Chef and owner of Food, I Love You, Mpho Phalane shows how food is more than just cooking, but a practice of memory, identity and connection that asks us all, ‘How do we feed ourselves?’
Phalane’s work shows how food carries identity, memory and connection, from her grandmother’s kitchen to Constitution Hill
As South Africa faces food insecurity, Phalane reimagines the kitchen as a space for care and resistance
By cooking with indigenous grains including sorghum, millet and cowpeas, Phalane uses food for learning, nutrition and climate-smart resilience
When chef, food thinker, and owner of Food, I Love You, Mpho Phalane speaks about food; she doesn’t begin with recipes. She begins with a question: “How do we feed ourselves?” Because for her, food is much more than what is on our plates – it is memory, identity, and human connection.
During a discussion held by Mamakashaka and Friends on August 26, Phalane took the audience through her journey into cooking. From her grandmother’s house, burgers on the rooftop with swollen feet, lunches at UJ, to the beginning of Food, I Love You at Victoria Yards and transforming the former prison kitchen at Constitution Hill. For Phalane, practice has never been ‘just cooking’. It is asking deeper questions about belonging, care, resistance and returning to a sense of self.
Rooted in Memory
Graphic of beans used in South African cooking. Photos and graphic by: Hannah Brown
Phalane’s story is kneaded together through memories: A grandfather who taught her the importance of quality, a mother who made vision boards and introduced the power of visualisation, and childhood meals at her grandmother’s house. Food, I Love You began in her kitchen, cooking for friends, which grew into events and eventually into a business. All these memories are not just details; they show how food carries identity.
When UJ first invited her to run a restaurant, she was “still in the process of finding this language.” The pace was fast, food was functional, stripped of its intimacy. “This is not how I envision my practice looking”, she shared. “I want the moments of slower, the moments to learn”. Even a pot of beans carries memory – because for Phalane, food was never just about cooking. It is about the stories and politics simmering beneath the surface. The journey of food is both intimate and political.
The Politics of Food
Across South Africa there is a growing hunger crisis. FoodForward SA’s State of Household Food Insecurity in South Africa Report 2026 showed that 70% of households experience moderate-to-severe food insecurity. Statistics South Africa data revealed that between 2019 and 2023, the number of food-insecure people rose from 14.25 million to 17.8 million, with severe food insecurity increasing from 5.2 million to 8 million. Around one in four households went an entire day without food at least once. The report states that, “due to conflict, climate change, economic downturns and global health crises. Rising food prices and supply chain disruptions have further undermined access for vulnerable populations.”
After joining Victoria Yards in 2019, she also saw the contradictions. The introduction of the monthly event, First Sundays, seemed to be for insiders, but the surrounding community was left on the edges looking in. “For me, First Sundays were not crafted for the community in and around Victoria Yards,” she said. She noticed the tensions between the comfort of home cooking and the broken food system. This act of ‘noticing’ really made her question, “who gets to be inside the gates?”
When moving to Constitution Hill in 2021, Phalane tried to change that dynamic. She created a space that honoured history, welcomed everyone and treated hospitality as more than just food. “I wanted a place that could hold both beauty and grief”, she explained. Occupying those spaces changes you as a person, as you are forced to confront the contradictions and histories within the walls. When Food, I Love You first took over the space, it felt cold and raw, but there was another layer of history that was being created. Phalane wanted an environment where “everyone felt like it was home and warm, which is contrary to what a prison is meant to be.”
Indigenous Grains and Plants
An article by Critical African Studies, discusses the lack of availability of healthy food and stigma. Colonisation and Apartheid reshaped diets as, “indigenous and traditional crops in many communities in South Africa was adversely affected by their perception as ‘poverty foods’ or food for the elderly.” Traditional crops were excluded from the dominant food systems and could only be purchased in ‘informal’ food systems. As Phalane states, “there isn’t great systems around production. We are not demanding of our food enough”.
Ultra-processed food sales are high and dietary patterns are worsening with rising food insecurity. It is important to teach children about indigenous crops and focus on meals that are nourishing and communal. “I always knew disrupting the system has to happen on that level, we have to do it at school,” Phalane said. These are acts that push back against a system that makes cheap, unhealthy food the easiest option. Accessibility and storytelling are inseparable: “it is all about accessibility, really. Also, our need to be able to tell our stories and know our stories more”, she reflects.
Receipt given to audience members from Mpho Phalane, during the talk hosted by Mamakashaka and Friends. Photo by: Hannah Brown
Food as Resistance
Across Johannesburg, chefs and activists, including Chef Mokgadi Itsweng, are reviving indigenous crops such as sorghum, millet and cowpeas. Not only rooted in heritage and memory, as Itsweng states, “our indigenous plants are climate-smart. That’s something we can be proud of.” It is a practical response to a food system where 62% of South Africans cannot afford a healthy diet, and access to fruit and vegetables is far below global averages.
Phalane’s practice reimagines kitchens as places for learning and transformation. As a space where process matters, where experimentation and failure are part of the work. “It was never one linear thing,” she said. “It is time for expansion.”
Who Feeds You?
Mpho Phalane’s approach is both simple and radical – to feed in ways that remember and create spaces that hold beauty and grief.
After the discussion at Mamakashaka and Friends, a microphone was passed around to audience members while they reflected on their time spent at Food, I Love You, or on how their paths had crossed with Phalane. A young chef, who had worked at the restaurant, shared the influence Phalane had on her journey, highlighting her “style in terms of how you cook and how you embrace African ingredients differently”. Another audience member shared that Phalane has shown him how “slowness is necessary” and that “you create in a very authentic way, and it translates in your food as well”.
Phalane asks the question, “Who feeds you?”
As we move through life, through our different practices, what do you leave for yourself? This forces you to question identity, memory and connection – and could be an opening to imagining a different future for ‘How we feed ourselves’.
Handwritten recipe for Sorghum Balls. Photo by: Hannah Brown
FEATURED IMAGE: Graphic of beans used in South African cooking. Photos and graphic by: Hannah Brown
If you’ve ever wondered who keeps the university’s complex daily rhythm flowing smoothly behind the scenes, meet Registrar Carol Crosley.
If you stepped into her office, you would find small clay art pieces, bright green plants along the windowsill, and wooden shelves holding small sculptures and figures that add a subtle artistry to the space. Photographs of friends and colleagues lined the room, alongside quieter moments of pride: her two sons, Jayson and Ryan Crosley. Moments frozen in time but alive with the bonds that have shaped her.
It’s 08:30 am, on Monday, August 31, and Carol’s day has already begun. She’s finishing a meeting with the deputy registrar, with emails and more meetings still ahead. In many ways, it was a normal day – except that it wasn’t. Some familiar touches are gone. The walls have been stripped naked of photographs, and the plants have disappeared. Instead, a September calendar sits unmarked on the desk. It is a quiet reminder of the month Crosley will no longer be coming to this office. This day, too, would be different. Letters introducing the university’s incoming registrar needed to be drafted, and goodbyes needed to be said to colleagues.
After almost three decades at Wits, Crosley was preparing to leave the university she had originally planned to spend only five years at. She had always believed in change. Before Wits, she moved between teaching and the corporate world, spending four years at Johnson & Johnson before returning to teaching. When she arrived at Wits, she was appointed head of functions and events in the Vice-Chancellor’s office.
Then came a venture she describes as her “baby”: the Student Enrollment Centre. At the time, the space was occupied by restaurants and ATMs. Crosley and her colleagues transformed it into a dedicated space where students could navigate enrollment, registration and the administrative business of becoming a Witsie.
When Carol started, the work was very different from today’s digital university. Applications were processed manually, with each offer typed, signed by hand and sent by post.
Crosley stayed because there was always something else to build. Over time, she rose from assistant registrar to deputy registrar, eventually serving as registrar for 12 years. She describes her role as guiding a student’s academic life-cycle: from application and registration to examinations and graduation – while quietly ensuring that the university’s rules, records and governance remain in order.
“Students who break the rules know exactly what the registrar does. If you have never been to the registrar’s office, then that is a good sign,” she says with a knowing smile.
During registration, when queues of anxious students stretched across the venue, Crosley did not remain behind an office door. Sershin Naicker, the Student Recruitment Manager who worked closely under her, remembers seeing Carol “walking the queues herself, speaking to students, answering questions and helping clear bottlenecks.”
For all her reputation as a hard taskmaster, there was another side to her leadership.
Ashleigh Davids, a Project Coordinator within the registrar’s division, recalls seeing Crosley help students who needed meals or somewhere to stay while trying to resolve their registration problems. Fahmida Abrahams, the Finance Manager for the registrar’s division, remembers bringing Crosley problems that seemed almost too strange to be true – like figuring out where a bank deposit of R23 million came from.
Nishi Sooful, General Manager for Communication and Publication, remembers Crosley arriving at work on crutches rather than taking sick leave. Mashudu Mafhenya, Manager at the Central Records Office, recounts her coming into campus as early as January 2, sometimes waiting for security to open the lifts. Sam Rangata, Head of the Academic Information and Systems Unit, reflects on Carol’s habit of visiting units after registration to personally thank staff.
Perhaps that is why Crosley chooses “perseverance” to describe her career. She calls herself disciplined, goal-oriented and serious about doing things properly. Her colleagues add their own words: integrity, courage, warmth, humility and care.
As Wits evolved, so did Carol. “When you’re young, I think you’re impatient, and you feel like you can change the world,” she says. She arrived with a clear sense of how things should be done, but learnt to loosen her grip on that certainty, understanding that different paths can lead to the same destination.
Somewhere between the rules, meetings and responsibilities is a woman whose happiest place, she says, is not really a place at all, but time spent with her sons and three siblings. Soon, she’ll relocate to the Western Cape to be closer to her sister and brother, trading the registrar’s routine for more time and fewer responsibilities.
On her final afternoon, the office no longer looked empty. Gift bags gathered with cake, cupcakes, and chocolates brought by colleagues across different departments. At 4:06 pm, Crosley was still on the phone with a colleague, laughing and promising to stay in touch. As she smiled, a tiny tear appeared at the corner of her eye. “It’s going to be hard to leave Wits,” she said, “but it’s also going to be very hard to leave my friends.”
She once imagined changing the world. She learned instead that sometimes the meaningful work is smaller: listening to someone, meeting a student and offering advice or pointing them in the right direction. If she could write one sentence to the next Registrar, it would be: “Trust your instincts.”
On her final day, Crosley did what she had done for nearly 30 years: She showed up. When asked how she hopes people remember her, she doesn’t mention the systems she changed or titles she held.
As South Africa approaches a wave of teacher retirements, educators are feeling the impact of vacant teaching posts.
Its 09:00 on a Monday morning at Entandweni Primary School in Zondi, Soweto. Every desk has a learner seated behind it, writing down numbers as Zusiphe Nolusu stands in front of the class, explaining what improper fractions are. Some learners look puzzled but as Nolusu continues explaining, the moment of realisation fills the room as their faces light up with understanding.
Zusiphe Nolusu, a final year Bachelor of Education student from the University of Witwatersrand is not a stranger to standing in front of 30 learners, ready for a long day of teaching, marking class activities and sometimes having to deal with some uncooperative learners. This is a preview of her chosen career path that she has spent four years preparing for. But as her graduation approaches, this one concern lingers at the back of her mind: Will she find a permanent job next year?
A classroom. By Zebrena Ralph
South Africa’s public education faces a contradiction: thousands of qualified teachers are entering this profession and struggling to find employment, while schools have teaching posts that remain vacant because of budgetary constraints.
Infographic explaining the education paradox in South Africa. By Zebrena Ralph
In 2023 former Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga, wrote that about 31 000 teachers graduate annually, but only 18 000-20 000 teachers are absorbed into the public-school sector. At the same time, South Africa is approaching a wave of teacher retirements. It is expected that by 2030, close to half of South Africa’s teacher force will be retired. Motshekga said that the employment of teachers needs to rise from 405 000 to approximately 428 000 by 2030 to maintain the learner to teacher ratio which is 29.8 students to one teacher. These figures raise a central question: if qualified teachers are ready to work and the education system needs more educators, why are vacant teacher posts not being filled?
Lukhanyo Vangqa, a spokesperson for the Department of Basic Education, provides an overview for this national issue that public schools in South Africa are facing. Vangqa explains that “employee salaries are paid from equitable shares which comes from the Provincial Treasury. It doesn’t come from the (Department of) Basic Education. So, it’s the provinces that decide how much they want to allocate to their education departments… in terms of teachers and the employment of teachers,” he says.
“This comes after the budget has decreased as part of the country’s austerity measures to reduce the country’s debt, resulting in the budget for education being cut,” Vangqa adds. “Therefore, they need to find savings in their budget and one of the ways they do that is to allow for natural attrition. When teachers retire or resign…they don’t fill those vacancies in order to deal with the budgetary pressures and constraints they have.”
However, Tumi Madika, the Senior Executive Officer from the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa (NAPTOSA) in Gauteng, laments how vacant teacher posts impact teachers on the ground. “The issue of unemployment of teachers is of serious nature,” Madika says. “Overcrowding is the order of the day in Gauteng schools… the reason for that is the rise in population. The department cannot keep up with the influx of people coming to Gauteng. The lack of appointment of teachers makes it worse for the issues of overcrowding.
“Issues of safety come into place…You are not able to teach, so teaching and learning is not happening.” Madika adds.
Madika also confirms that retired teachers’ posts are not filled due to budget constraints. “Those employees left by March 31 this year, the ages of 55 and 65. The challenge is that since that time, to date, there is no educator that has been employed in those positions…Those posts have been advertised now (clarified to be July) but they will appoint (teachers) next year January (2027). So, there is a chance that those educators are doubling up on work since March 31 (2026) up until next year.” He states that the government needs to lift the budget cuts and fund education adequately to combat the vacant posts.
A current teacher at King Edward VII School, Jonathan Green, has seen this reality unfold from two perspectives. Green teaches at a quintile five public school, which the government classifies as the least economically disadvantaged schools and are fee-paying schools. “We are very fortunate in the fact that we have more staff available and that means that there is reduced class sizes because there are a greater number of staff to carry the load.”
Through his non-profit organisation, Community Developmental Projects, he has held holiday classes at a no-fee paying school, Noordgesig Secondary School, Johannesburg for four years. “I think it is very different. Talk about overcrowding, that is where you see it happen. Talk about lack of resources to a greater extent, that is where you see it happen,” Green says. Apart from the responsibility of preparing for lessons, teaching learners and marking piles of tests, teachers must also deal with administrative work. “You have sympathy for the mountain of admin work, the diagnostics analysis that they (teachers) need to do, the compilation of results, the marking of many more scripts, you know.”
Green teaching at Noordgesig Secondary School. Image by Zebrena Ralph
After 34 years of teaching in six different public schools, Audrey Kleinhans (67) knows this situation well. She confirms that her post was not filled after her retirement. “My post was vacant (when I resigned) and they just took a teacher who was not qualified to replace me,” she says.
A classroom from King Edward The VII School. By Zebrena Ralph
As Nolusu completes her final year of her degree, she has a few concerns for what awaits her after university. “So next year I have to job hunt. So I am worried if I will get a job immediately or if I will have to wait long.
“If I don’t get a job next year, I think I will just come and do my honours because I have already applied,” Nolusu says.
This is a reality that has persisted for years and if budget constraints continue to affect the education sector, the future of South African public schools could be in an even more dire state.
FEATURE IMAGE: A classroom from King Edward The VII School. By Zebrena Ralph
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A new wellness campaign is raising awareness around food insecurity among university students.
The office of student success (OSS), under the faculty of health science (FHS) has been running a novel campaign, #MakeADifference, since June, which aims to encourage donations towards basic needs care-kits that include food and toiletry supplies that are given to Wits health science students in need, while simultaneously raising awareness of food insecurity in South African universities.
The #MakeADifference campaign was developed by master’s students in community-based counselling psychology (MACC), in partnership with the OSS, a student wellness department.
Erick Kabongo, a MACC student, says the campaign is intended to, “capture different aspects of a students’ well-being” and this includes ensuring access to basic necessities such as food and toiletries.
“Class issues vary and some students get access to things while others don’t. If we aid students with basics such as food and toiletry, we are allowing them to compete fairly within their academic pursuits,” says Boikhutso Maubane, a counselling psychologist at OSS.
Before the campaign launched, the OSS had a food bank that would receive donations irregularly and only catered to a small pool of students who expressed need. “What was important this year was being able to really provide for students, especially during these trying economic times in South Africa,” Maubane told Wits Vuvuzela.
Despite being disrupted by the covid-19 pandemic, the campaign has increased the visibility of the food bank to potential donors as well as students who may need support.
Since June, OSS has distributed over 70 care-kits and has recently received 74 care-kits valued at R200 through a single donation, which will be distributed to students for the remainder of the year. Care-kits consist of non-perishable foods and basic toiletries.
Anelisa Mofokeng , administrator at the OSS, says an average of 10 students fetch a care-kit when available from the office. Students are identified through the health science course coordinators or they approach the OSS independently. There are roughly 70 students who form part of the campaign’s database and receive an email when care-kits are available. The office prioritises self-funding students when distributing care-kits but NSFAS students are not excluded from receiving aid.
Due to the pandemic, the campaign has been forced to function largely online, taking away the ability to engage with the Wits community. However, Maubane says the campaign has still managed to make a difference in this difficult time and it still has a lot to accomplish for the benefit of student communities.
FEATURE IMAGE: The #MakeADifference campaign supports health sciences students in need. Photo: Vetiwe Mamba
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In episode six of We Should Be Writing season 7, the team unpacked the evolution of music as a form of expression and protest, through four decades in the South African context. The episode explores the journey of South African music and its consumers from the 80s, 90s, early 2000s and contemporary listeners. From the […]
