DURBAN - A GROUP of three friends from Ntuzuma are riding the wave of the success of their herbal medicine business, which was born from the profit they made growing and selling vegetables on a plot of land in the area.
Sibusiso Mpungose, 29, Bongumusa Nduduzo Ndlovu, 30, and Keith Mshengu, 31, started their business, Morgreen Morlife, with the proceeds from the sale of spinach, carrots, mealies and sweet potatoes they had grown.
Mpungose, who grew up in Eshowe, completed his mechanical engineering studies at Elangeni TVET College in 2014.
After qualifying, he could not find employment and decided to study carpentry through Seta.
“Right now, I’m doing refrigeration and air conditioning training with Samsung, which is a three-year course that comes with a trade test. I farm part-time. It’s something that I grew up with. It is something our family did,” said Mpungose.
His great-grandmother inspired him to venture into agriculture as a business, as she had a sugar cane field at home.
“She used the field to do business with Tongaat Hulett at the time BEE was introduced. She was an uneducated woman who raised all of us on this money from her land. She was heartbroken when the family had to move,” Mpungose said.
After seeing that life was still a struggle, despite having acquired qualifications, he thought of his great-grandmother.
“I was struggling and my efforts to find work were getting me nowhere. That’s when I remembered that at home, I had been taught to plant this month so that next month I will have something to eat.
“I decided to look for land here in Ntuzuma and, through the community leadership, I found a portion of land they were already using to farm on,” he said.
Mpungose began subsistence farming and, after a while, he began selling some of his produce. However, there was not much support from the immediate community.
“I believe this is typical in South Africa. Communities don’t see the value of the things close to them. People want to buy spinach from inside a store. We had a lot of spinach so we decided to supply ours at a discount to people selling vegetables in the Durban CBD,” Mpungose said.
He said while they were pleased with the growth and progress of their fresh vegetable business, his interests in agriculture leant more towards forestry.
“This includes essential oils, flowers, as well as medicinal herbs such as Moringa. We have a product currently in stores and pharmacies. During Covid-19 these products were selling very well as they are immune boosters. With the profit we made from the sales during Covid-19, we were able to buy a machine worth R10 000, to process the medicinal herbs. Right now, we also use the machine for other companies that want to process their medicinal herbs, and we charge them per kilogram.
“This business was born from a business of the soil,” Mpungose said.
He had planted cassavas trees, mealies, sweet potatoes, and now he wanted to focus on medicinal herbs.
“My dream is to have a farm processing our own soaps, cosmetics using plants – as we already make organic pest controllers, fertilisers and compost that we derived from plants.”
Daily News