Divorced, Broke: Meet Zim Woman Running Multi-Million Chicken Plant In SA
By Ali van Wyk
This is the story of Lizzy Makichini – a Shona girl from Sandawana emerald mine in Zimbabwe, 250km from Bulawayo, who is now Operations Manager at Grain Field Chickens in Reitz, Free State.
Lizzy arrived in South Africa in 2008 with her husband, a truck driver. They settled in Delmas. By 2012, divorce changed everything.
She was broke. She was working as a cleaner and packer in an Indian shop just to survive.
But every morning, she would also go to the gate of a chicken abattoir in Delmas, hoping to be picked for casual work.
She was called in a few times. During a short training session, a quality-control manager noticed her.
“I did psychology,” the manager told her. “I can see you are smart; you know what you are doing. I want you in my department.”
That was her breakthrough. She was appointed and completed accredited courses in poultry-meat examination and Inspection.
But when she applied for a production-assistant position, she was told being female was a problem.
“Ladies don’t come to work. You need maternity leave. Your boyfriend hits you, and then you don’t come in,” she was told.
As she was leaving, the manager who had first appointed her pressed a newspaper into her hand and said, “Look in there. There are positions advertised.”
On 20 May 2013, Lizzy took three minibus taxis alone to Reitz – a town she had never seen, for a job interview she wasn’t sure she would get.
At the interview, Grain Field Chickens offered her a contract on the spot.
Even though the pay was R500 a month LESS than in Delmas, she saw the quality of the facilities and the energy of management and knew her future was there. She took it.
Her rise was meteoric.
She started in quality control but was soon poached by a production manager who was tired of her good work holding up his line.
Suddenly she was put in charge of the evisceration department: 59 people, all Sesotho speakers, a language entirely unrelated to her home language of Shona. She had already had to learn isiZulu to survive on the streets of Delmas.
“I remember I was sweating,” she says. “But because I love challenges, I said to myself: let me go for it.”
Six months later, without taking any course, she was speaking enough broken Sesotho to get by.
She became one of four senior supervisors under factory manager Theo van Strijp, who would eventually become the company’s CEO.
In 2018 she was appointed shift manager. In 2023, operations manager for the entire plant. She is finishing a Bachelor’s in Management Leadership at the University of the Free State next year.
What does she look for in new candidates?
Willingness, dedication and initiative.
“When you work as a casual and you’re assigned to peel gizzards, and you finish: go and wash the crates, clean the floor. Don’t only do what you were assigned,” she says.
And for those looking to move into management: “You have to showcase that you can do all sorts of things. You have to take ownership of what happens around you. The business needs those people. We are looking for them.” – African Farming