Dr Hubona paves path from surgery to Parliament

| Friday August 13, 2010 00:00

No challenge stood in her way and right now she feels no challenge can stand in her way, including the challenge of representing her constituents in Tonota North.

On September 5, Dr Hubona, waving the Botswana Congress Party (BCP) ticket, will be standing against Fidelis Mmilili Molao of the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) for the vacant parliamentary seat, which was held by the late Baledzi Gaolathe.

In the 2004 and 2009 general election, Dr Hubona stood against Gaolathe. But in 2009, she gave a good account of herself with more than 3,000 votes while the former won with over 5,000.

Until now, Dr Hubona's life was a rollercoaster ride as she soared like an eagle on the hunt for prey.

She started her schooling in Francistown at African School, now Nyangabgwe Primary School. Then, because of her family's relocation to Sebina, she did part of her primary education there before finishing at Nyamambisi.

For her secondary education, she went to St Joseph's College at Kgale in 1962 where she rubbed shoulders with the likes of Sheila Tlou, formerly Morake, who was some classes behind her, Dr Bright Bagwasi and Dudu Mahloane.

After finishing her O'levels in 1966, the following year she won a scholarship to do her two-year A'levels in Brighton, Britain at the Public High School for Girls.

In 1969, the University of London where she did her Bachelor in Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) at the Royal Free School of Medicine for Women snapped her up.

About the school, Dr Hubona offered a rejoinder: 'It was to be a school for women only, but there were males as well when I trained there'. She qualified six years later and headed straight home where for four years she worked at the Jubilee, Sekgoma Memorial and Nyangabgwe Hospitals.

In 1980, she left again for England where she specialised in surgery at Nottingham University. Because of that, she is now a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.

After qualifying, her surgical interests were in trauma and paediatrics surgery. About that she quips with a degree of self-satisfaction: 'I believe I was the first qualified female surgeon in Botswana. My trauma training is in spinal trauma and rehabilitation and disaster preparedness for trauma'.

Because she is so eruditely endowed, Dr Hubona could have chosen to remain in England or any other western country where the lure of money has seen many an African leaving home.

In fact, she says after she completed her studies, she had a mouth-watering offer in Saudi Arabia where she says women were reserved about being treated by male surgeons.

To prove just how sought-after she was, while she was in Botswana, one day she just picked up a phone and rang the hospital where she trained as a specialist and they hired her there and then.

But because her heart was home, she resisted any temptation to move abroad.

'I just have to be home. I felt I had a big role to play, more so that Botswana was at her formative and decisive stage'.

'Actually, Dr Mahloane, Dr Bagwasi and myself were the first group to go for training after independence. The vision of an independent Botswana fell upon us.

'People kept asking us why we were going back home and what was there for us, but we told them that our country needed us,' she said.

Retrospectively, Dr Hubona is content she decided to come back to Botswana. Among the highlights of her career was helping to set up the surgical unit at Nyangabgwe Hospital.  Also, in 1977, when a contingent of Botswana soldiers were ambushed and killed by Rhodesian forces, she was there and helped in their rescue.

Dr Hubona was also in the thick of things, applying her surgical knowledge when a bomb struck Mophane Club in Francistown during the time of Dr Gaositwe Chiepe as Minister of Health.

Legend has it that the bomb detonated while revellers were on the floor twisting and turning to Jimmy Cliff's 'Remake The World' and singing along drunkenly, 'Tu Mene Pepele e Sa-fo-re!'

'I spent days and nights operating on the casualties as well as briefing Dr Chiepe on progress,' she recalled about the time.

Another memory at Nyangabgwe was a fossilised mine at the centre of the hospital compound. Because of the mine, there was eminent danger of the hospital walls collapsing. She said the Department of Mines responded heroically when the hospital administration called them.

'One of the drains had blocked as a result and it was affecting one of the wards. People from the department of mines literally camped inside the hospital premises. We were kept awake supporting them in whatever way including feeding them.

'I remember there was one called Stephen Williams who was very helpful. They pumped thousands of concrete inside the mine as well as the drain to rehabilitate it.

'The result is that the hospital is now sitting on top of tons and tons of concrete,' says Dr Hubona.

At one point Dr Hubona had to oversee doctors of up to 28 nationalities. None of them could speak English and a way of communication had to be devised.

'We made a policy of hiring interpreters whom we called at certain times,' she recalled.

It is nine years now since she left the hospital and set up Polani Clinic where she is surgeon general and proprietor.

For some, retirement means spending days playing with grandchildren and watching the sun set, but not Dr Hubona. At the clinic she is like a piston in a running engine of a car, always jerky, anxious, nervous; hardly a person to easily pin down.

Whenever you succeed in securing an appointment with her she always cries in heavily accented Setswana: 'Ha kina nako hothelele. Nako yami i tsewa ki balwetsi - I have got no time at all. I am always pre-occupied with patients.'

She may be a political novice compared to some of her comrades in the BCP but she pulls no punches in critiquing the policies of the ruling BDP.

This past weekend, at her launch in Borolong, she beseeched potential voters to give her the mandate to represent them in Parliament where she wants to knock on the door of Dr John Seakgosing (Minister of Health) and take him to task about the policies of Domkrag.

Among the people whom she will take to task when she enters Parliament, is Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi about 'the substandard education of Botswana' that she is always lamenting about at freedom squares.

Her detractors from the ruling party always provide a rebuttal to her arguments saying 'How can she say that Botswana's education is substandard when she is a product of it?'

But Dr Hubona always has a ready reply. She is convinced that the BDP government is not doing enough to help alleviate poverty among Batswana and that her party will bring about necessary changes to the nation.

Polani Clinic is on the top floor of the Blue Jacket Square's two-storey building.

Patients of all ages pack the cramped reception, waiting patiently for their appointment with Mma Hubona.

And as spritely as a spring chicken, Dr Hubona emerges from the consulting room to either briefly greet a visitor, or reassure the patients that she will be with them shortly.

Last time I was there, she kept shaking her braided head to remove a recalcitrant dreadlock that kept straying to her forehead, obscuring her view in the process.

The smile on her face quickly put me at ease and the strong handshake was an apt substitution for a motherly hug that would have been most welcome to me.

'I have to make it fast because patients are waiting. We can talk for 30 minutes at least,' she said with convivial haste in a husky voice.

When 63-year-old Dr Hubona set up Polani, which translates to 'get healed' Clinic after retiring from Nyangabgwe she said she wanted another challenge away from the tumultuous 10 years she spent as a superintendent of the hospital.

About the retirement from the hospital, she says: 'I chose to leave early because I felt I had done enough. I wanted another challenge, hence I set up Polani. I did not want to become redundant. I am happy with what I did at Nyangabgwe'.

By the time she took the helm of the hospital in 1990, it was at the zenith of the HIV/AIDS pandemic when Batswana were dying like flies.

'It came to a point where Nyangabgwe was called 'the slaughterhouse' because patients just collapsed and died even on the operating table. By that time, some of these deaths were completely inexplicable. Our clinical outcomes were really bad,' she says, her eye straying to the digits that make up time on her cell phone.

Dr Hubona, who used to go by her marital name of Habangana, before reverting to Hubona, is a Francistowner to the core though she pledges allegiance to her village of Mathangwane where she was born.

She insisted on the following quote: 'I have been exposed to issues of great political significance by colleagues and comrades. I have come to appreciate what some people have sacrificed for the love of their nation, and this steels me to face the challenges of sacrificing for my nation.

'I wish I had more resources to do more for democracy in my country, but then again it is a lesson to do with the little that one has to persevere peacefully ...to face any obstacles ...for the love of our nation'.