Elizabeth Vimbai Mhangami
It is with great pleasure and a heart bursting with pride
that I introduce to you Our July Young African Woman of Note.
Elizabeth happens to be my youngest sister and so writing
this piece is at once easy but daunting a task. Elizabeth was born and raised
in Zimbabwe. She is someone we in Zimbabwe refer to as a “born free” because
she was born after the birth of Republic of Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe was declared an
independent state in April of 1980 and Elizabeth Vimbai graced the world with
her arrival in November of that year.
Vimbi as we know her did her primary and secondary school
education in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe and later went to the United States, where she
studied political science and women’s studies at Loyola University, Chicago.
After working for a brief period in the United States,
Vimbi made a decision to set up a not-for profit organization in Bulawayo in
order to assist AIDS orphans. However her idea of assistance was to look at
ways in which she could provide assistance without breeding aid dependency,
which is a huge problem in Zimbabwe and the African continent. In her own words
in an interview in the New York Times, 2011: “You
start having conversations with yourself about aid and dependency what is
the most effective way of helping that would do the least amount of harm?”
Catha, a child head
Vimbai works with youth as opposed to young
orphans. These you are heads of households and this basically means that after
the death of both parents to HIV/AIDS, these young people have the sole
responsibility of taking care of their younger siblings. They are responsible
for their food, clothing and school attendance. This means that they have had
to drop out of school in order to generate income for their siblings to survive
and also they are responsible for cooking cleaning and all the activities that
come with parenting. Many of the youth were about 9-12 when they were left as
child heads of households but they were in their teens when Vimbai started
working with them.
A child head and her family
Vimbai is the founder and executive director
of Vanavevhu, a Shona word meaning “children of the soil.” Through Vanavevhu
the youth and their siblings are able to get food, shelter, basic necessities
and healthcare and this has freed the youth to attend the program which Vanavevhu
offers them. The program teaches entrepreneurial skills and this is paired with
bee keeping, candle making and market gardening. These ventures are generating
profit for the youth and a sense of financial security that they have never
had.
Clearing the garden
Vanavevhu started out with ten families,
supporting 32 children in total in 2010. To date another twenty families have
been added bringing together over 90 children and seniors benefiting from
Vanavevhu support.
In the classroom
With their teacher Vimbai
Arrival of Vanavevhu chickens
Vimbai is fierce about protecting her youth
and has an amazing understanding of the issues that they face. She brings to
her program a very youthful vibe and they can relate to her easily because in
so many ways she is one of them. Her keen perception of what typical teenagers
need to go through, gives her youth space to be themselves, make mistakes and
to move on. She deals with resilient young people, who in so many ways have had
to grow up very quickly in order to fill the role of parents for their
siblings. Many of them were vendors, selling candy cookies and matches in order
to make a living. Read their amazing stories and be absolutely inspired here.
Vanavevhu dance!
When I ask Vimbai what challenges she faces
with her work she talks about the fact that the youth are the forgotten ones in
most of the development discourse. Her age group is not a targeted “vulnerable”
population by large donor agencies and so very often she cannot apply for big
grant funding for her program. She therefore works tirelessly to raise fund
herself by holding speaking engagements back to back when she comes to the
United States for board meetings. In a way this is to her advantage because she
is not bound by donor agency rules and regulations, which are not always
compatible with what she is doing on the ground. She therefore relies on the
support of individuals or organizations that are at liberty to fund any program
they wish to.
Vanavevhu Candles
Another challenge which she so articulately
describes here is the vulnerability of young women to men who prey on them
because they are wealthy. She describes the allure of the promise of clothes, a
cell phone, and money and how a young 15 year old may be hard pressed to resist
this and abandon the program, which offers long term benefits as opposed to
short term gratification. Vimbai works hard to assist and counsel the young
women into making good choices in order to spare them exchanging sex for money,
so that they can avoid diseases and having to depend on a man who may at any point
abandon them. As a feminist this is a very important part of her work, and she
hopes to impart some of her knowledge to the young women in her program. As a
feminist she works with the young men also, so that they understand the
inexcusability of physical violence towards women and she insists on mutual
respect and equitable allocation of chores and duties in a gender-neutral
fashion.
Vanavevhu Girls
I have often questioned Vimbai on how it is
that she can do what she does in such a challenging environment where there are
incessant power outages, a tough political climate, isolation from family (we
are all in the US and she is in Zimbabwe), lack of a vibrant cosmopolitan
social life such as the one she had in Chicago, her response is simple: ‘these
young people are the future of Zimbabwe. Whether we like it or not, those who
can leave are leaving and probably not coming back. Those with well to do
parents are all gone and what is left is these AIDS orphans who no one even
thinks about. Not government or even NGOs. If we truly are serious about the
future of Zimbabwe then these are the young people who will be running the
country and if we do not try to at least give them basic critical thinking
skills business skills and a sense of self worth, then Zimbabwe will be in even
deeper trouble than it is now.’
Duncan and Brian preparing the bee smoker
Musa, a child head
Vimbai’s take on development work is this:
“If every African /Zimbabwean in the Diaspora, would take up just one social
justice issue and DO something about it, then we would see positive social
change.” She is of the firm belief that while we need assistance, Africans have
to take responsibility for their continent and be at the forefront of
articulating our issues, prescribing solutions, and then be the leaders who
implement the action plans. This ensures that there is a real positive outcome
and that it is permanent and self perpetuating. She often shakes her head as
she comments on how for fifty years Africa has been the recipient of donor
funding but the continent seems worse off now than it was fifty years ago. “We
have allowed people to commercialize our problems and to commoditize our woes
and the result is that these problems will never be allowed to disappear
because then someone’s paycheck will have to vanish. Therefore the problems
persist because the solutions offered are designed to fail. This is what the
development industry is predicated upon”
Sipha, a child head
Vimbai exemplifies the term “walking the
walk”. She is committed to Zimbabwe in a way that many speak of but very few
have demonstrated in a tangible way. Despite the many bureaucratic obstacles
and intimidation she has stood her ground and with sheer determination and
courage established what has to be one of the most innovative organizations
that I have ever seen. I am proud that she is my sister, but more importantly I
am proud of the high standards she has set for her youth and her staff at
Vanavevhu. Her insistence that things be executed properly and with due
contentiousness has resulted in a group of youth and staff who are proud of
themselves and what they have achieved thus far and instilled a deep sense of
ownership of the program and the enterprise that ensures that it can only
succeed. She does this by having high expectations of herself and this is the
role model she is to the youth and all those who work with them. Her passion is
infectious as is her humor and her mischief and her amazing belly-laugh! Thank
you Vimbai for all you do and for the amazing human being that you are.
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