Chronicle Editor
Judith Phiri, Business Reporter
Determined to earn a living after being involved in a traffic accident, Ms Ruth Khumalo (67) of Nkulumane 12 suburb in Bulawayo, was adamant that she would make it one way or the other.
Before the accident, Ms Khumalo was a nurse at Mater Dei Hospital under Jubilee Clinic attending mostly to patients who needed special care. After the accident, she could not go back to work as doctors said she would not be able to walk again.
“The accident really affected me and I couldn’t go back to the work I used to do. I was in a wheelchair for a year and the doctors had told me I wouldn’t be able to walk again. However, I refused to entertain the thought that I would be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. In the Bible, the Lord says what you do not want, rebuke it. I was determined to get out of the wheelchair and be able to start walking on my own. Luckily, I came to realise what I wanted and now I walk using one crutch.”
As if she had not suffered enough misfortunes, a year after her accident, Ms Khumalo lost her husband. This added to her misery as he was the sole breadwinner for her and their daughter.
“My husband passed away in 2018 and what pained me the most was that he was our breadwinner and I was no longer working because of the injuries I sustained in the accident. I had to look for a source of income in order to survive and look after our child.
“That’s when I started to teach myself handwork. I started making detergents and drinks but the market for my products was a challenge. I got a shop that was interested in my products, but it was in Plumtree. Transporting my products was a challenge, carrying the products to the buses in my condition made it worse. I then stopped sending the products and looked for another option.”
Ms Khumalo said she started to do beadwork and somewhere along the way, she decided to start teaching other people. She said for a while she worked from home until she joined other women to form a collective.
“The Ministry of Women Affairs, Community, Small and Medium Enterprises Development assisted us to register a company as a group of 10 women in 2021, to make it easier for us to get any form of assistance. However, for some reason the women started slacking and some wouldn’t co-operate, which made us stagnant.
“As a widow and considering that I had no other source of income, I saw it fit for me to soldier on because I didn’t have anyone to take care of me and my child.”
Ms Khumalo registered her own company in 2022, Siztek Investment, and took on beadwork, knitting, detergent making and training as her survival strategy.
She has since moved her small to medium enterprise from home to the Bulawayo SMEs centre located at OK Mart.
“This place has opened some doors for me, in terms of training and capacity building initiatives. I have been taught the importance of branding my products before selling them. The major source of income is my beadwork and traditional attires. In a good month I can make over R5 000.”
Just like any other SME, Ms Khumalo faces a number of challenges such as the unavailability of raw materials locally. She sources most of her raw materials from South Africa, including the traditional skirts, beads and hats she sells among other things.
“I can’t do those traditional skirts on my own because a pleating machine is required which I currently can’t afford. For my business to move forward, I decided to source the skirts all the way from South Africa, add beads and then sell. I do the beaded bags myself from scratch.
“The challenge is that I don’t have a market to sell my products. I usually sell when there are big events in the city such as the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) and this is where some of the products are bought. When there is the Sanganai/Hlanganani World Tourism Expo, I also take my products there because I’m a member of Women in Tourism and these allow me to get a bit of income. I wish to get major clients that want traditional wear so that I can make more orders.”
For her SME to grow, Ms Khumalo said she needs financial assistance in order to make bulk products.
“Working is sometimes a challenge because I can’t carry heavy things. My condition requires me to do most of the work sitting. Not being able to produce in bulk is also a headwind for me. At one of the meetings with SMEs, N Richards offered to buy some of my detergents but the challenge was on quantity because I can’t deliver the orders they would want per week or month. I have all the paperwork and I’m tax-compliant but their order starts from 100 to 1 000. What pains me the most is that I don’t have the money to be consistent in my deliveries.”
Ms Khumalo said SMEs carry so much potential which can be fully exploited if they are financially liberated. She said market linkages are also a critical component of their success.
Ms Khumalo said paying monthly rentals was a challenge as business is low in some months, making it hard for them to fend for their families. Mrs Florence Nyathi (76) of Njube suburb said the absence of market linkages is one of the obstacles hindering the growth of SMEs.
Mrs Nyathi who is into sewing, lost most of her machinery and products in 2011 when a fire gutted the National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) premises close to the NRZ Main Station, where they worked from. Since then, it has been very hard for her to recoup.
“Our things were burnt in 2011 in a building next to the one we are currently working in. The Government assisted us by availing an alternative place for us to work from. However, for women-led SMEs, access to markets is a challenge,” she said.
This has resulted in most people living from hand to mouth, which stifles their businesses.
“I sell uniforms for different schools, but we are too many in this business. We meet a lot of challenges; someone can say their uniforms are US$2 while you are saying US$4, considering the production costs. As you know, people will go for the cheaper products, which sometimes will be of poor quality material.”
Bulawayo Chamber of SMEs vice chairperson Ms Sithabile Bhebhe said in a bid to assist more SMEs around the city, they were engaging various stakeholders to ensure SMEs have safe and conducive working spaces. She said women make up a large chunk of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). The sector provides a living for many and last year added US$8,2 billion to the national gross domestic product (GDP).
“There’s need to formalise all the MSMEs, however, it becomes a challenge when some are still working from home which makes it difficult to account for them, let alone for them to market their products and services.”
She said rentals were among some of the challenges hindering the growth of SMEs as most places around town are pricey. Local currency payments are also affecting SMEs as most raw materials and machinery require foreign currency.
The Government has taken a deliberate stance to empower women at grassroots level, alleviate poverty and tackle gender disparities in the country. A number of initiatives are being carried out to ensure platforms are created from which women entrepreneurs can access funding to spearhead their projects.
Recently in Baku, Azerbaijan at the Non-Aligned Movement Conference on Advancing the Rights and Empowerment of Women, Minister of Women Affairs, Community, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Monica Mutsvangwa said Zimbabwe has made strides in ensuring gender equality and women empowerment.
She said the country has also made a huge milestone as President Mnangagwa has signed a high-level political compact on ending gender-based violence practices.
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