Kapelwa Sikota

Kapelwa Mwanang'umbi Sikota was born in Mongu District in Barotseland on 7 July 1928. Her father died when she was young. As a girl she was in hospital in Mongu and realised there was not a single Zambian woman nurse on the staff, not even for maternity work. According to a magazine this inspired her to become a nurse herself. She married Aggrey Mulala Sikota, a politically active "African medical assistant" who later became a government official, in 1953 and they had four children. == Education ==

She was educated to the highest level that any girl in 1930s and 1940s Zambia could reach: first in primary schools in Western Province and then at Chipembi girls' boarding school about 75 km north of Lusaka. Next her brother arranged for her to go to a mission school near Durban, South Africa for secondary education before enrolling at McCord Hospital to train as a nurse. This hospital for black people was widely known as McCord Zulu Hospital and Sikota had to learn Zulu while she was there. == Career ==

Back in Zambia in 1952, she worked at Lusaka Central Hospital, now University Teaching Hospital, and was the first African registered nurse to do so. It was not unusual in Rhodesia and other parts of colonial Africa to find health workers called assistants, orderlies, auxiliaries etc. working under European trained nurses and/or doctors. For a short spell in the 1950s Sikota was employed at Roan Antelope Mine Hospital in Luanshya. Her work as supervisor in a mining company hostel for trainee nurses gave rise to a UK parliamentary question in 1960 when Iain Macleod, Secretary of State for the Colonies, was asked whether he would deal with discrimination she was experiencing from Rhodesian mining companies. John Stonehouse, the MP asking one of a series of questions relating to the political situation in Northern Rhodesia, said the companies would not employ her in the capacity of a fully qualified, registered nurse. Macleod replied that he had no reason to think Sikota was being "debarred from any post through discrimination". According to her son, the politician and lawyer Sakwiba Sikota, she was involved in "the political and independence struggle", and she and her husband hosted political meetings at home. In 1971 Sikota, by that time Chief Nursing Officer, presented graduation certificates to some of these enrolled nurses. became the first African to hold the post of Zambian Chief Nursing Officer. In 1974 she went to France with her husband who had a diplomatic posting there. On her return she was involved in a project exploring the use of customary Zambian healthcare, traditional birth attendants for example, to supplement modern medicine. She retired in 1984. She died on 30 May 2006 and in 2011 she was one of eleven women pioneers in different fields honoured by the Zambian Association of University Women (ZAUW). == References ==