Fumane Diseko
Cape settler Simon van der Stel may have come from a continent where people devoured snails and frogs’ legs with relish, but he could not stomach a local culinary custom — the roasting and eating of mopane worms.
“This caterpillar is called aroutse by the Namaquas and is found in their country,” he noted in 1685. “The monster is regarded by them as a delicacy and a dainty dish, for when they have first squeezed them out all of its green ordure, they impale it on a wooden spit and lay it on the embers until it is baked hard, and then they consign it with gusto to their eager bellies.”
Three hundred and ten years later, a workshop on masonja (mopane worms, the pupae of the Imbrasa belina moth) was held at the University of Pretoria to decide how to conserve the “monster”.
This “potential gold mine”, as Deputy Minister of Environmental Affairs Bantu Holomisa put it in his opening speech, has been a traditional source of food for Southern Africans long before Van der Stel — and still is today.
“We need to change our perceptions and see it as a resource,” explained Holomisa, although he confessed to not eating mopane worms or locusts. “If we manage this resource, we could harvest 10 times more.”
Conference delegates heard that the lowly worm has a very high protein content (amounting to more than 50 percent of its dry mass). It is further endowed with lycin acid, calcium, iron, phosphorus, sodium, potassium, fats and contains about 25 calories per 100 grams. However, more scientific research is needed regarding the creature’s digestibility.
The government may fund and back pilot programmes to farm the worm, educating people about the importance of conserving it, since over-harvesting may result in extinction. Large areas which were regarded as mopane areas in South Africa no longer host the worms.
Concerns were also raised about exploitation of “mopane harvesters”, mostly rural women, who collect the worms for their own use and to sell to others.
Unlike in Malawi, where national parks allow people to harvest the worm, national parks in South Africa do not permit this. In South Africa, the harvesting of the mopane is done mainly on land owned by farmers, who can make an exorbitant income — untaxed — of up to R60 000 a season, by charging each mopane-collector R100 per harvest. In the past, communal land belonged to the chief and people had to pay him for the worms.
Since the whole Southern African region is endowed with these creatures, it was suggested at the workshop that the region collaborate in the exchange of information and research.
There are a number of unanswered questions: for example, why South African mopane merchants are sitting with unsold stocks while customers buy their Botswana cousins. Speculation has it that the Batswana sell their worms more cheaply, and Francistown delegate Peter Becker boasted that they are more delicious as they are prepared differently from South African worms.
How the mopane trade works and how it should be regulated was also an issue raised at the conference. Theuns Duvenhage of the Industrial Development Corporation suggested that the harvesters organise themselves into a group.
“The thing with blacks is that they are disorganised, they don’t even think of pulling things together,” he said. The lack of structures is attributed to the fact that the harvesters are at the mercy of landowners.
Prince Machimane of the World Wildlife Foundation said landowners were more organised. He said that where land is leased by farmers from the government harvesters could perhaps negotiate a deal.
Furthermore, the occurrence of masonja is irregular. Dollars flashing in the eyes of big entrepreneurs in Zimbabwe were erased by the fact that the worms refused to be canned — their sporadic appearance meant factories could not be planned for mopane areas.
On the lighter side, Pauline Hobane from Zimbabwe pointed out in her speech that a hotel in the Victorian Falls issued certificates to tourists, who, unlike Van der Stel, braved “macimbi” cuisine and delicacies. Unlike at Victoria Falls, the food served at the workshop was not related to the subject of discussion.