SMag Women of the Year issue | Nompumelelo Nkosi is FoodTok ready!

Social-media sensation Nompumelelo Nkosi is having her best year yet. She is best known for having coined the catchphrase “u-petrol”, a clever play on words whereby a cook takes a liquid-courage break mid-cook to regain their strength.

Nkosi has scaled impressive digital heights with her idiosyncratic charm dished up with sharp comedic smarts, along with an entertaining approach to home cooking. The 30-year-old self-taught cook and digital content creator continues to captivate with her video clips furnished with witty one-liners as she plates up hearty, homegrown meals.   

“There are so many women in digital — you could have chosen anyone. I’m super grateful to have been chosen,” says Nkosi, still in disbelief at making SMag’s selection of impactful women. “It scares me how my life is moving forward. I want to get to the point where I’m more excited than scared because I’m like, ‘God, there is no way. There is no way this is all me.’ It was amazing that God put me in food because food is love. I come from love and I am love. To be placed in food and be able to merge that with my sense of humour was one of the best things that could have happened to me, as social-media and content creation is all about finding a niche.”

I first interacted with Nkosi over the phone in an interview last November. At the time, her social-media following had just rocketed. Almost a year later, on the set of her first magazine shoot, Nkosi catches me up on her incredible trajectory in the digital space since we last spoke.

“I am the Aromat brand ambassador and, as part of my ambassadorship, I shot my 100-egg recipe book with them in Cape Town earlier this month,” she says. “I got a three-year bursary to the Guvon Academy to pursue cheffing and I think I’ve found the one I want to send my uncles to in December [lobola]. I’m in talks to take my content outdoors and I have been nominated for the SA Social Media Awards and the DStv Content Creator Awards.

Thus far this year, I’ve worked with over 20 brands and I’ve made my first million. I’m overwhelmed by everything happening in my life. I wouldn’t have known to pray this prayer. I don’t think my brain could have processed something this great for me.”

Nkosi hails from the township of Umlazi, south of Durban, and her passion for food was ignited by her grandmother, who died in September 2018. A closer look at her story reveals Nkosi is no overnight success — hard work, God, and an unrelenting will to make it to Joburg set her on course for a better life.

“ I’ve been in Joburg since 2015, trying and going back home and nothing coming together and staying with friends,” she remembers. “During those stays, the least I could do was to cook and clean for them. You want your friend to come home and not feel that you are a burden. With the love and appreciation that I had for my friends I couldn’t help but make the dishes special and that is how I started. My first five videos were shot in friends’ kitchens.

"When I began to look for my own place, I didn’t have a rent deposit or bagged a single campaign, I was trusting God. With the belief that this cooking thing was going to take me far, I began to look for my place, especially my kitchen.”  

“U-petrol?” Nkosi offers a glimpse into how the catchphrase set her apart.

“When I walk in stores the cashiers shout out ‘Petrol!’ and even back in Umlazi, older women recognise me. I’m shy, so once I get ‘u-petrol’ I have confidence and courage. I think that’s where it started. Now it seems to be my thing. It’s just to say that you’ve been cooking and you need a little strength. It’s not to say I’m an alcoholic, but rather that I’ve realised that people who cook with a glass of their favourite drink tend to enjoy cooking and that’s what I want to relay in my videos.”

Nkosi’s deep understanding of the power of personal branding has made her attentive to her own conduct and the uncertain nature of social media.  “You can have the clients, the brand, and even me, but who do we sell to if we don’t acknowledge our consumers? It’s for that reason that I wish them light and life at the end of every video, because they give me my bread and butter,” she says.

“Everyone who has social media has a choice of the content they consume, and they choose to consume mine. It’s not something I take for granted. There were days when that was not happening.” 

Seeking to complement her sharp wit with equally sharp knife skills, Nkosi’s professional culinary aspirations include a creative directorship and up-skilling young people through cooking.   “I want to be called a chef by profession; to have the skill and knowledge. When people say, ‘Chef,’ [I want to] turn around as well,” she says, amused.

“For now, I’m a cook. Everything for the rest of my life needs to revolve around cooking. I want to be in the food industry until I die.”  Nkosi, who identifies as lesbian, stresses the importance of her social-media presence in representation of the queer community.

“Before all the titles and designations, I’m me and I’m gay. Being gay is not my personality and I want people to acknowledge that I’m gay before anything else,” she says. “Representation is paramount to me, in that there are spaces where I won’t go in no matter how high the price tag is because those spaces don’t accommodate people like me.  Even though I haven’t experienced a lot of homophobia, it doesn’t mean that I won’t fight homophobia. I’m thankful to God and my family that I never had to hide who I am. I was given the space to be confident in who I am.”