No matter how sophisticated the nursing profession has become, for Prof Fhumulani Mavis Mulaudzi, the UP-based SARChI Chair in Ubuntu Community Model of Nursing, its essence is still caring.

It was running away from household chores that first attracted Professor Fhumulani Mavis Mulaudzi to nursing.

Her father, Simon Raliphada, loved tea. And when he came home in the afternoons, she was expected to make a cup of his favourite brew. Instead, she would literally run – over the fence to the clinic that had, rather fortuitously it would later seem, just been built next door to their home in the village of Muduluni Ha Kutama in Limpopo. There, as a 14-year-old, she would watch the nurses at work, with fascination, and they soon asked her to perform little tasks in the clinic.

Her mind was made up. She would be a nurse. Little did she know then that fulfilling her desire would also satisfy her mother’s wish for her daughter to follow in her footsteps and become a teacher.

The decision would have such a far-reaching effect that Prof Mulaudzi has recently been honoured with the National Research Council (NRF) Champion of Research Capacity Development and Transformation Award for the mentoring role she has played in supervising black female postgraduate students to become top scientists of the future.

Now the South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) Chair in Ubuntu Community Model of Nursing, based at UP, Prof Mulaudzi has also fulfilled her promise to her late father. When he was ill in hospital, he complained that the nurses were not attentive. They didn’t provide bedpans, and they shouted at patients. Why would his daughter want to take on this difficult job? How would she cope?

“I promised I would go into nursing and change that culture; I would make sure that the nurses change their attitudes and take care of patients better,” Prof Mulaudzi said. “That’s why I am doing this ubuntu work – to ensure I fulfil the promise that I made to him.”

With her top position and the recent award she received at a ceremony at Zimbali Lodge in Durban on 31 August, she has more than surpassed her mother, Anna’s, expectations and her promise to her father.

Add in the speaking engagements at top nursing conferences in countries such as Singapore and Mexico, and the seminars that she conducts at universities in the UK and US, and you get a sense of the sweeping difference that Prof Mulaudzi is making.

“I say to my students, ‘Let us try to bring African knowledge to the wider community globally so that we are not just recipients of knowledge. We must also be people who are developing knowledge. Let’s put what we do as Africans out there in the world.’”

Education and academia came naturally to Prof Mulaudzi. Four years after starting work as a professional nurse, she was already teaching bridging courses for midwifery. She says this stems from the fact that her colleagues said she always explained things in a way they could understand. “Even in the ward, I liked teaching the subordinates,” she said. “So when they wanted someone to teach the bridging courses, my classmate, now Dr Robert Lavhelani, recommended me.”

It was the same when she started studying at the University of South Africa (Unisa) after her studies at the Venda Nursing College. When her daughter was hospitalised at the age of about three months, smack bang in the middle of Prof Mulaudzi’s exams, the members of the study group she had set up persuaded her to write the exams, saying she was the one who had motivated them with her good explanations. “They said, ‘You are the one who has been teaching us this course and there is no way that we will pass and leave you behind; come and write,’” she recalls. “So I did, and I did very well.”

She studied all the way to her doctorate through Unisa. “I never had the opportunity to have a teacher in front of a class during all my university years. Yes, I am very, very disciplined because we had to start from scratch:  understanding what an assignment is, how to write an assignment and what it means to reference.”

Prof Mulaudzi is not a time waster. Even her spare time is productive. On the day we spoke, her next activity on her schedule was to record a 10-minute morning devotion for the church. An active member of the Lutheran church, she is a member of its women’s prayer league. The real value of godliness, of caring for others, dominates her life.

Our conversation ends with a song. She sings an extract from a Tshivenda hymn, ‘Yehova nga a rendiwe’, choosing a stanza about God’s mercy and grace to illustrate one of her best ways of relaxing, which is singing.