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Walter Nyamukondiwa Chinhoyi Bureau
Philanthropist and liberation war heroine Mrs Florence Howard Ndlovu, who founded Chengetanai Old People’s Home in Chinhoyi, has died. Mrs Ndlovu succumbed to suspected diabetes-related complications at Chinhoyi Provincial Hospital last Friday. She was 87. Zanu-PF Mashonaland West Province recommended provincial hero status for Mrs Ndlovu who was arrested and detained several times during the country’s war of liberation.

The request has since been granted and she is expected to be buried at Chinhoyi Provincial Heroes Acre tomorrow.

A widow, Mrs Ndlovu founded Chengetanai Old People’s Home in 1984 to cater for neglected senior citizens mostly of Malawian and Zambian descent.

Her husband left to join the war in 1974 and never returned.

In an interview her daughter, Mrs Martha Mukanda, said Mrs Ndlovu’s death had robbed the community of a person committed to caring for the elderly.

Mrs Ndlovu was a nurse by profession and at one time her certificates were destroyed by the Rhodesians.

She was arrested in 1964 while working at Harare Hospital and spent three years at WhaWha prison.

She was arrested again in 1974 after being accused of using her car to ferry freedom fighters who burnt a truck laden with beer near Aysher Mine in Mutorashanga.