In search of King Shaka’s favourite food

Kenosi Malebye, pastry chef at Les Créatifs. (Photo: Anna Trapido)

By Anna Trapido

14 Jun 2024

The ukhova heritage banana (also known as ‘banana ka Shaka’) offers us a rare gourmet glimpse of the man behind the myth.

Rural KwaZulu-Natal is undoubtedly lovely beyond any singing of it, but admiration mutates into anxiety-tinged irritation when the directions sent by a family of banana farmers are confusing, and the absence of a cell signal precludes a clarifying call.

Every so often my friend’s GPS would revive just long enough to issue an impossible instruction (such as telling us to turn left at the peak of a hill with no side roads) but mostly we were on our own.

Because my travelling companion had purchased his telephone in India, the intermittent directions were given in the voice of a Bollywood movie star. I was initially charmed by the incongruous accent but even Asia’s smoothest baritone begins to grate after several hours in such circumstances.

Why was I cursing and stalling my teeny tiny car? Partly because I am a terrible, terrible driver but mostly because I was a food consultant on season 2 of the Shaka iLembe TV show. In that capacity, I was tasked with providing the production with historically accurate information on everything farmed, foraged, hunted, cooked, brewed, eaten and drunk at the court of early 19th century Zulu King Shaka kaSenzangakhona.

It was while working in this capacity that I first came across the iconic warrior’s fondness for bananas in a report by the International Institute for Environment and Development on the Richards Bay Minerals (RBM) Cultural Heritage Project.

Banana ka Shaka okhova, Zulu heritage bananas. (Photo: Anna Trapido)

This partnership between RBM, the Mbonambi community and the KwaZulu-Natal heritage authorities operates the archaeological excavation unit at the Managa Heritage Centre. The report mentioned that within the grounds of the facility mentioned above is one of the banana groves that King Shaka reserved for his exclusive consumption.

My ears pricked up. Why was the king privatising fruit?

I have subsequently found additional information. Nathaniel Isaacs (who knew King Shaka but had all sorts of unsavoury agendas) describes the Mbonambi grove in his book “Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa (1836). The classic anthropological sources are Eileen Krige’s “The Social System of the Zulu” (1936) and AT Bryant’s “The Zulu People as they were before the White Man Came” (1949).

Both say that the crop was couriered to the king across his exponentially expanding empire. Bryant adds that the transporting soldiers were forbidden to interact with anyone while on royal banana business.

This same story is on the website for the Amafa King Shaka Visitors Centre at KwaDukuza (which also has a transplanted portion of the Mbonambi grove).

With the exception of Isaacs, all of the above rely on oral tradition told long after the edible events occurred, but, in association with the archaeological and botanical evidence at Mbonambi, they seem relatively reliable.

The TV contract has long since ended, but my interest in the great man’s fruit fixation has persisted. Why am I still interested? Because personal details on Shaka are extremely elusive.

Our understanding of who he was has been shaped by the vilification and hagiography of those who came after him. If we are what we eat, then a foodie foible offers a rare gourmet glimpse of the man behind the myth.

Let me be clear, I am not talking about the ubiquitous yellow, Cavendish banana crescents sold by modern supermarkets worldwide, but rather the large, firm, fragrant heritage form of the fruit known in classical isiZulu as ukhova (plural okhova) and frequently described with the use of a borrowed English word as “banana ka Shaka” (Shaka’s bananas).

They are one of many landrace bananas growing along Africa’s East Coast from Zanzibar to Durban. Most are derived from ancestral varieties brought across the Indian Ocean by Austronesian seafarers, perhaps as early as the first millennium BCE.

The antiquity of the association is reflected not only in the plant’s pest-resistant, waterwise adaptations to KZN’s environmental conditions but also in its incorporation into some versions of the Zulu creation narrative.

According to the sacred story (as told by Zulu informants quoted in Axel Ivar Berglund’s “Zulu Thought-patterns and Symbolism” (1976), having been lowered down from the heavens tied to an ithumbu (intestine cord) rope, the first man met the first woman under an ukhova tree. The couple went forth and multiplied. This is why Zulu traditional medicine accords okhova a central role in sexuality and fertility.

But wait, there’s more! isiZulu has many noun classes with distinct pronouns. Class 1a and 2a are used for people e.g. personal pronouns: Umama (mother) and Omama (mothers). Most plants use impersonal pronouns from class 3 (umu-) and 4 (imi-), but bananas have human personal pronouns Ukhova and Okhova. They are part of people.

Bringing the bananas back to the King, what does his craving tell us about who Shaka was?

On one level, his favourite food may reflect early experiences. In an otherwise difficult and dislocated childhood, our hero spent several relatively stable years living away from the Zulu heartland territory amongst the Mthethwa people. Mbonambi falls within this area.

Several contemporary commentators observed that the king spoke with an Mthethwa accent. The prohibition on commoners eating from the Mbonambi groves was not continued by subsequent Zulu kings so it seems that there was nothing inherently regal about them. Perhaps he was demonstrating a nostalgia for the tastes of a terroir that had treated him well?

The kingly comfort food theory probably explains some but not all of the issue. This was not just consumption; it was conspicuous consumption. As an astute politician, living in a society replete with symbolic meaning, Shaka’s every act was at least in part performative.

The Zulu people existed long before Shaka kaSenzangakhona, but it was during his reign that a minor polity was transformed into a vast and powerful empire.

As the founding father of modern Zulu identity, was he linking himself with the creation story? Was he casting himself in the role of first man, making the world anew and generating all that would come after him?

For weeks, my banana ka Shaka investigations were entirely book-based but there is only so much reading that can be done before it becomes essential to eat an ukhova.

The fruit of kings was not in any of the many Gauteng supermarkets or specialist greengrocers that I tried. I was so obsessed that I even went on to Radio 702 appealing for outlets to come forward. My search was literally and metaphorically fruitless. Tragically, most of us live in monocultural morass.

There are thousands of varieties of banana but almost everyone, all over the world, eats just one; the Cavendish banana. Which is why my friend and I set out on our epicurean odyssey.

A series of half-connections through friends of friends of friends led me to these potholed hills and eventually to the Vundla family farm at Endloveni. Sipho Vundla seemed pleased but surprised by our interest in okhova. He knew the term ‘banana ka Shaka’ but not why the fruit was referred to in this way. Any associated prestige has long since expired.

Heritage banana farmer Sipho Vundla. (Photo: Anna Trapido)

While he grows both okhova and Cavendish bananas, the latter is much more popular with local customers because, he says, “we have always lived with them, so we don’t value them”. Such is the scorn for the local variety that the word “ukhova” is used by young people as an insult to describe a person considered poor and old-fashioned.

Senior members of the Vundla homestead accorded okhova more respect. Sipho’s grandfather told me that they tend to grow as conjoined duos and that any such fruit is strictly forbidden to women of childbearing years lest they too produce twins, which are considered to be a portent of misfortune. He observed that the taboo applies only to women. Men apparently gain strong sperm from eating okhova (conjoined or otherwise).

Sipho Vundla recognised that (unlike the highly seasonal, pest-vulnerable and water-greedy Cavendish bananas) okhova are resistant to pests, extremely waterwise and will grow all year round.

Subsequent telephonic conversations with Ernest Mlambo, subsistence farmer, environmentalist and co-founder of the Manukelana art and nursery in St Lucia, produced the observation that: “They are a vital part of the natural food forest. Other bananas are vulnerable to disease, but I have been growing these local bananas for as long as I can remember, and I have never had any problems with them. In drought, they need very little water. In times of flood when we cannot get out to shops, they keep life going. Through climate change and food insecurity, they can protect us, just as they protected those who came before us.”

The proof of any pudding is in the eating. For what it is worth, I prefer the taste and texture of okhova to that of Cavendish bananas. They can be eaten raw and cooked. Raw they are firm, fragrant and gently sweet without the cloying quality that puts me off the supermarket stock.

The Vundlas gave me the traditional Zulu recipe for okhova boiled in the skin then peeled and mashed into uqodasi. This savoury starch can be eaten with meat and/or vegetable relish. Ernest Mlambo introduced me to isigonyongwane, a mixture of sliced ukhova with roasted peanuts.

I subsequently discovered that there are also okhova growing all over Durban’s historically Indian township of Chatsworth. While the first Indian indentured workers arrived in KZN several decades after King Shaka’s death, there is considerable culinary crossover in the use of heritage ingredients.

In Chatsworth, they are referred to as “butter bananas”, frequently fried and served with a tamarind chutney.

Banana ka Shaka have yet to make a formal debut in the fine dining space. Chef Johannes Richter of the Living Room at Summerhill in KZN knew the fruit but not its royal connection.

He had previously experimented with them making “first a porridge-like mash but the texture was quite challenging, so we then tried a kind of chip by boiling, then blending and spreading the puree out to dry like a fruit leather. Served with Kolbroek pork and a banana salsa, it was quite nice, but it is a work in progress.”

I brought home as many stems as I could fit into the back of my car and shared some of my bounty with the kitchen brigade at Les Créatifs in Bryanston, Johannesburg.

Kenosi Malebye, pastry chef at the aforementioned palace of posh nosh, spent a few days working with the heritage fruit and observed that “from my point of view they are more consistent than regular bananas. They remain constant throughout the ripening process. They don’t go mushy. Cavendish are a real risk for a pastry chef because you never know what you are going to get. These, even when the skins have gone from green to yellow and yellow to brown, are still firm inside with the same fragrant, almost herbal quality.

Kenosi Malebye, pastry chef at Les Créatifs. (Photo: Anna Trapido)

“That unique taste makes them very flexible when you are creating new recipes. I am still experimenting with them, but I think that they can work with savoury and sweet recipes. I have tried them with quince in a dessert and also with cumin as part of starch in a main course dish.”

Having been offered a tiny taste of the cumin-ukhova combination, I can confirm that it is exquisite and inspired.

Chef Malebye’s understanding of the ingredient extends beyond taste and texture because “they have been passed down through generations. They are part of how we can influence the conversation around what South African food is all about. When we support local ingredients, grown by small South African farmers rather than eating imported food we create change for the better culturally, economically, environmentally.”

This view tallies with Sipho Vundla’s observation that “these plants are part of our heritage. They were grown by our ancestors and when we care for the land, we honour those who came before us. We must change the way people see them because they are part of a sacred process that comes from ancient times and should last forever.”

Should last forever: but will they? At the 2024 World Banana Forum in Rome, the director-general of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, Dr Qu Dongyu, described how “the demand for low-cost, high-yielding bananas has created a vast monoculture with just one type of globally traded banana. This homogeneity in the food system is a risky strategy because it reduces our ability to adapt in a rapidly changing world.”

This is why it should come as no surprise that Panama Disease (also known as fusarium wilt) is currently whipping through and wiping out Cavendish banana plantations in Asia, Australia, and Africa.

Environmentalists argue that creating renewed customer appreciation for older Panama-resistant, regionally specific bananas like okhova is essential.

Those who wish to savour the food of kings in KZN can find them growing wild or sold at markets such as the Bangladesh Market in Chatsworth. And in Gauteng, the Vundlas’ banana ka Shaka are available via Siphiwe Sithole @Africanmarmalade.

As for me, my obsession endures. Going forward, I intend to spend time at Mbonambi and in the UKZN archives to understand the extent and implications of the royal connection.

I am also going to eat and cook with a lot more banana ka Shaka – which is possible because (unlike the super seasonal Cavendish) okhova are available all year round. DM

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