Simbarashe Madzana has found his niche at Meals on Wheels Community Services, where he is finance director of the Western Cape region. A humanitarian at heart, here he shepherds money to greener pastures – the intended beneficiaries – and is accountable to various stakeholders.
Simbarashe started life learning to be a shepherd, taking care of his grandparents and uncle’s cattle, sheep and goats in Serima, a rural part of Zimbabwe in Gutu District and Masvingo province. He didn’t realise then that this was preparing him for his current position.
“I didn’t know that I was more humanitarian, until I started working in the NGO sector in South Africa. Being a humanitarian is my life’s purpose,” says Simbarashe, who has two young daughters.
Simbarashe completed a higher national diploma in accountancy at Masvingo Polytechnic in Masvingo, Zimbabwe, a BCom (Hons) in accounting at Midlands State University, a government-owned university in Zimbabwe, and MBA at Stellenbosch Business School. He is a certified strategy and implementation consultant (CSIC) with StrategyInc.
He then went on to work for the government of Zimbabwe in the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education as an assistant accountant, where he was promoted into various positions to become a senior provincial internal auditor. “I appreciate the experience, but I struggled to find myself in those spaces.”
Because South Africa was seeking skilled accountants, he applied for a work permit and is now in his current position. Simbarashe joined the Meals on Wheels Community Services Western Cape Region in 2011 after a stint at Aerea-Sat in Bellville as an accountant.
South Africa, however, was not necessarily the greener pasture it seemed. One of the biggest challenges was adjusting to an environment in which everyone speaks either Xhosa or Afrikaans, and they could only accommodate him in English. “You have to normalise speaking English on a daily basis to integrate.”
Waste and poverty
Simbarashe highlights the irony, throughout the interview, that there’s more than enough food to ensure that no one goes to bed hungry in South Africa, but less than enough to share, as so much of it is either lost or wasted. For example, he says, 10 million tons of food gets thrown away in South Africa each year as reported by the WWF, enough to fill six stadiums, while there are 18.2 million South Africans living in extreme poverty.
He references horrifying global hunger statistics, which shows that over 800 million people do not have adequate access to food, while an estimated 1.3 billion tonnes of food is lost or wasted each year according to the Food Agriculture Organisation at the United Nations. This amount of lost or wasted food is more than enough to ensure adequate meals for everyone.
Simbarashe says Meals on Wheels Community Services’ biggest challenge is to ensure that food gets to where it needs to be. “It is mind-boggling to think that, in a country like South Africa, people will literally die of hunger, when it is one of the greatest African economies.”
He has a strategic approach to everything he does, and this helps him when it comes to planning. Simba needs to ensure that money is balanced with the need for food. To do this, the team must ensure robustness donations and resource mobilisation “As a welfare service of Seventh Day Adventist Church in South Africa we are grateful to the church, corporates, individuals and government for support and enabling us, but we require more resources to ensure no one goes to bed hungry in South Africa.”
Simbarashe says he leads by adjusting his style to the environment, reading the room, as is the current buzzword. For him, this actually means that he has different styles where needed; he can be firm when he must be, but also allow others space if required. He engages with colleagues and will ensure that he understands where they are through interactions, even those as small as a greeting in the kitchen.
“I realised that building authentic relationships with staff members is how you ensure that the outcome of an organisation is met. So, I take time to learn the employees from day one. I like to see people excel and do my best to create opportunities for those in my team to grow and develop.”
Simbarashe’s team is small at the regional office, with seven staff members, although he also works with 20 branch managers in the Western Cape region and then reports to the board in the Western Cape and head office in Bloemfontein.
Pursuing passion
Meals on Wheels Community Services, he says, may be a stepping stone towards becoming a CFO or CEO in the NGO space. “I’ve seen that civil society organisations play a critical role in the economy. The value that they're adding to the economy is way, way underestimated.”
He’s a family man who is blessed to be married to the woman he loves, Happiness, who inspires him to be a better version of himself everyday. Simbarashe feels strongly about GBV and sits on the board of Out Here Worldwide, an NGO that helps to eradicate this blight on society, where he helps with strategy generation and implementation, as well as providing his financial expertise.
It’s all about giving back, he believes. “You have not lived until you do something for someone who will never repay you, and your fingerprints will never disappear from the lives you have touched.”
Simbarashe doesn’t believe in taking work home, but rather parking it at the door. To wind down, he plays football and goes to the gym. He’s also a reader, sports lover and watches rugby and soccer and enjoys time out with family.
His children, eight and five, are constantly teaching him more about life from their perspective and he enjoys spending time with them. “They bring this element in that you learn more lessons from them than the ones that I learnt through life. They teach me to be authentic.”
