News24 | With a PhD at 74, this veteran nurse is still leading with grace and grit

• Princess Anne-Sheilah Makhado obtained her PhD in advanced nursing science at the age of 74.
• With humour, warmth and a steely resolve, she unpacks her long journey as a nurse and of creating solutions in the public health system.
• This article is part of Spotlight’s 2025 Women in Health series, featuring the remarkable contributions of women to healthcare and science.

Princess Anne-Sheilah Makhado has worn many hats: that of a midwife, professional nurse, motivational speaker, farmer, seamstress, mother, and author. Her latest achievement was graduating last year with a PhD in advanced nursing science from the University of Venda at the age of 74.

And Makhado is still learning.

She recently returned home to Louis Trichardt in Limpopo armed with fresh insight after a month in Beijing, where she visited her son, who is teaching English.

“In China, I observed a lot,” she says. “It’s peaceful and very clean. I’ve never seen such beautiful red roses right in town, and no one steals these roses. And the elderly there, no one I saw was limping; people are working and they have purpose.”

Reflecting on this, she recalls telling her group of retirees in Louis Trichardt that if they want to stay healthy, they need to make an effort to exercise more and keep busy.

Keeping busy has been a hallmark of Makhado’s life. Fittingly, she describes herself as “results oriented” and “thirsty”. She adds: “I ask God to send me where there is a need.”

Makhado’s competing priorities came to a head in 2015, when she applied for a Master of Nursing course at the University of Venda. She was 65 at the time. “The dean said: ‘I can’t take you,’ and I said: ‘Why?’ And she said: ‘You got 59.8 marks for your honours degree.’” This is just below the 60% minimum typically required to qualify for a master’s programme.

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Looking back, Makhado says that during her honours studies, which she completed in 2010, she was also juggling a demanding role as a nursing services manager at Midlands Provincial Hospital in Graaff-Reinet, a position she held for six years. “I had been running an institution where I found nursing issues not up to a good standard,” she recalls.

The rejection hit hard. “I cried then. I cried like a baby,” she says. “Then, in 2017, I went back to the university, and I said: ‘I am back to repeat my honours now’.” She completed the degree a second time, earning her graduation in 2018. That same year, she enrolled for her master’s, which she completed in 2020.

Child-headed households

Her master’s research, which focused on the experiences of child-headed households, was inspired by her work with a non-profit organisation she founded in 2018, called Voice of the Voiceless.

Building on this, her PhD explored strategies to improve support for these children. She interviewed 15 child heads of households, aged 14 to 19, along with 15 of their relatives, and conducted additional focus group discussions within the community.

“Many of these children, when asked about their parents, they would say: ‘We heard that our mother died but we’re not sure when. We don’t even have a picture of our mum.’ And many of them didn’t know their father,“ she says.

A key finding in Makhado’s research was a need to educate men on family values. “That’s why, in my recommendations, I said there should be man-to-man programmes because men are [conceiving] children and leaving the children there. Men must learn to take care of their children, not just dump the mother with the baby. Then the mother has HIV and dies - and the children?”

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Another key recommendation was that traditional leaders should play a greater role in caring for orphaned children.

“I went to the traditional leaders, and I said: ‘You are a traditional leader. What are you doing for these children? You need to have a list of the children that are heading families in your area, and you must visit them.’”

With high crime rates, alcohol and drug use, and some child-headed homes unable to secure their doors, Makhado also questioned the role of the community policing forum. “[A]re they aware that these children must be protected and kept safe? … The drug sellers know there are no parents and know they can abuse these kids.”

Reflecting on conditions in these communities, she says: “It is painful, my darling, traumatic.”

From Sophiatown to Limpopo and Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital

Makhado grew up in a tightly-knit family. The second of seven siblings, soon after her birth in Johannesburg’s Sophiatown in 1950, the family moved to Sibasa in Limpopo, where her father worked for the then native affairs department and her mother was a school teacher.

“My mother was so neat and clean and organised,” she says. “My mother taught us never to take no for an answer and to never settle for less.”

After attending Shingwedzi Secondary School, she trained and worked first as a teacher, then as a typist. But one day entering a hospital, she recalls: “I saw the crisp white uniforms, my heart bled and I knew this is what I wanted.”

At 27, she started her Diploma in Nursing at the then Groothoek Nursing College in Polokwane, moving to Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital in Soweto to specialise in midwifery. She says her first job as a nursing sister in Baragwanath’s buzzing casualty and neurology sections was “wonderful, really”.

Chuckling, Makhado recalls how one patient grew so enamoured with her, that she suggested Makhado marry her brother: “So the guy was invited to come and meet me. But he was a short guy and I was not interested in short guys.”

How does one become a good nurse? 

“Nursing starts with you,” she says. The question is “how would you like to be treated when you are ill?“ she adds.

In 1984, Makhado moved back to Limpopo to Elim Hospital and then to the former Transvaal Provincial Hospital - which is now the Louis Trichardt Memorial Hospital - as a clinic sister supervisor, with tasks including managing mobile clinics in the area.

“Working directly with the vulnerable and disadvantaged, women working on farms from a tender age, carrying their babies. I felt a strong need to empower them,” she says.

Another issue close to her heart is children with special needs.

In 1998, Makhado says, she helped set up Tshilwavhusiku Razwimisani Special School, a special needs school for children 25 kilometres outside of Louis Trichardt.

“I used to visit schools in that area and picked up so many children who had some type of disability.” As a results-orientated person, she says she couldn’t turn a blind eye to this. “So we sat down and identified an area where we could start a school for the mentally challenged.”

Makhado says Tshilwavhusiku Razwimisani started with just 30 pupils and volunteers, including mothers preparing meals. Today, the provincial education department is running the school, which has 298 pupils. “There are moments where I feel like crying. We started from nothing,” she says.

Training nurses in Graaff-Reinet

In 2008, Makhado became the nursing services manager at Midlands Provincial Hospital in Graaff-Reinet, in the Eastern Cape. “There was a lot of unemployment and many young people would say to me they wanted to do nursing,” she says. But the challenge was that the nursing colleges were far away in Mthatha or Gqeberha.

The solution came to her: starting a nursing training college at the hospital. “So I applied to the South African Nursing Council in 2010. Oh, and God has been wonderful, the college was approved in 2012. The next challenge was, where do I get the structures where the school would operate?” Makhado says she then negotiated with the provincial Department of Public Works to renovate buildings for student nurses’ accommodation and with the then mayor of Camdeboo Local Municipality, Hannah Makoba, to secure classrooms.

“I used to go out to furniture shops and ask for whatever furniture … for the nurses,” she recalls. This would become the Midlands Hospital Nursing School, today still an accredited institution within the Eastern Cape health system. During our interview, she checks the spelling of Makoba’s name on her phone, saying they have kept in touch.

The Master Lock Key

Upon retiring from the public sector at Midlands Hospital in 2013, Makhado returned to Louis Trichardt where she focused on motivational speaking, continuing her community outreach work and studies. She also wrote a book called The Master Lock Key.

“It has been and will always be in my deepest innermost thoughts that women are the backbone of the nation. If women can learn to stand firmly in great numbers and become more assertive in issues that concern themselves, their families and the nation, I believe there will be a better future,” she wrote.

Makhado is divorced and a mother of three children: two daughters and a son, and three grandchildren. When she struggled to make ends meet on a nursing salary, she sewed for extra income.

“My mother, when we grew up, used to show us how to sew. She gave me that skill. So when times were tough, I did some sewing. I used to produce track suits for schools. When I come back from work as a nurse, I would take out my sewing machines.”

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Makhado relays another enduring joy: farming and growing food. She heads gardening projects that supply the Spar in Louis Trichardt with spinach, beetroot and garlic.

“It’s quite amazing,” she says. “I encourage all, I urge women and girls, let us work and fight poverty and hunger instead of idleness and being dependent. Women have this dependency syndrome. I said: ‘Oh no, we cannot go on like this!’”

As our conversation draws to a close, Makhado underscores South Africa’s need for women leaders, saying that “anything is within a woman’s power”.

She adds: “This country needs women’s listening ears and caring touch, but also thinkers, risk takers. Risk is the spice of life. What we women can achieve is virtually limitless.”

This article was first published by Spotlight – health journalism in the public interest. Sign up to the Spotlight newsletter.