By: Natasha Archary
South African TikToker, Onezwa Mbola has called out US-based TikToker and model Nara Smith for allegedly “stealing” her content.
Onezwa who creates food content using items she grows, raises or forages, received a lot of backlash for accusing the popular Nara Smith for replicating her recipes.
However, after the founder of eMandulo, Onezwa’s homegrown and handmade condiments and seasonings spoke out, social media users found many similarities between Nara’s content and the South African local.
Some even pointed out that Nara Smith changed her voice to sound more like Onezwa.
Nara Smith who gained popularity on TikTok for her penchant to cook everything from scratch, was found to upload recipes a few days after Onezwa had first posted them.
While Onezwa states that she’s not the first to create recipes which included boba tea, homemade mozarella, pastas or roasted chicken and vegetables, the similarities between Nara’s content and Onezwa’s was too coincidental.
Onezwa said she would be taking a break from content creating after seeing Nara Smith use her ideas to get views and generate an income from TikTok for it.
“For months now, I have watched a very popular content creator use my ideas, and again I’m not the first person to do anything, but she has used my ideas to get views.
That would be fine but in South Africa we don’t get paid for views, where she is, they get paid for views. So, she has been making money from stealing my content.
She always manages to change her videos just enough so that I cannot say that they are my ideas. When I took a break from content creating recently, she then went onto my YouTube and started using ideas from my YouTube.
I have kept quiet for the longest time, just venting to my boyfriend and my friends and they all told me to just let it go because I will be dragged by her mob of followers.
Recently I made a guava boba tea video and I was so proud of that video, and a day later she made a boba tea video.”
Onezwa says she is very disheartened because Nara is benefitting from her content ideas, never credits her source of inspiration and continues to gain followers, all while Onezwa is lucky to get a brand partnership every 3-months or so.
Nara Smith always starts her videos saying someone in her family, or she herself has been craving something and that’s why she decided to make it “from scratch.”
Take a look at Onezwa and Nara Smith’s boba tea recipes and see if you can pick up similarities:
@onezwambola • Guava Boba : guava leaf tea, guava infused goats milk • goats cheese, mushroom and spinach galette 💚🤌🏾 #fyp #rurallife #farmlife #ezilalini #southafrica #dayinmylife #viral ♬ original sound – Onezwa Mbola
@naraazizasmith what’s your drink order? #easyrecipes #homecooking #fypツ #drink #boba #cravings ♬ Just Give Me One More Day – Alej
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