The tide is slowly changing for women who dream of one day taking control of cruise ships, research vessels or those who simply want to spend most of their lives on the open sea.
The South African Maritime Authority (Samsa) has over the years been on an active drive to recruit more females into the male-dominated industry – and the applications have been streaming in.
Nine of the young 20 cadets on-board the SA Agulhus, which docked in Port Elizabeth yesterday on its way to Cape Town, are females who can not be happier to be standing their own alongside their male colleagues.
The massive vessel – also known as an icebreaker because of her ability to plough through frozen water – is over 100m in length and boast successful missions to various destinations, including Antarctica.
One of the first ever females to have been afforded the opportunity is Zikhona Gwexa who started her journey some seven years ago.“The Samsa training programme actually started with us in 2011 when they were looking for a “birth ship” on which cadets would normally do the training. They then approached Samtra (South African Maritime Training Academy) and the rest, as they say, is history because that’s how it all started for me and many other women,” she said with a beaming smile.
“It has been both exciting and challenging, especially for females though,” Gwexa added.
“When I started my training I was put in a ship where there were crew on-board from other countries. One of the first question I would usually be asked is what I am doing on the ship because I am a woman and that I’m supposed to be at home, getting married and so on. They really used to discriminate against your gender, against religion and all of those things, but at the end of the day it’s really all about you and what you want out of life,” she said optimistically.“I just told myself that I’m not going to let those things affect me even though the reality is that this is a male-dominated industry. Having said that, I have to add that it has become a lot better over the years because as you see there are a lot of females on board.”
One of those young women is Butterworth-born Lelethu Mtuzula.
“I’ve always wanted a career in the maritime industry so after I finished high school I went to Cape Town to study, you have to study maths and physical sciences, by the way,” she said.
Mtuzula, 20, said she wanted to inspire other young woman to follow in her footsteps.
“There’s nothing for other girls to be scared of really [and] luckily, you don’t have to know how to swim because there are life jackets if you’re in the water and that hardly happens anyway because we’re always on the ship. They must not be scared and just study, study, study,” she said.
Asked what some of the challenges are, she said: “I think the challenge for me is to always know what I’m doing because you might make a small mistake that may jeopardise the safety of everyone on the ship. So you really need to know what you’re doing and if you don’t, just ask.”
Gwexa shared some interesting facts about the SA Agulhas: “Well, the fact that she’s a very old lady, she’s 41 years old, but she can still perform very good. She is over 100 metres in length so there’s lots of space for accommodation. There are classrooms here, because it is a training vessel, of course, as well as science labs.”The mega-vessel will embark on a two-week voyage from PE to Cape Town before taking her eager cadets on a four-month mission on the open sea.ALSO READ