It’s a sweltering Saturday morning in the Lowveld, and Tintswalo Hospital, a pillar of the surrounding rural community in the Bushbuckridge sub-district of Mpumalanga, is bustling with activity.
All the patients joining the queue snaking along the dirt road, barely notice a 55-year-old woman in her sweats and a plastic apron, painting the walls of the casualty unit. Out of her usual business suit, even the staff don’t recognize her as the remarkable and dedicated CEO of the hospital, Ms. Merriam Moyimane.
Volunteering her time over the weekends to assist a team from the Tshemba foundation to transform the hospital one stroke of paint at a time.
Ms. Moyimane, born in Tintswalo’s closest referral hospital, Mapulaneng, is the oldest of 7 children and raised by her late grandmother, a strong role model in her life whose caring influence Merriam summarises as “we were poor, but never went to bed hungry”.
Evidence of her hard work and determination can be dated back to her school record, receiving various best student awards before graduating from the Gazankulu nursing school as a professional nurse. “Tintswalo hospital is not just a workplace for me”, says Ms. Moyimane. “My heart is here”.
Indeed, since graduating, she has not looked back, dedicating her life to improving the quality of care to the many patients that seek help at Tintswalo.
Merriam is a strong believer in continuous development, “Everything and everyone has the potential to improve” she says matter-of-factly. “We are never done getting better”. She walks the talk too, getting several diplomas and majoring in Nursing Administration & Education as well as earning a master’s degree in public health from the University of Limpopo. And she is not done yet. Setting her sights on a Ph.D., funding permitting.
With all this experience, her trajectory to success was guaranteed, and she was officially appointed as the Tintswalo CEO in May 2018. Ms. Moyimane says “I accepted the position because I love my community. I grew up in the hospital as a junior nurse and feel that it is part of my own history.”
This position is not for the faint-hearted. The challenges of resource-limited healthcare are enormous and politically fraught with many sleepless nights to ensure ethical management decisions in an environment that is often plagued by corruption.
Merriam has navigated her path with aplomb, producing a squeaky clean audit report in 2019 and all the while getting down and dirty with the painters and spending entire weekends covering during strike action, working in the kitchen to ensure the patients were kept fed.
Ms. Moyimane sees the potential of Tintswalo as a Centre of Excellence in rural medicine. She interrupts her own sentence to assert “It is not some pipe-dream–We just need support to improve our infrastructure and staffing”. She adds “I am confident for the future.”
“It is not some pipe-dream. We just need support to improve our infrastructure and staffing”
More information and opportunities to contribute to the casualty renovation project can be accessed here:
