Madeline Nyamwanza-Makonese is the first Zimbabwean female doctor, the second African woman to become a doctor, and the first African woman to graduate from the University of Rhodesia Medical School. [1] [2] She graduated from the University of Rhodesia Medical School in 1970. [2] Madeline's success is significant and was a huge step forward for women in Zimbabwe, where women are considered culturally unequal to men. [3]
She was the seventh child in a family of nine. She was born at St Augustine Mission, Penhalonga where her father worked at the mission farm. [4]
In 2014, there was a scandal as it was alleged that Madeline's husband, Deputy board chairman Eben Makonese of the medical aid society Cimas Medical Aid Society, influenced the appointment of his unqualified brother-in-law as the group's director of medical services. [5] An extract from the Sunday Mail dated 24 August 2014 highlighted:
Simon Vengai Muzenda was a Zimbabwean politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister from 1980 to 1987 and as Vice-President of Zimbabwe from 1987 to 2003 under President Robert Mugabe.
The University of Zimbabwe (UZ) is a public university in Harare, Zimbabwe. It opened in 1952 as the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, and was initially affiliated with the University of London. It was later renamed the University of Rhodesia, and adopted its present name upon Zimbabwe's independence in 1980. UZ is the oldest university in Zimbabwe.
Tsitsi Dangarembga is a Zimbabwean novelist, playwright and filmmaker. Her debut novel, Nervous Conditions (1988), which was the first to be published in English by a Black woman from Zimbabwe, was named by the BBC in 2018 as one of the top 100 books that have shaped the world. She has won other literary honours, including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the PEN Pinter Prize. In 2020, her novel This Mournable Body was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2022, Dangarembga was convicted in a Zimbabwe court of inciting public violence, by displaying, on a public road, a placard asking for reform.
Terence "Terry" Osborn Ranger was a prominent British Africanist, best known as a historian of Zimbabwe. Part of the post-colonial generation of historians, his work spanned the pre- and post-Independence (1980) period in Zimbabwe, from the 1960s to the present. He published and edited dozens of books and wrote hundreds of articles and book chapters, including co-editing The Invention of Tradition (1983) with Eric Hobsbawm. He was the Rhodes Professor of Race Relations at the University of Oxford and the first Africanist fellow of the British Academy.
Chenjerai "Hitler" Hunzvi served as Chairman of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association beginning in 1997.
White Zimbabweans are Zimbabwean people of European descent. In linguistic, cultural, and historical terms, these Zimbabweans of European ethnic origin are mostly English-speaking descendants of British settlers. A small minority are either Afrikaans-speaking descendants of Afrikaners from South Africa or those descended from Greek, Portuguese, Italian, and Jewish immigrants.
The Parliament of Zimbabwe is the bicameral legislature of Zimbabwe composed of the Senate and the National Assembly. The Senate is the upper house, and consists of 80 members, 60 of whom are elected by proportional representation from ten six-member constituencies corresponding to the country's provinces. Of the remaining 20 seats, 18 are reserved for chiefs, and two for people with disabilities. The National Assembly is the lower house, and consists of 280 members. Of these, 210 are elected from single-member constituencies. The remaining 70 seats are reserved women's and youth quotas: 60 for women; 10 for youth. These are elected by proportional representation from ten six-member and one-member constituencies respectively, corresponding to the country's provinces.
Timothy John Stamps was a Welsh and Zimbabwean politician and medical doctor who served in the Government of Zimbabwe as Minister of Health from 1986 to 2002. For most of that period, he was the only white member of the government.
Fay King Chung is a Zimbabwean educator and was an independent candidate for the 2008 Zimbabwean senatorial election. Chung has worked to extend access to education and to bring education-with-production principles into school curricula in Zimbabwe and other developing countries.
Abortion in Zimbabwe is available under limited circumstances. Zimbabwe's current abortion law, the Termination of Pregnancy Act, was enacted by Rhodesia's white minority government in 1977. The law permits abortion if the pregnancy endangers the life of the woman or threatens to permanently impair her physical health, if the child may be born with serious physical or mental defects, or if the fetus was conceived as a result of rape or incest. Nevertheless, an estimated 70,000+ illegal abortions are performed in Zimbabwe each year.
Bernard Thomas Gibson Chidzero was a Zimbabwean economist, politician, and writer. He served as the independent Zimbabwe's second finance minister.
Ethel Maud Tawse Jollie OBE was a writer and political activist in Southern Rhodesia who was the first female parliamentarian in the British overseas empire.
Simon Charles Mazorodze (MCh.B) was a Zimbabwean cabinet minister and a medical doctor by profession. He is also widely credited as one of the founders of the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front, which has been ruling the country since independence.
Patrick Zhuwao is a Zimbabwean businessman, farmer, and politician. He served as minister of public service, labour and social welfare between October and November 2017. He was expelled from the ruling ZANU–PF party during the 2017 Zimbabwean coup d'état.
The Termination of Pregnancy Act is a law in Zimbabwe governing abortion. Enacted in 1977 by the Parliament of Rhodesia and effective starting 1 January 1978, it was retained after Zimbabwe's independence in 1980. The law expanded abortion access, permitting it under three circumstances: if the pregnancy endangers the life of the woman or threatens to permanently impair her physical health, if the child may be born with serious physical or mental defects, or if the fetus was conceived as a result of rape or incest.
Sakhile Nyoni-Reiling is a Zimbabwean-born pilot living in Botswana. She was the first female pilot in Botswana and the first woman to serve as general manager of Air Botswana.
Michael Theodore Hayes Auret was a Zimbabwean farmer, politician, and activist. A devout Catholic, he served as chairman and later director of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe (CCJP) from 1978 until 1999. He also served as a member of Parliament for Harare Central from 2000 to 2003, when he resigned and emigrated to Ireland.
Jane Ngwenya was a Zimbabwean politician.
Stella Madzimbamuto was a South African-born Zimbabwean nurse and plaintiff in the landmark legal case of Madzimbamuto v Lardner-Burke. Born as Stella Nkolombe in District Six of Cape Town in 1930, she trained as a nurse at South Africa's first hospital to treat black Africans, earning a general nursing and a midwifery certification. After working for three years at Ladysmith Provincial Hospital, she married a Southern Rhodesian and relocated. From 1956 to 1959, she worked as a general nurse at the Harare Central Hospital. In 1959, her husband, Daniel Madzimbamuto, was detained as a political prisoner. He would remain in detention until 1974, while she financially supported the family.
John Denys Taylor was a Christian medical missionary who founded Bonda Mission Hospital within the Nyanga district in Zimbabwe.