doing things. So it’s very nice to watch him cook and to cook with him. And the commentary is always top tier, he’s hilarious. I really enjoy cooking with him, he is my favourite person in the world.”
Most of her followers have asked who she cooks for, as it seems like she doesn’t only stay with her son.
“Everyone wants to know who I cook for, it’s a very popular question because you never see them in the video,” she says in uncontrollable bursts of laughter.
She lives with her dad, son and her cousin who recently gave birth.
“And then I have my aunts. I have three aunts that live here permanently and I have cousins as well. In general, you would say there are around 10 people.”
In her earlier videos she did show some of her family members but as her following grew she says she knew it was important to protect them from social media.
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