unsung hero

 

Author: koketso Mashaba - 12/31/2011 - 22:00

Unsung Heroes

A very rare but truly special occurrence is when you live with a heroic spirit at home. I am one of the few who are blessed with this remarkable privilege. Writing this article will be one of my many emotional and retrospective moments…
Masana Elsie Motubatse, what a woman! Born into a family of five children, married at the tender age of 19 and becoming a mother of five herself is but the tip of the iceberg of how her life would unfold. She fell under the sad reality that many women born in the 1940s live with - illiteracy. Being the determined young mother that she was, she sold fruit to fund her education and subsequently send her own children to school. She did her absolute best and watched God do the rest.
As she was raising her young ones, she started off as a nurse at Lydenburg Hospital. As her children ventured into their various varsities, she became an Afrikaans teacher at a rural school. Naturally as it would occur in one’s career, she later became the Principal at two respective rural schools. God elevated her and positioned her in His own pace! She later got involved in ANCWL and started running various women-empowering projects, where the focus was to help rural women become self-sufficient. This was especially important to her because she had been divorced from the father of her children and had to learn to fend for her five.
Good things come to them that wait, is the description of the next stage of her life. She received national recognition for her efforts in her community- she was awarded “Community Builder of the Year 2002” in her late 50s. God didn’t stop elevating her there, no! She became the Mayor of Burgersfort in 2006, the Municipal speaker of Tubatse Municipality from 2007-2010. Through this channel, she has been able to send innumerable under- privileged youth to prestigious varsities via bursaries. And several to Cuba study medicine.
The test of all tests struck her during this year, 2011. She had been in an accident where she collided with a truck, head-on! As her grandchild I was utterly devastated and drove from Pretoria to Limpopo to see my gran-gran! To my surprise and comfort, she had walked away from the accident without a scratch! I wept as she testified to me how faithful our God is, she said “He said I should not fear, He said he will finish what He has started. Who am I to doubt the Word of God?” . Jitters, goose-bumps! God has done exactly that