Triumph in a teacup — Covid took his job, but this Langa farmer is brewing a herbal success story

Daily Maverick

9 hours ago

Losing his job during Covid led Mzi Mashicili to a life pivot. Now the Langa small-scale farmer dreams of becoming a big player in herbal teas and dried herbs.
16 on Lerotholi in Langa, Cape Town, is a vibrant space with a gallery at the front and a vast garden at the back. As part of the immersive experiences at the 2025 Food Indaba conference, farmer Mzi Mashicili hosted a breakaway event called 'Tea with a Farmer' in his garden in Langa. He offered his home brew of lemongrass tea mixed with other aromatic and herbs packed with health benefits.
Mashicili (35) lost his job during Covid-19 in 2020, which he says left him feeling a kind of depression and stress. As the days passed his mom asked him to join her in a garden she had started on a patch of land, and this set him on a different course of self-discovery, passion and success.
Mashicili took the garden so seriously that he has helped expand it, taken courses to advance his knowledge, helps feed himself and his family and now hopes to supply herbal teas to the booming, tourist-rich retailers in Cape Town.
'It started at the time of Covid, so most people lost their jobs during the Covid. I was one of those victims who lost their job and I grew up in the household where we were exposed at a very young age to how to farm, because at the backyard my mother used to have spinach, carrots; we didn't buy a lot from the street vendors, we were always like having something at home. So that was the culture that was introduced at a young age. But because of the stigma in the township of the youth it was not in my mind that I want to become a gardener or small-scale farmer,' he says.
Mashicili was devastated after he lost his job, which he had had for six years. 'Covid showed people flames, it showed a different type of life. So because there was nothing to do, just staying at home, doing nothing, was stressful, closer to maybe depression.'
After his mom convinced him to join her in the garden, he realised she and the lady she gardened with needed a lot of help because the garden wasn't fenced and they fetched water from a nearby hostel with 20-litre buckets they put on their heads, there were barely tools to work with, and no proper storage facilities for them.
As he was working and recruiting other young people in the neighbourhood to join he was approached with an opportunity to study farming basics in a short course offered by Abalimi Bezekhaya, a nonprofit organisation that supports micro-farmers on the Cape Flats and in townships to grow vegetables organically. Its website says this enables individuals and groups to start their own vegetable gardens at home, or community or institutional gardens, to encourage food security and create livelihoods.
Now, four people work on the garden, including Mashicili's mom and a seasonal person. They sell the vegetables from the garden and also sustain themselves from it. Mashicili says there are challenges because a lot of unemployed people or people on grants come in and ask for help because they cannot buy vegetables and need something. Because of this he says he is still looking for ways to be truly profitable and sustainable.
Mashicili says he learnt a lot in the month-long course, including co-planting and pesticide-free planting. 'I didn't know that there are plants that you have to plant with other plants and there are plants that don't like to be planted with other plants. We call it companion planting.
'As an organic gardener you have to prove that by creating your own compost and own ways to deal with pests. Now… if I want to
chase away the insects, I know that I can plant some marigold, you know, if it's around like cabbage or spinach or cauliflower, yeah, I can plant some marigold so that it can chase away the insects.'
Mashicili has had a hunger to learn since grabbing the opportunity with both hands in 2021 and studying for two years at the South African Food and Farming Trust. That included an internship with hands-on experience on a farm, and from that he discovered a love of herbs and making teas.
He is currently part of the Agrihubs support programme run by the South African Food and Farming Trust, which primarily deals with the production aspects of being a farmer. Its website states: 'Core components of an Agrihub practical support includes input-side services, e.g. nursery, extension support, tool hire, farming inputs, etc.
'Value addition for farmers, e.g. sorting facilities, pack houses and processing infrastructure. Knowledge generation to share good technical practice but also to collect and disseminate local knowledge and practice and a coordination market agent function of availability and order fulfilment to assist with market access.'
Mashicili adds: 'What attracted me a lot through that learnership was the importance of herbs because I already know vegetables, because as I said, I grew up in a household where we didn't buy a lot of vegetables because my mother grew a lot of what we needed.'
He believes his Mzi's branded herbal tea has a big market in Cape Town because people are generally health conscious in the city.
'I am very passionate about herbs and creating these brews,' Mashicili says, jokingly adding that he is leaving the vegetable farming to his colleagues.
'There isn't always a lot of money in this but we have received help, as you can see – we now have a fence, water, an irrigation system… and other tools. You need to be passionate and persevere. I know it will work out in the end, we have the knowledge and the work ethic now… even if it means packing all your products and delivering by taxi all over Cape Town, I do it, because it is the only way to success.' DM