Just in: Lesego Semenya died Covid-19

Photo:Twitter

Just in: Lesego Semenya aka LesDaChef died of Covid-19

It is a sad day indeed. News of Lesego Semenya aka LesDaChef’s death has spread like wildfire on social media on Monday morning.

Just in: Lesego Semenya died Covid-19

Photo:Twitter

Celebrity chef, cookbook author, and award-winning TV personality Lesego Semenya aka LesDaChef has reportedly died after a battle with Covid-19.

The news about his death was announced on Twitter on Monday morning. This comes after he tweeted last week that he had tested positive for Covid-19 and that he was hoping for the best as he had a co-morbidity.

The South African has reached out to his company on Monday morning, but no comment has been given yet.

An excited Lesego announced at the end of June that he officially owns the full rights to his first book.

In an interview with TimesLive Lesego said he was born in 1982 in Soweto, Lesego Semenya is the oldest son of teachers (he has two younger brothers). He worked as a process engineer for six years before quitting the corporate world a decade ago to go to chef school.

Lesego attended the Prue Leith Chef’s Academy in Pretoria, and it was while he was a student there that he entered a 2010 Fifa World Cup pie competition for which he made a pie based on a kota recipe. He won: it was named the official pie of the World Cup by the British High Commission and part of Semenya’s prize was a stint at British chef Richard Corrigan’s Michelin-star restaurant in London.

Since then, Semenya has worked at five-star hotels and luxury game lodges, he has been a private chef for a wealthy family, has cooked regularly for an American billionaire’s son and he was a judge on the SABC cooking reality competition Top Chef. He has his own company called LesDaChef (also his social media handle, and he’s hardly ever seen without his trademark black ‘LesDaChef’ cap).

And now, a book. 

It’s called Dijo – My Food, My Journey: 220 pages of rich, striking and evocative images of the chef, his loved ones and street scenes familiar to South Africans. Those photographs sit alongside a delightful variety of recipes which are accompanied by poignant stories.

On Monday many South Africans were left shocked at the news of his death: