The 72-year-old brewer has been making the traditional drink since she was a teenager. She was taught by her mother who used to make marula beer for friends and family. During marula season, she wakes up early in the morning to collect the popular local wild fruit that has fallen from trees around the township. “I make my beer the old-fashioned way, just as I was taught as a young girl. “I keep the fruit in the sacks I collected them in to ripen until they turn yellow in colour.

“I squeeze the juice out of the fruit into a bowl or a big vase. Later I remove the pits from the juice and add a measured amount of water to the mixture. I then store it in a drum,” she says. The next day the juice will have a foam on top, which she removes in preparation to drink it. “On the first and second day the juice is sweet, and anyone can drink it, including children, but from the third day it ferments and turns into beer and the taste turns bitter, but most people love it like that,” she adds.

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Ndlovu says her beer does not cause a hangover, and according to her, it also cleanses the blood and digestive system. She sells her product to locals from her home in Nkowankowa Section A next to Hudson Ntsanwisi School, at R15 for a 2-litre bottle. She also takes orders for events. She says she will continue making the beer as a way of preserving her heritage and showing youngsters that there are great benefits in consuming organic traditional beer.

“Young people don’t know the food and drink we used to consume growing up and if we don’t take responsibility to preserve our culture, it will be lost for the next generation. “Our children and grandchildren must not forget where we come from as a people, not everything needs to be modernised, there is a lot of good in enjoying organic and traditional food and drink,” she concludes. For more information contact Dinah at 071 120 6023.