Madeline Nyamwanza-Makonese

It is from him that I inherited the spirit of hard work that has and continues to inspire me.

I feel highly honoured and favoured by the nation and also by Almighty God. I feel blessed. I think God has granted me a long life to reach up to this age and being honoured as a hero in my lifetime

The boys didn’t accept that I was top of the class. They used to say, you’ve got a male brain. You are a woman, you shouldn’t be top of the class. But I topped the class from grade one up to grade standard six. And then in secondary, I was also top of the class. So there was that challenge of competition with the boys. And my father used to work at the mission as a gardener. So he used to come home and tell us, the visitors that came to the mission, he told us about Herbert Chitepo, the first black lawyer in Zimbabwe.

One day he told us about a couple, a white couple. The husband was a veterinary surgeon and the wife was a medical doctor. And I really wanted to be that doctor. There was a flame in my heart that I wanted to be a female doctor. And from there, I was just aiming at working towards being a medical doctor. And in Form 1, when the teachers asked what we wanted to do after school, most people said teachers, clerks, police officers, governors, secretaries. Then when it was my turn, I said I wanted to be a medical doctor. And they all laughed. Especially the boys said, what? Because there were no female doctors, only black ones. And my headmaster then said, yes, Madeline, you can become a doctor.

When I qualified, it took another seven years before any other black girl registered in the medical school. And then they came out from high schools, from Bonda, from St Augustine’s, and from Goromonzi. Lots of girls came to register in the medical school. And you know, during my lifetime, I’ve been integrating and talking and attending meetings and continued medical education. I attend that almost weekly. And the latest drugs, the latest, new diseases and all that, I’m in front. So I’m quite happy and the girls, there are over 600 women doctors in Zimbabwe after, I qualified. They have done very, very well. They’ve done specialties, you name it, they are there, specialists in cardiology, radiology, oncology, paediatrics, you name it. All the fraternities, they are women and they are doing very, very well.

The sky is the limit. Don’t allow issues of gender and culture to inhibit your dreams. You can be all you want with hard work and self-belief.