After beginning her university studies in chemical engineering, Zandile Queen Finxa, 30, pivoted into food sciences, graduating top of her class in consumer science: hospitality management at the University of Pretoria. She is a product developer at Woolworths, where she’s the creative force behind the cakes on the bakery shelves and a recipe developer and food writer for Woolworths TASTE magazine. But Zandile’s influence extends far beyond commercial kitchens. They are the founder of The Sorghum Agenda, a food activism project that reimagines indigenous grains like sorghum in gluten-free cookies and retail concepts. This work has gained international recognition, featured at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Nutrivision Nigeria conference and in the documentary Mxsterminds. A former Food XX Women in Food Award winner and a Top 3 research presenter at the Critical Food Studies: Transdisciplinary Humanities Conference, Zandile’s approach to food is scholarly and spiritual. They master’s research on sustainable indigenous food systems draws on her Basotho heritage and lessons from her grandmother, whose root-to-tip cooking philosophy became a blueprint for Zandile’s decolonial culinary mission.
I matriculated from General Smuts High School in 2013 with 6 distinctions (English HL, Afrikaans FAL, Physics, Chemistry, Life Orientation and Accounting). I then went on to study Chemical Engineering at the University of Pretoria for two years, before transferring my studies to the Department of Consumer and Food Science, graduating top of my class with a Bachelor’s in Consumer Science- Hospitality Management Degree. I also went to to do two years of Master’s study and research, with my focuses being around cultural sociology and sustainable indigenous food systems, of which my studies were in tandem with Food Science and Botanical Sciences. My certifications on the side have been in graphic design and as a Doula.
My first major achievement was my first restaurant in my Culinary Arts degree, where I conceptualised a restaurant based on my Basotho heritage and brought what is often considered “less aspirational” foods to the fine dining table.
Following that, I conceptualised the inaugural dinner for the University of Pretoria’s Future Africa campus, where the entire menu was based around plants we would then harvest and forage from the gardens of the campus. 80% of the menu was sourced through harvesting of the indigenous plants, with the main course highlight being Mabele-a-ting (fermented sorghum pap, not foraged). This stood out as a highlight for the guest lecturer, who is one of the leaders in sensory and consumer sciences. Seeing our food within the lens of its exotification pushed me to write and present a study to the Critical Food Studies: Transdisciplinary Humanities Approaches conference, titled “Towards Decolonial Transdisciplinary Research: The humanities in food studies”, with a paper titled “Farming in the Capital: Creating Culinary Experiences with Cultural Innovation”. The paper, presented in my Honours’ year, went on to place in the Top 3 of the research presented (comprising Master’s, PhD and Post-Doc studies).
In my Product Development final year class, I won the “Most Innovative and Creative Product Development” for my conceptualisation and development of an assorted range of sorghum cookies- made to be gluten free and highlighting the sorghum indigenous grain. This was the conceptualisation of The Sorghum Agenda- from which I went on to grow my knowledge share of the grain, other indigenous grains and plants and our food systems with my online followers, culminating in over a hundred developed products focused on our indigenous foods/grains. This went on to be featured across multiple publications across the border and over seas, and led to me winning the “Secret Ingredient: Behind the scenes” award in the Food XX Women in Foods Awards in 2022. I truly started realising the reach of my work and how it had gone from a passion project to food activism.
Most recently my work has been featured on two documentaries, namely “Mxsterminds” by HOLAA-Africa, highlighting work from Queers across Africa, and at the Nutrivision Nigeria conference by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where “The Sorghum Agenda” was used as a case study on sustainable indigenous nutrition.
I currently wrote an article for the recent EAT OUT Magazine, focusing on our Culinary Cabinet and how we are in the process of rediscovering our country’s indigenous ingredients, with more fine dining establishments, chefs, and other food experts starting to incorporate them more in their work.
I have learnt to speak up more for our indigenous foods, across multiple platforms and reach- from policy makers to consumers, understanding our food systems and learning more about the processes that determine what our food system looks like- which also shape how I look at the food system from a sustainable lens as someone within the retail, large-scale product development space.
Chef Lesego Semenya, late, was my mentor and we both carried the goal of ensuring there was space for our (as township kids) food on the fine dining tables we catered to as classically trained cgefs.
Khanya Mzongwana has been pivotal in my approach of food styling and approach, and looking at food outside of the very clean cut boxes we often place it in.
Chef Anthony Bourdain, late, was very intentional with highlighting the indigenous people of the places he travelled and not aiming to look for the Westernised versions (often bastardised) of their food.
Mostly, my grandmother- after whom the Sorghum Agenda was created. She used the smallest of foods to make the biggest plates of food, and taught me the fundamentals of our traditional food before I even knew I was learning. From her quiet practices of food preparation, the sustainability consumption of everything we made from root-to-tip and nose-to-tail (which played an incredible role in my Master’s studies in how we are culturally socialised in our food consumption, and the efforts we can make to create sustainable food systems across the larger food system by changing consumer food perceptions of what is “aspirational” food). She taught me to be so stubborn to my heritage, that it feels like a woven piece of me, and not just a cloth I wear every now and then.