The Sunday News
Vincent Gono, Features Editor
HER full name is Ruth Mavhunga Maboyi. She was born in 1957 and is a proud mother of five children. She is a veteran of the liberation struggle, a soldier in independent Zimbabwe, a teacher by profession and a politician. She is wife to Ambassador Aaron Maboyi and that makes the two one of Zimbabwe’s many political couples.
But what sets her a little apart from other political couples is that her political consciousness was not rubbed to her through her romance with a politician. It was just in her, which probably explains her humility. It was her political conviction that forced her to join the liberation struggle when she was still very young and it is the same conviction to serve her country that tirelessly drives her.
She has recently been appointed deputy minister in the Ministry of Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage, yet she remains little known beyond the boundaries of rural Beitbridge where her political capital is Beitbridge West — a constituency she won the right to represent in the last election in 2018.
With her election victory, her political star seems to be shinning brighter as evidenced by her recent appointment to a ministry previously superintended by male ministers by President Mnangagwa in a just ended cabinet shakeup largely necessitated by the unfortunate death of some ministers. Sunday News spoke to deputy minister Maboyi who could not hide her joy at the recent appointment that she described as a show of confidence in her by the country’s political leadership.
“I was really surprised but happy at the appointment. I am not overly ambitious when it comes to politics and I am always content with whatever I get in terms of political office, that is what was inculcated in us during the liberation struggle. I therefore want to pay my gratitude to President Mnangagwa for recognising me from the so-called minority tribe to serve the country, to serve our people,” she said.
Deputy minister Maboyi said when she got into active politics after she resigned from teaching it was after she was approached by people in her constituency who asked her to represent them and she obliged.
“To be honest I never saw this coming. I am a war veteran yes, and I served in the army for seven years after independence and that goes to show how political conscious I was. I never dreamt of my political star rising so high in so short a time. I was content as a representative of my constituency because I want development. My constituency is geographically very expansive and I have been on the ground seeing how best I can help the people, especially women, in a number of life empowering projects. So, this appointment really came as a surprise, a good surprise for that matter. It’s not just for me but for the people that I represent as well and for the generality of the people of Zimbabwe whom I will help serve,” said Deputy Minister Maboyi.
To women in the country, she has some really good advice. She said there were a lot of opportunities not only in politics but in farming, in mining and even in the corporate world. She urged young and academically gifted women to further their education saying there was no limit to the opportunities if one was qualified and deserving.
“Although a lot needs to be done in the area of educating young women to take up opportunities, the country has moved strides in the right direction in terms of opening up space for women in different spheres of socio-economic development. There are a lot of low hanging fruits in farming and in mining where anyone can apply for land,” she said.
Deputy Minister Maboyi said she was working to revive adult education in her constituency as a basic empowering tool for those who did not have access to education.
“We need to build more schools, clinics, drill more boreholes and initiate community development and empowerment projects with a shelf life. Let’s have more Vocational Training Centres and Innovation Hubs that recognise the abundant talent among our people. It is important that we modernise education,” she said.
Asked what she will do in her new role as deputy minister in the all-important ministry responsible for issuing important documents such as birth and death certificates, national identity documents as well as passports, she said she would encourage women and marginalised communities to get the documents that were important for national planning.
On reports that a number of departments in the ministry were riddled with corruption, she said it was common knowledge that President Mnangagwa has been talking so much about removing all bad apples from Government service. She said she will join him and her boss in the ministry — Minister Kazembe Kazembe in ensuring that corruption was nipped in the bud not only in the ministry of Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage but the country as a whole.
Deputy Minister Maboyi joined the liberation struggle in 1977 when she was 20 years old after realising the exploitation that the black people were suffering at the hands of the white colonial regime. She left Tongwe, her home area in a group of 10 other youngsters and travelled on foot via Ndambe, Shashe and crossed the Shashe River into Botswana and arrived at the Marapong area where they were then taken to Pikwe in trucks before being flown to Zambia’s Victory Camp, a place reserved for female combatants only where she said there were over 4 000 people.
She said they lived there until July before moving to Mkushi Camp where they set camp to pave way for new recruits who were arriving at Victory Camp. After training in Zambia, they were deployed and fought the liberation struggle and at independence she was attested in the army in 1981.
“I was deployed to the Zimbabwe Intelligence Corps and left the army after seven years in 1988 where I joined the education sector. I couldn’t stay at home so I started reading and went for teacher training. So, I am a teacher by profession and I am naturally a teacher,” she said, adding that she will remain humbly committed and dedicated to service of the country and its political leadership.
