Tendai Rupapa
Senior Reporter
LOVE and compassion were the hallmarks of the year 2024 for First Lady Dr Auxillia Mnangagwa, who touched many hearts and changed countless lives in the course of her philanthropic work.
She is an empowerment champion who never tires.
Her deep passion to assist Zimbabweans and empowerment of women and girls runs in her veins.
Her background moulded her resilience and inspired her philanthropy, which she started even before she became a First Lady.
Growing up in a child-headed family with her being the eldest, Amai Mnangagwa had to fend for her two younger siblings.
She also still found time for others, helping the elderly in her community.
Over the years, Dr Mnangagwa’s work through her Angel of Hope Foundation has touched the lives of many vulnerable groups.
Today, many have lived to tell how their lives were transformed for the better.
In the year 2024, she barely rested.
Hats off!
At a personal level, Dr Mnangagwa scaled dizzy heights academically, ending the year on a high note by graduating with a Doctor of Philosophy Degree in Tourism and Hospitality Management at Midlands State University (MSU).
She did this as a motivational factor, showing that with focus, anyone can climb the academic ladder despite social standing and age.
Courtesy of the partnership between her AoHF and the Zimbabwe Open University, communities are being empowered through free open learning.
The programme is ongoing and courses on offer include Agriculture, Basic Counselling, Disability Management and Sign Language, Health Behaviour, Basic Records Management, Cultural Heritage, Entrepreneurship and Business Management, Early Childhood Development, Basic Nurse Aide programme and Palliative Care for the Elderly, and Basic Computer Literacy.
Hardworking, resilient, and unassuming, Dr Mnangagwa made significant contributions to the tourism sector in a year in which her efforts compelled UN Tourism to hold its first ever Tourism Forum on Gastronomy in Africa in her honour.
Gastronomy tourism, which mainly involves the exploration of food as the purpose of tourism, gives tourists a total experience of what Zimbabwe has to offer, in the process creating jobs and earning the country foreign currency.
She received a special invite to the UN Tourism Africa and Americas Summit in the Dominican Republic where she received a red carpet welcome because of her exploits in the tourism sector, a feat that has never been achieved by any sitting First Lady in Zimbabwe since the attainment of Independence in 1980.
Grounded in the country’s traditional norms and values, she held separate camps for boys and girls drawn from the country’s 10 provinces, imparting in them life skills and the values of ubuntu needed for them to grow into responsible citizens. In a bid to teach the children to embrace the values of discipline, resilience, hard work and obedience to realise their dreams, Amai Mnangagwa continued with her Gota/Nhanga/Ixhiba programme countrywide.
She also held a special Gota/Nhanga/Ixhiba session for hundreds of primary and secondary school learners from Southern Africa who were attending the Regional World Children’s Day commemorations in Victoria Falls.
The children were from Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Botswana and Namibia.
On the social front, she sought to mend broken homes by introducing the Afrikana Family Humanism programme to tackle widespread promiscuity among married couples in which couples were actually competing to outdo each other in cheating.
Indeed, she filled the cracks in the walls of many homes by offering both men and women a shoulder to cry on.
A good counsellor, Dr Mnangagwa, used her programme as a platform to promote good communication, love, and bonding among married people.
Women, who for many years have been on the receiving end of men’s cheating, claimed they had turned the tables, but the First Lady counselled morality, dignity, and respect among partners.
She had previously introduced a highly educative and interactive Nharirire YeMusha programme which enabled Zimbabweans to roundly come up with the qualities for a model man and woman the country needs in the wake of the deteriorating social fabric caused by the collapse of the extended family unit and westernisation.
The programme focused on parents and guardians after children attributed their mischief to parents, who they said were neglecting their duties to mould them during the Gota/Nhanga Ixhiba programme.
Men and women who attended the Nharirire Yemusha programme first met as a group where the First Lady addressed them on the objectives of the programme before they were separated with the men having their own discussions while women did the same.
This gave the two groups time and space to freely lay bare their issues.
This came as the mother of the nation, as Dr Mnangagwa is fondly referred to, captured the imagination of the world, earning standing ovations at various forums across the globe because of her philanthropic work.
The desire to help the need and inspire others to greatness is an in-born thing for the First Lady.
As health ambassador, Dr Mnangagwa held extensive medical outreach programmes in league with personnel from the Ministry of Health and Child Care unlocking vulnerable groups, including the disabled, the elderly and those with albinism, access to free eyesight checks, cervical cancer screening as well as checks for non-communicable diseases like hypertension and diabetes.
She made use of her AoHF’s mobile clinic and top-notch mobile hospital affixed with state-of-the-art equipment in the medical outreach programmes in all provinces including remote and hard-to reach areas in an effort to protect and preserve public health.
As a motivational factor, she also went through the cancer screening and camped with the medical teams encouraging people to get tested and screened as this would enhance their chances of survival if ailments were detected early and people were commenced on treatment.
Through her Angel of Hope Foundation’s partnership with the Seventh Day Adventist Church Warren Park District, they refurbished Warren Park Polyclinic and donated consumables to enable the health centre to fully service the community.
As part of the refurbishment, walls were painted, electricals fixed, a 10kv solar system was fitted, new water tank was fitted while a water pump and toilet sets were installed.
The partnership also saw the clinic receiving many other hospital consumables and equipment.
Teen mothers were not left out.
The First Lady gave their children food, clothing, and blankets.
She offered the mothers a chance to go back to school and made sure they shared their tales with other young girls as examples to show that neglecting education in pursuit of men had negative consequences.
She hammered on the need for schoolchildren to stay focused, concentrate on their studies, and aim high to achieve greater things in life.
An unassuming woman of valour who does not hide her passion for hard work, Dr Mnangagwa traversed the length and breadth of Zimbabwe as Agric4She patron, encouraging women as primary care givers in families to grow a variety of crops including traditional grains which boast high nutritional value and medicinal properties.
What stuns many people is her energy and drive to get results.
Elderly women, children, and vulnerable members of the community were the major beneficiaries of her programmes.
Coming against the backdrop of an El Nino-induced drought, her message sank in well in communities countrywide where she also ventured with her popular school feeding programme in which she prepared food, personally fed learners and urged communities to carry forward the programme for the good of the children.
Geared to mould women of virtue countrywide, the First Lady spent the year rolling out projects for women as a way of relieving pressure on men’s wallets and in the process end domestic violence which mainly emanates from the sharing of scarce resources.
Men, she said, as heads of households, must give their spouses a portion of land to grow crops for their granaries so that families would not go hungry while also boosting household food security and nutrition.
Through her Widows Association, she has also been rolling our projects for widows across the country so that they are self sustainable.
In 2018, Amai Mnangagwa introduced nationwide inheritance and property programme which involved experts from various fields who imparted knowledge to widows, widowers and orphans on inheritance issues making communities aware of their rights.
She carried over the programme through the years and has promised to intensify the awareness campaigns in 2025 so that people have knowledge on property rights and inheritance law.
Only this month, the First Lady led a gender-based violence awareness campaign walkathon from the infamous Booster to Overspill Shopping Centre in the sprawling settlement of Epworth promoting peace, love and harmony in families in the spirit of the 16 Day of Activism against Gender-based violence.
The Booster is a haven of prostitution as well as drug and substance abuse, which the First Lady abhors, hence her intervention to curb vice.
She was joined by the United Nations family, diplomats, the Zimbabwe Republic Police, GBV survivors, churches and members of the community.
The First Lady seeks to promote peaceful homes where couples live peacefully together, raising their children in a dignified manner free of early child marriages, violence, and drug and substance abuse.
This came as 10 children from Dr Auxillia Mnangagwa Children’s Home in Chiredzi touched down to a heroes’ welcome at Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport in Harare on their return from a triumphant Russian trip where they won a soccer trophy, flying the Zimbabwe flag high.
The children, previously among hordes of children living and working on the streets of major cities and towns who were taken by the First Lady and committed to the children’s home where they are housed, fed and sent to school, walked with a spring in their steps following the success.
The First Lady also hosted an African-themed appreciation dinner for the organisation’s partners in recognition of their support throughout the year 2024.
The foundation, which is not State-funded, relies on its partners and well-wishers to be able to mobilise resources to assist the needy and implement life transforming projects throughout the country.
It is through the partners, that through her Angel of Hope Foundation, the First Lady managed among other things, to deliver truckloads of building materials, including cement and roofing sheets she mobilised, to repair 10 schools and over 79 homesteads that were damaged and had their roofs blown off by strong winds last month in Nyazura, torching wild celebrations in a community that was at the crossroads.
During the festive season period, which marks the end of the year, the First Lady held a walkathon to promote road safety and mark the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims in an oversubscribed event attended by diplomats, their spouses, embassies’ staff, Government officials and the Traffic Safety Council of Zimbabwe (TSCZ).
Also present were transport associations, drivers and conductors unions, churches, traditional chiefs as well as communities who all marched with the mother of the nation.
In recognition of her hard work, love and passion to save lives, Transport and Infrastructural Development Minister Felix Mhona announced her appointment as the road safety patron.
Judging by the huge volume of work the First Lady achieved during the year under review, her appetite to do good for the nation evidently remains high.
Welcome 2025.
