Neo Nontso Radiates Love, Life and Motherhood on the Cover of Batswadi Magazine
Celebrated chef, content creator and entrepreneur Neo Nontso graces the latest cover of Batswadi Magazine, captured at nine months pregnant and just days away from welcoming her baby.
Radiant and surrounded by an abundance of fresh fruit and produce, Nontso fronts a striking maternity cover that brings together the worlds currently intersecting in her life: food, love, family, creation and motherhood. But beyond the beautiful imagery, her accompanying cover story offers an intimate reflection on entering motherhood without losing sight of the woman she has spent years becoming.
“I don’t see becoming a mother as starting my life over or becoming a completely different person. I see it as an expansion of who I already am,” Nontso shares. “I’m still me, I just get to discover another part of myself that I’ve never met before.”
Neo Nontso on the cover of Batswadi Magazine | Credit: George Qua-Enoo
That sense of expansion arrives during an already significant season for Nontso. Alongside preparing for the arrival of her first child, she is gearing up for the release of her new cookbook, Love and Lobola, an intimate collection inspired by falling in love, marriage, family, culture and the traditions she has created along the way. Nontso describes the book as an African love story told through food, with recipes connected to real moments from her own life.
Food, naturally, becomes an important thread connecting these different chapters. Having long used cooking as a way of nurturing those around her, Nontso says pregnancy has given nourishment an entirely new meaning and changed the way she views her body and what it is capable of.
It is also through food that she hopes to create memories for her growing family. “I love the thought that one day my child will eat something and immediately think, ‘This tastes like home.’ I think that’s one of the most beautiful things you can give a child,” she says.
Neo Nontso for Batswadi Magazine | Credit: George Qua-Enoo
While the excitement of motherhood is palpable, Nontso is equally candid about entering the unknown as a first-time parent. Rather than expecting herself to have everything figured out, she is embracing the experience as something she and her baby will learn together.
The result is a Batswadi cover that captures Nontso at a particularly full moment in her life, celebrating motherhood not as a reinvention, but as another layer of a woman already firmly grounded in who she is.
Batswadi Magazine’s latest cover featuring Neo Nontso and the full cover story, “A Season of Abundance: Neo Nontso on Motherhood, Identity and Making Room for More,” are out now: https://batswadi.co.za/a-season-of-abundance-neo-nontso-on-motherhood-identity-and-making-room-for-more/