Rooted & RISING

Mogau Seshoene turned her love for food into a movement of heritage, heart and home. Ten years on, she's stirring the pot for a new generation hungry for belonging.

- MECAYLA MASEKA

There's a particular magic that happens in a South African kitchen on a Sunday morning. The smell of onions braising away, the sound of kids playing outside, the radio humming somewhere in the background. In the middle of it all is often a matriarch in an apron stirring a pot.

For Mogau Seshoene, these mornings and many other food memories, were her first classroom. She learnt that food could be love. That recipes were stories passed down in whispers and often measured by memory. That cooking flows from the heart and can honour those around you. "I learnt to cook quite young," she says. "I must have been 12 when I seriously had to learn. My earliest memory is probably in my mom's kitchen: the smell of banana bread that we woke up to every Saturday; learning to cook pap as a preteen; making bulk achaar with my cousins and grandma during the school holidays when it's mango season."

In Mogau's family, everyone cooks - her mother, a gifted baker; her grandmother, a keeper of old recipes; her cousins, partners in kitchen chaos, even her uncles know their way around the kitchen. Every gathering becomes a feast of laughter and flavours, each family member more excited than the next to debut whatever new recipe they've mastered. For them it was never just about eating, it was belonging.

And though she didn't know it then, those seemingly simple moments would later become the foundation of a springboard that would catapult her into culinary success.

A STIRRING WITHIN