IMAGINE you have two chronic illnesses, one of which has left you confined to a wheelchair and another has people looking at you weirdly and wondering what is just wrong with you because it is somehow strange.
Also add the fact that doctors have advised you to continually rest and do absolutely nothing, but the passion and dedication to work won’t just let you.
That is what Joseph Moyo, founder and director of The African Woman Foundation (TAWF) has had to live with since 2011.
Mr Moyo was in 2011 diagnosed with chronic back pain and chronic intractable hiccups at the Livingstone Central hospital.
“I began to have continuous pains in my spine in 2011 and the same way, I developed this condition of hiccups. They [Livingstone Central hospital] tried to treat my back pain and hiccups with some medicines, but they never stopped,” he says.
Sometime in May or June of 2016, Mr Moyo flew to the USA to seek medical attention at Florida Hospital in Altamonte Springs in Florida.
“I was admitted to that hospital for almost a year because my condition wasn’t getting any better,” he says. “The improvement was minimal.”
He says: “I could walk a bit with the aid of a walker, until they prescribed me a wheelchair and declared me temporarily disabled. I don’t know when I will be okay.”
Mr Moyo lives on therapeutic drugs time and again.
Talking is not without challenges either because of his hiccups. “Sometimes when I am in the bank or anywhere public, people tend to wonder what is wrong with me because I am always constantly hiccupping. Sometimes, you have people look at you in a certain discomforting way,” he says.
Since then, Mr Moyo usually flies back and forth between Zambia and the USA for his medication – of course now, given the current scenario, flying is a risk too.
He has, on several occasions, been advised by doctors to rest and “do nothing at all”.
But he has defied those doctors’ orders and says: “I have dedicated my last breath here on earth to change the perception that people and society have towards the girl child.”
He adds, “I am determined to use my days on earth to contribute towards ensuring a better future for the girl child so that they may in turn contribute towards the growth of the country and continent as a whole.”
A father of three – two daughters and one son [Leifer], Mr Moyo says he decided to found and register TAWF in 2018 because of the challenges faced by his daughters Cara, 31 and Mara, 28 in a society where men who could approach them and tell them they loved them were in fact only interested in using them for sex.
“Plus, wherever, they would go to visit, my daughters would be made to believe that their value was in sex and child bearing only. That made me angry and made me relook the approach, especially in Africa.
“That, coupled with the experiences I had while working for the United Nations, I discovered that a girl child in Africa was being raised for sex and child bearing,” he says.
TAWF was first registered in the USA in the State of Florida in 2018, with another office being in Washington D.C.
Even though it was registered in the USA, Mr Moyo says its lenses of focus are focused on Africa.
To this day, TAWF has 176 satellite offices across Africa in various communities where women organize themselves and register with their respective local authorities and operate under the core values of the mother body.
“The USA offices are just for logistics in terms of shipping aid and finances,” he says. “We exist to change how society treats women through education, by changing how a boy child is raised in a home and also by changing how a girl child is raised in a home.”
Mr Moyo is of the view that challenges being faced by the girl child in society are as a result of how they [including the boy child] are raised in a home. To change this, he says both girls and boys are supposed to be raised as equal sexes in a home.
“That way, once the boy child grows up and goes into society, he will know that girls are not groomed and raised to be a subject of the boy but as an independent human being and equal partner to development,” he says.
TAWF also exists to empower women with knowledge to understand some of the legislation that protects them whereas empowering the endangered girls with education.
To date, TAWF has sent over 7,000 young women and girls to go to school across Africa to various colleges and universities so that once they attain education, they can be independent and empowered enough to contribute to the growth of the continent.
“Many women are abused by men who feel they own their survival,” he says. “We visit various colleges and universities to talk to scholars on these matters and identify those that are struggling with fees so that we help them. Others come to us through Facebook requesting help, and we help them and we are still helping a lot of young girls and families here in Livingstone.”
Mr Moyo who is married to his wife of 32 years, Evelyn was born on September 3, 1965 in Chibombo district in Chief Mungule’s area. He is number six in a family eight which consisted of three girls and five boys – two of whom have since passed on.
“Most of my childhood, I did not have the priviledge of having and knowing a father. My father [John Moyo] died when I was very young, leaving my mother [Anita Mthimkulu] and my grandmother to raise us, something that wasn’t easy,” he says.
He attended Mbosha Primary School in Chibombo from 1972 to 1979. After passing his Grade Seven exams, he was selected to go to St. Paul’s Secondary School but couldn’t go there due to finances and then opted to go to Mumbwa Secondary School for his grade eight, nine and ten before enrolling at Wisdom Secondary School in Lusaka, which was owned by a Mr Handabu for his final two grades.
“After completing school, I went back home in Mbosha and became an untrained teacher at my former school Mbosha Primary somewhere in 1986. I enjoyed my stay there,” he says.
Soon after, with the help of then Katuba Member of Parliament [a Mr Laima], Mr Moyo in 1988 got a job in the now defunct Special Investigation Team for Economy and Trade (SITET) which was a government security agency that worked hand in hand with the Ministry of Finance and was posted to Livingstone.
“The duty was to check compliance in foreign currency trading, corruption and also check on whether businesses where adhering to the sanctions that President Kenneth Kaunda had imposed on South Africa resulting from apartheid. Basically, we were ensuring that public workers lived within their means,” he says.
Mr Moyo has a Diploma in International Relations from the University of Alabama, a Bachelor's Degree International Relations from the University of Florida, a Degree in Family Life Education from the University of Florida, a Diploma in in Social Work, a Diploma in Gender Studies and he is today, a certified member of the Centre for Family Life Education, a USA regulatory body for family life educators.
He has previously worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and spent most of his time in Angola and Rwanda. Apart from working there, he is also a human rights activist and is the founder of the United Nations Human Rights Association in Zambia where he, together with the likes of Dr Sipula Kabanje, Dr Irvin Devalia, Vernon Mwaanga and others were educating people on issues of human rights.
A committed Seventh Day Adventist member, Mr Moyo in 2003 founded the Lifestyle Health Foundation (LHF) which used to promote good healthy lifestyles and sponsor children to school. The organisation grew and got registered in the USA, Cambodia and India.
