- Hit and run accident left her with permanent limp, scar
IN 1999, the life of 17-year-old Mary Nawale changed in an instant. Standing at about 1.9 metres tall and unaware of her own potential, she was plucked from the bustle of Lusaka’s City Market by MultiChoice’s Jan Malan and promised a fairy-tale transformation through the M-Net Face of Africa regional final modelling competition in Swaziland (now eSwatini).
She had been selling underwear stitched by her father.
She had never walked a runway or dreamed of becoming a model. But she had something rare—natural beauty and innocence. In that moment, the girl from a dilapidated home in Chipata Township believed she had found the key to a better life.
In 1998, the pay TV Company had introduced a beauty pageant called M-Net Face of Africa, which identified ordinary African girls with the aim of turning them into supermodels – the quintessential Cinderella story.
Uncovering Africa’s next top models from everyday girls
Face of Africa was no ordinary beauty pageant. Oluchi Orlandi, the Nigerian who won the first competition that year, was not a model when she was identified on the streets of Lagos – she was a 17-year-old hawker selling bread.
She is now a supermodel running her own modelling outfit.
“Needless to say that after winning the competition, my life changed forever. But when I reflect as I tend to do, I realise that as much as I have enjoyed so much success and the stuff that dreams are made of on a global stage – one thing remains the same and that is being ‘woman’,” she wrote.
No doubt Mary had dreamed of a life far better than what she experienced with her parents.
Mary came from a disadvantaged background, living in an incomplete building with a communal toilet and no running water, in Lusaka’s sprawling Chipata Township.
She was also uneducated.
Mary jumped on the idea, cheered on by her family, including her father.
However, Mary’s fame wasshort-lived. Not long after she returned from eSwatini, where she won the regional competition that booked her a place to participate at the continental level, she disappeared from the limelight.
The rumour mill went into over-drive, with some speculating that she had fallen pregnant, therefore would not proceed to the next level of the competition. There were even rumours that she had died. None of it was true.
That year, Benvinda Mudenge from Namibia won the M-Net Face of Africa competition. Her prize money was US$$150,000, and she also had a modelling stint in New York.
“Everything they wrote about me was false. I am still alive, not the way I was before but still I am here,” she says.
Mary still lives in the same dilapidated house in the impoverished Chipata Township with her mother and siblings.
Her father died years back, apparently of depression, unable to live with his daughter’s shuttered dream.
Just a pipe dreamMary, herself, speaks about her life with rue.
“It should have been an opportunity of a life time,” she says. “In fact, that was the reason I even accepted and my parents consented. I knew that if I managed to win the finals, my life would change. I was told some of the prizes could includea house and car.”
Mary feels duped and abandoned. She never expected to return to her parents’ home in the township, and to the life she lived before.
Mary claims that there was an attempt to disqualify her from participating in the finals of the competition.
“I never came back with anything except my clothes, make-up and pictures. I never even heard from the company,” she says.
Mary claims that there was prize money for winning the regional finals and that her contact received that money on her behalf.
“I saw that money but I was not given any money,” she says.
“I was informed by the contact that the money was theirs. I was told that I would only win the prize money after the finals. I didn’t understand because that was not what I was initially told.”
When they arrived back in Lusaka, her contact informed her that she would be contacted as the M-NET Face of Africa finals drew near. Since that time, she has been waiting ‘for the cows to come home’.
Mary says what followed was a smear media campaign aimed at tarnishing her name, including claims that she had fallen pregnant and, therefore, unable to continue in the competition.
She says the pregnancy rumour was false, and was disproved by a medical test.
“How could I withdraw when I did not know anything that was happening after we returned to Lusaka? No-one came to tell me anything. I was told to wait for them. I was harassed by media who came home and followed me wherever I went in the township, capturing pictures. It was upsetting,” Mary says.
Her home was also targeted by thieves, who thought she had come back with a lot of money from eSwatini.
“It was terrible. Eventually, we had to involve police because it was too much. There were times we would spend nights at the police because of fear. It was a nightmare,” she says.
With the help of her father, Mary tried to take up her grievances with some pro bono human rights activities to help engage the contact from MNET but it all came to nothing. They never went back to MNET directly.
The emotional toll was heavy. Eventually, the family decided that for her own mental health, Mary needed to leave the township for farm life for a while to escape the chaos.
The dream had soured into something cruel. Her mental health deteriorated.
Years later, a kind gesture from reality TV star Cherise Makubale offered a brief light.
Cherise was the first Zambian to win Big Brother Africa in 2003.
With assistance from Cherise, she managed to get a five-year contract with Madison Insurance.
“After a while I would come back here then go back again.
Around 2004, Cherise came to find me and had a pep talk with me. She really wanted to find out what was happening with me. She encouraged and tried to help me network. I told her I needed a job,” Mary says.
Opportunity shuttering freak accident
Unfortunately, she was later involved in a hit-and-run accident in Chipata Township while returning home from work in the evening. The incident hoisted her onto a downward path she was determined to escape.
Mary spent six months in Lusaka’s University Teaching Hospitals (UTH) for her fractured leg, before her employer moved her to Italian Hospital, where she stayed for another six months.
The accident left her with a permanent limp and a scar on her face.
“I was completely down for more than a year. I needed a wheelchair and other things.
Thankfully, my employers then came through and provided all that was needed. They also helped with finances for my family. For that, I am forever grateful because I do not know what would have happened to me,” she says.
She admits that her life has been going downhill since.
“Look at me; I’m a laughing stock here. People mock me especially those who know about my participation in the MNET Face of Africa,” Mary says.
She now seems resigned to fate, and has no source of income.
“I feel like I was just used and then discarded. I was sold dreams and my parents and I bought into it. I deserved to be treated better than I was. It’s all because I was young, naïve and came from a poor background.
We didn’t know any better,” Mary says.
“I’m struggling. Look at the house in which I live, look at me and the shoes that I’m wearing, can anyone believe I even walked the runway once? No. I need help. I’m not okay,” she says.
Apart from a few newspaper cuttings, Mary has no pictorial memories of her participation in the competition.
Her sister, Martha Nawale, says she tore and threw away the pictures that she came back with from eSwatini out of frustration.
“The only things we have are these newspaper cuttings,” Martha says.
Her mother, Juliet Nakanyika, is concerned about her daughter’s mental well-being.
“This is not how my daughter was,” she says. “She was beautiful and lively. But since the whole thing in 1999, she has never been the same. We all worry about her because of her mental state. We all have to walk on egg shells around her so as not to upset her because anything can trigger her.”
Ms Nakanyika says her daughter was taken advantage of.
“My daughter deserved to be treated better. If there is anyone out there that can help, we welcome any assistance. My husband died trying to find help for my daughter. He was equally affected by how everything turned out and what had happened to her,” she says.
Ms Nakanyika said her daughter, who is the second in a family of seven, was the one they had hoped would change their fortunes.
It, however, turned into a haunting experience of broken promises and exploitation.
More than two decades later, Mary is still waiting for the world to remember her, not as a footnote of scandal, but as a symbol of what could have been
