Rumbidzayi Caroline Kahari is an Australian trained journalist and a published author of Lost In Africa, a book which highlights Africa’s post-colonial struggles in economic transformation. She has also published; The Day Night Came, Faithful Sinners and Bedrooms of Power-The Brokers, using the African story telling genre of Ngano, for preservation of the African story through edutainment.
She has worked in public and private institutions in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Uganda and Brazil. A social entrepreneur Rumbi is passionate
about gender issues and is a founder of the Centre for African Women Advancement(CAWA) an organization which promotes mentoring of
women for leadership positions. She is also a strong advocate for the African guiding principle of Ubuntu.
Author Kahari, a black woman, born in the hot African Savanna sun and of the Shona people, located in Zimbabwe, translated as “the house of Stone; Bantu woman of the Chihera clan, whose totem is the male Eland who came into the world disadvantaged, not only because she was a woman, but because she was born black under a system they called color bar, which segregated citizens according
to race and being black meant limited or no opportunities. As she walked under the African skies, she followed legendary women who have gone on before her and have stood up against injustice. She pays tribute to torch bearing women like Wangari Maathai of Kenya, Charwe Nyakasikana of Zimbabwe, who led the revolt against colonialism in 1889 and Winnie Mandela of South Africa who gallantly fought against Apartheid.
Ubuntu was birthed in her during her time as a student in Australia. Author Kahari navigated corporate, becoming and advocate when society would have wanted her to bow her head. She lifted up other women and stated that “when only one woman in a room of powerful men, she will still shine.”
As a journalism student, she became one of the student voices which stood up against the apartheid system in South Africa, through the foreign student’s newspaper, writing articles on South Africa. It was then that she realized being black came with a responsibility and an obligation of standing up against injustice. Being black meant moving together with unity of purpose and it took her to leave the cocoon of her country and go away to fully comprehend what it meant to be black.
Like most women, she had a dream of getting married and having children. African society tells you that in order to be complete human being, a woman must be married or else she remains a girl. Marriage is seen as a right of passage. Author Kahari had a relationship in her life which she mistakenly thought would lead to marriage, but left her heart broken. She went to her father for a shoulder to cry on, something that in African tradition a daughter cannot do but she broke the rules and went to him.
It was in Johannesburg that the idea for Centre for African Women Advancement was birthed. After her business failed after three years, she realized that one of the reasons was lack of mentorship. There were no safe spaces for women to mentor other women. A space where woman can share deep secrets which help women decide whether to be in business or not.
The collapse of her Black Empowerment company in South Africa made her spread her wings to East Africa. She found a business partnership opportunity in Kampala, the city of the seven hills. She watched a movie about the former dictator of Uganda Idi Amin in Johannesburg. When the film ended, Author Kahari sat alone in the theatre and wished to visit Kampala one day to see what
Idi Amin had left behind. To her surprises, a couple of weeks later, she received a call from a business man in Uganda
inviting to come to Uganda and help him run his Public Relations company. This call came like an answer to her prayers. She never thought she would stay there for a year, but going to Uganda gave her a totally different perspective of Ubuntu and the story of Africa. In Ugandan she realized that our African story is one. It is only in our heads that our story is different from each other. The
story of black women is the same, but what she found most interesting in Uganda, was while my grandmother could not read, she met women who were her age who were highly educated and had even gone abroad to study. It dawned on her that Uganda’s independence had come early therefore black women. My grandmother on the other hand had been disadvantaged at birth
because she was a black woman. She had to rely on her grandfather for financial support while her peers in Uganda had been well educated and had become managers in hotel.
Black woman journey has been most enriching when to see another black woman doing well, when she rises to her full potential. We can only go forth and multiply as Black women if we help each other along.
