- From Hibiscus Dye to Hut Paintings, Malunga Brings Zimbabwean Heritage into Fashion
At her workshop in Bulawayo, Nkanyeziyethu Malunga begins a garment’s story long before it reaches a customer. The 37-year-old designer uses plants, tree bark, sisal, reeds and other locally sourced materials to create dyes, patterns and textures for clothes and accessories.
Her work brings indigenous knowledge into contemporary fashion while raising a larger question: can cultural craft become a viable business without losing the community knowledge and care that give it value?
Malunga’s label, GANU, draws on natural materials and techniques including basketry, crochet, batik and beadwork. “My dyes are mainly extracted from plants such as mnyii and hibiscus,” she says, adding that she also uses other plants and tubers suited to dye extraction.
The materials are not simply a palette. Their collection and preparation connect the finished garment to local landscapes and skills passed down through generations.
Her starting point was her late maternal grandmother, Ngatsha Nkatha, who lived in Tsholotsho, a rural district in Zimbabwe. During school holidays, Malunga and her siblings visited her and watched her turn sisal, sedge and reeds into winnowing baskets.
“When I was a child, I often visited my grandmother in the village with my siblings. She was very dexterous with her fingers, and that passion eventually became mutual,” Malunga said.
She began experimenting with fashion as a teenager and launched GANU in 2013. Its name comes from iganu, the Ndebele word for marula fruit, reflecting the designer’s effort to build a label connected to local resources and African identity.
The business draws on more than plant fibres. Malunga keeps Angora goats and uses their fur in garment production, straightening and dyeing it. Cowhide comes from local abattoirs and is processed at a tannery before being incorporated into leather designs. Sisal and tree bark are harvested by Malunga or gathered by colleagues in rural areas.
That range gives her work a distinct material vocabulary. It also makes sourcing central to the business: production depends on access to natural inputs, the knowledge required to prepare them and relationships with people who gather or process them.
If GANU expands, maintaining those connections while supplying customers consistently will be part of the commercial test.
The label’s wider significance lies in the way it treats cultural knowledge as a source of contemporary design. In 2024, Malunga founded Matobo Goes Fashion And Beyond with women from Matobo, working with Ekhaya-gaia and the Amagugu International Heritage Center. The project adapts traditional hut paintings into clothing.
The initiative responds to the fragility of paintings on rural homes: rain can wash away patterns that are not always documented. Reproducing designs on fabric offers another way to preserve and share them.
But the project also gives women a role in interpreting the cultural forms and knowledge their communities hold. The patterns do not become detached decoration; the aim is to carry their origins into a new setting.
That distinction matters as African designers take local materials and visual traditions into wider markets. Cultural references can gain visibility, while the people who preserve the techniques and motifs may remain distant from the commercial value they help create.
Malunga’s approach begins with local knowledge and collaboration, though long-term success will depend on whether contributors continue to be recognised and benefit as demand grows.
The economic potential is significant in Zimbabwe. The country’s cultural and creative industries contributed an estimated US$2.7 billion to the economy in 2024, equivalent to 5.92% of gross domestic product, and supported an estimated 22,223 jobs, according to figures cited in the report.
Those numbers place fashion within a larger creative sector, where design can link heritage, employment and enterprise. They do not, however, show how much revenue reaches individual makers or rural communities.
Malunga’s work has attracted attention beyond Bulawayo. Her designs appeared at the Durban Fashion Fair in 2016, and she has worked with markets in Ghana, Europe and the United States. She displayed under the ZimTrade pavilion at the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair in April 2026, while ZimTrade’s SheExports initiative has helped her explore international markets.
Access to those markets can help a small label grow, but international exposure is only one measure of success. The business must also maintain quality, explain the origins of its materials and ensure that the people contributing skills or designs are visible in the value chain.
For a label built around local knowledge, those relationships are part of the product as much as the finished garment.
The ecological case also deserves careful measurement. Natural dyes and locally sourced inputs can offer alternatives to some industrial materials, but “natural” does not automatically mean environmentally sustainable.
The available account does not quantify resource use, dye-processing impacts, production volumes or how harvesting is managed. As the business grows, documenting those practices could help distinguish a compelling design story from a verifiable sustainability claim.
Malunga herself recognises that knowledge cannot be preserved by relying on one family history. Her grandmother died before she could pass on everything she knew. Since then, the designer has sought the guidance of other older women who hold traditional skills.
“My grandmother’s death came early, before I could master everything on the use of indigenous knowledge in creating contemporary fashion,” she said.
That experience gives her work a sense of urgency: skills survive when they are practised, shared and valued. GANU’s challenge is to turn that principle into a durable business one that can reach customers while respecting the origins of its materials and designs.
Malunga’s collections suggest that fashion innovation need not begin with imported trends or industrial inputs. Their longer-term impact will depend on whether the craft, communities and knowledge behind each piece remain part of the enterprise as it grows.
