Chisa is a product of the townships of Zimbabwe’s colonial era. My grandmother, Mrs. Helen Chisamba Muchawaya, was a market trader in Harare, now Mbare, during the day, and a specialist food vendor in the evening. Her market stall had many items but the mainstay was tomatoes. When sales were slow the tomatoes would tend to perish; she arrested their deterioration and added value to them by converting them to “sumu”, a sauce with a tomato base with onion and chillies.   She would sell this tasty tangy sauce accompanied by homemade “fatcooks” outside the local municipal bar (kubhawa). In this way she diversified her income streams and sent her children to school, as she was now widowed.  Sumu was by no means her invention, but she produced it on a scale which brought in a reasonable income. Sometimes she would send her children, my mother and her siblings, with the products to sell on her behalf. In the process my mother learnt to make this sauce and continued to make it in her own home, where I, in turn,   was introduced to it. Together we talked about going “commercial” with sumu, but invariably we never did. In honour of my grandmother and her daughter, my mother, Mrs. Ruth Muchawaya Mpisaunga, I have decided to commercialise the production of sumu, under the name “Chisa”.

Great women did truly amazing things to raise and provide for their children. Most of these efforts have gone undocumented and unrecognised. Chisa is my way to pay tribute to my lineage and generations of great women whose industry and entrepreneurship have had a profound and life-changing impact on many.