Nomakwezi Mzilikazi obtained her PhD earlier this year for her research into the activities of elephant shrews and bush babies. Picture: Mike Holmes

Village girl a leading zoologist

By Karen van Rooyen

FOR a young Transkei girl who had a fear of mice, Dr Nomakwezi Mzilikazi has come a long way.

Not only is she the only black woman staff member in the zoology department at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, but she is also believed to be the only black evolutionary physiologist in the country.

Her research into bush babies and elephant shrews – shrews resemble mice but are in fact a distant relative to the elephant – earned her a PhD earlier this year, research which also secured Mzilikazi the R100 000 African Woman Scientist Fellowship from the Department of Science and Technology in 2003.

“I was terrified of mice. But you get over it if you’re really interested in the research. The elephant shrews are related to elephants and are not rodents at all.”

Mzilikazi was born and raised in Idutywa, a rural village north of East London.

She credits her interest in sciences to her high school biology teacher. There were no laboratories at her school and Mzilikazi’s first contact with a microscope was in her first year at the University of Transkei.

“When I was growing up, I didn’t know that I would become a zoologist,” she said.

“All I knew when I went to university is that I wanted to study biology. I was interested in reproductive biology. I had this thing about helping people who could not have children.”

It wasn’t until she met her mentor, Barry Lovegrove, at the University of KwaZulu Natal, where she went to further her studies, that she decided to focus on the tiny mammals for her PhD research.

Over a period of two years, she monitored the activities of about 100 elephant shrews in the wild.

She would trap them, then anaesthetise them before making an insertion to implant temperature date loggers – a watch battery-type object weighing only 3g – into the shrews which weigh 60g on average.

While the research may not directly impact on humans, there are indirect implications like preserving the creatures, which are found only in Africa, for generations to come.

“You cannot conserve what you don’t understand,” said Mzilikazi.

“You need to study them to see how they respond to unpredictability in their environment.”

Mzilikazi speaks as passionately about her research as she does about her dream to get more black people involved in the field.

She said in the six years she spent at the University of KwaZulu Natal, there’d never been a black graduate in the zoology department.

At the moment, there are three black students in the class of 21 third-year students she lectures at NMMU.

But it’s something she hopes to change.

“There is nothing fascinating about running around in a bush, sleeping in tents, using gas stoves and lighting up a candle if you’ve been doing it for 18 years,” she said.

“If you’ve grown up in the hills looking after cattle, there’s nothing romantic about the solitude; being alone in the bush. I’m hoping they can see that there can be a career in life sciences that can be fun.”

Her youth and good looks – at 26, she is not much older than her students and she sports a funky peppercorn hairdo – are an advantage as students relate to her easily.

But she is not comfortable with being singled out for her accomplishments and prefers to talk about how proud her parents are of her.

Her mother, who still lives in Idutywa, addresses snail mail to her as “Dr N Mzilikazi”.

Mzilikazi has been grouped with women like Marie Curie, who won a Nobel Price for chemistry in 1911. “Those people are just too good. It’s such an honour for people to hold you in such high regard as a role model, but isn’t it a bit premature?” she said.

Mzilikazi plans to further her research and will spend next year in Germany to complete post-doctoral studies.

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