The Sunday News
Robin Muchetu, Senior Reporter
NO job is too masculine. As an eight-year-old girl she fed injured freedom fighters who had camped at her home during the war of liberation around 1977 after they were injured during the Rata bombings in Mwenezi, Masvingo Province.
Some of the freedom fighters had lost limbs and arms so it was her duty to feed them, young as she was. She would carry the food in a basket and feed the three injured men for over two weeks. The day they left was the last she saw of them and she still wonders who they were as she never asked for names.
That is when her love for politics began as she felt a sense of responsibility to be involved in the governance of the country after seeing the injured fighters. This is the story of Mrs Ambukirai Shava (nee Mashamba) who has defied the odds and done most things considered masculine. Growing up in rural Masvingo the mother of four never thought one day she would care for injured freedom fighters, hold a qualification in motor mechanics, be a Zanu-PF chairlady for George Silundika A district in Bulawayo and also be an entrepreneur.
She remembers freedom fighters coming to her home and getting food and clothing during the war, and more and more she began to see the need to help those that were fighting for the country and she never looked back as she grew up.
Now resident in Bulawayo’s Nkulumane suburb Mrs Shava said she has big dreams especially after completing her motor mechanics course with Sizinda Vocational Training Centre. However, the journey has not been easy.
“I have always been a stay-at-home mother caring for my children and husband but in recent years opportunities availed themselves and I took up the challenge. Our MP Cde Killian Sibanda offered to send interested people to the VCT and I was fortunate to be one of those and I decided to do a course that is different as all women generally like hotel and catering and dress making,” she said.
She had earlier studied entrepreneurship at the VCT and she decided to cross floors and go for a unique course as she said she was tired of hearing that women must be confined to cooking and other domesticated roles. With enough encouragement from the lecturers she settled for motor mechanics in 2016 where she was initially chided by the men in the class.
“The young boys would laugh and say I am not suitable to be in a mechanics class especially considering that I was 46 years old and the oldest woman there but with time they got over it and started treating me just like everyone else,” she said.
Determined to achieve, she was always getting high grades and making it to the top of her class most of the time. The lecturers were concerned about her ability to lift heavy engine parts but she assured them she was able as she had grown up in the rural areas where she ploughed the fields with an ox-drawn plough and fetched heavy buckets of water.
She went through her schooling with some hurdles especially in her marriage when her husband Mr Muzondiwa Shava was not impressed with her choice of course saying it was not feminine.
“He said to me, other women are training to cook and they are opening their own caravans yet you are busy with cars and engines. But I soldiered on. I would walk from home to Sizinda and it is very far, and that would be after I prepared for my child who was in Grade Zero then, prepared clothes and food for my husband before he left for work and finally cleaning the house and having to walk to the VCT in time for lectures which started at 8am,” she said.
The first days of schooling were tough, because she had stopped going to South Africa for her cross border trading business and she could no longer sell her second-hand clothing as she had decided to pursue her studies. This, she said, affected her income, hence the need to walk to school.
Seeing his wife’s determination, Mr Shava would silently leave bus fare on the table when he had some, and she said she was happy that he was now acknowledging her profession of choice. Mrs Shava managed to repair a lorry that was at her home and her husband was shocked to see what she had done.
“I repaired his lorry that was now stationary and he was shocked when he called another mechanic to look at it and he was told the job was well done save for an oil leak that was quickly repaired,” she said.
She faced stigma from other women who felt she was just a pea outside the pod but she never gave up. Asked on what plans she had for the future, she said she was aiming to secure a driver’s licence.
She also dreams to open a motor spares shop where she can supply car parts as she said she cannot readily open a workshop and start repairing cars as she is still gaining experience.
She also wants to further her education in the motor mechanics department.
Mrs Shava encouraged women to take up challenges in all fields, even those dominated by men.
“Women can do it, there is no job that is restricted to men alone. Again when one is occupied there is less arguing and fighting in the homes. Women will also not have time to chase after gossip in the neighbourhood as they will be occupied with school work and even jobs,” she said. Mrs Shava graduated as the best student in a class of 200 last year.
