LIMPOPO – People call her the queen of mopani worms, and it is a title Thifheli Nethisaulu-Kutama wears with pride.
The mother of two says it is her mission to put mopani worms back on the culinary map and onto the dinner plates of South Africans.
Apart from selling mopani worms, Nethisaulu-Kutama is an experimental farm manager at the University of Venda. She boasts various academic achievements, including a B.Agri Honours degree from the University of Venda, B.Tech agricultural management from the University of South Africa, and a national diploma in production science from the Tshwane University of Technology.
The mopani queen admitted that she started selling the worms purely out of desperation.
“I was broke and needed an extra income. The needs of my household were beyond what I was earning and I had to do something. I needed something to supplement my salary, and I know people need to eat good food, we all need good nutrients. Mopani worms has protein and calcium.”
Her mission, she says, is to empower herself financially, and others too, in the process. “When I started selling the worms, I also wanted to show other people that it can be done. My business not only packages mopani worms for household consumption, but I look at opportunities to supply to other hawkers, especially people who sit at home thinking how they can earn a living.”
This entrepreneur supplies her well packaged mopani worms to every province within the country. “Getting constant suppliers was one of my major challenges. There are mopani worms in South Africa, but the way they prepared it, its not the same as the Botswana mopani worms. So, the problem is that I had outsourced mopani worms,” she said.
She added, although mopani worms are a known African delicacy, many people still refuse to eat the indigenous food. “I want to encourage the person who has never tasted mopani worms, to try it,” she concluded.
