Independence war hero, charity worker and former Cabinet minister Naomi Nhiwatiwa has died in the United States.
Nhiwatiwa, a former adviser to the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s Africa Region, died at her home on April 12 in South Bend, Indiana, three days before her 71st birthday.
At the height of the war for independence in the late 1970s, Nhiwatiwa attended the first Zanu PF Women’s League meeting at Shai Shai in Maputo with the likes of Julia Zvobgo and Mavis Chidzonga.
At independence in 1980, she became one of only five female MPs from the Zanu PF side – and along with Joice Mujuru and Victoria Chitepo, they were the only women in Cabinet.
Mujuru was Minister of Youth, Sports and Recreation; Chitepo the Deputy Minister of Education and Culture while Nhiwatiwa became Deputy Minister of Posts and Telecommunications.
Armed with a PhD in Intercultural and Diplomatic Communications (1979), Master’s Degree in Counselling (1972), both from the University of New York at Buffalo, and a Master’s Degree in Human Growth and Development from Wayne State University in Michigan, she quit Parliament in 1988 to join the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund as the Senior External Relations Officer in Nairobi, Kenya.
She was then promoted to WHO Director of External Relations and Programme Promotion in the Africa Region in 1993 in Brazzaville, Congo.
In 1998, she was again promoted to the position of Senior Advisor to the UN in New York.
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After retiring from the UN in 2001, she worked as a Consultant on HIV and Aids, and as a Visiting Professor for the Department of Communications at Pepperdine University in California.
A devout Christian, Nhiwatiwa founded the Zerapath charity aimed at helping HIV/Aids orphans in sub-Saharan Africa.
“I have to do something about it, however humble it may be,” she said of her charity work. “If everybody does something, it will surely make the difference.”
A funeral service is due to be held at the First Seventh-Day Adventist in South Bend, Indiana, at 10am on Sunday, April 29.
Her family has decided she will be buried at the Southlawn Cemetery in South Bend on the same day.
