By Nkhensani Mthombeni
- Widowed with three children in 2004, Nyadzani Rambau bought a Toyota Venture and started driving villagers to Makhado to support her family.
- Rambau now owns three Toyota Quantums and won Limpopo’s Best Female Taxi Driver award in 2022 for her work and care for passengers.
Losing her husband could have broken Nyadzani Rambau. Instead, it pushed the mother of three into the driver’s seat.
When her husband died in 2004, Nyadzani suddenly had to find a way to keep food on the table and care for their three children.
She could not afford to sit around waiting for someone to rescue her.
Nyadzani gathered whatever money she could find and bought a Toyota Venture.
Then she got behind the wheel.
She started transporting people from her village to Makhado town. What began as a way to survive and support her children slowly became a business and a passion.
Nyadzani entered the taxi industry and has never looked back.
More than two decades later, the single Toyota Venture has grown into three Toyota Quantums.
And she still wants more.
Her dream is to grow the business until she owns midi buses and buses.
“I have great passion for the transportation industry and also I love interacting with different people on a daily basis. It gives me great pleasure conveying people from one place to the next,” she told Scrolla.Africa.
For Nyadzani, driving is about more than getting passengers to their destinations.
It is about making sure people in her community have transport when they need it.
But being a woman behind the wheel in the taxi industry still catches some passengers by surprise.
Nyadzani says people sometimes react with shock when they realise a woman will be driving them.
That surprise soon disappears.
She says many passengers relax because they believe women are more observant on the road than men.
But the job is far from easy.
Bad weather can turn an ordinary trip into a difficult journey.
When heavy rain hits, the gravel roads she travels become muddy and slippery. Nyadzani still has to get her passengers safely where they need to go.
Her hard work has not gone unnoticed.
In 2022, the Tshitale Taxi Association entered her into a competition recognising taxi drivers.
Nyadzani was named Best Female Taxi Driver in Limpopo.
She walked away with R10,000 in prize money, a trophy and a certificate.
For a woman who started with one Toyota Venture because she needed to support her children, the award marked how far she had come.
Nyadzani believes her strong work ethic and the way she treats her customers helped her win.
“My drive comes from not wanting to see anyone from my village being stranded for transport,” she said.
The mother of three is also proud of what earning her own living has given her.
Independence, she says, means freedom.
She can make decisions about her life and money without having to depend on someone else or ask permission when she wants to buy something.
Her journey has taken her from a grieving mother trying to find a way to support three children to an award-winning taxi driver running a growing transport business.
Now she wants other women to find their own road to independence.
Her message during Women’s Month comes from the life she has built through years of work behind the wheel.
“Women let us not wait for someone to put food on the table for us, let us stand up and do it for ourselves. It is so sweet to eat from our own sweat.”
For Nyadzani, those words are not just advice.
They describe the life she has built since 2004, one passenger and one journey at a time.
Pictured above: Award-winning taxi driver Nyadzani Rambau.
Image source: Nyadzani Rambau.
