Divine Ndhlukula

Divine Ndhlukula was born in 1958 in what was then Rhodesia and built a solid early career in insurance in Zimbabwe after independence, a respectable and relatively secure path for a woman in the formal economy of the time. In the 1990s she gave that stability up to start her own business, choosing private security, an industry almost entirely dominated by men and by the assumption that only men could credibly guard property, cash and premises.

She started SECURICO with a single client, one company vehicle and a handful of staff, doing much of the early administrative and client relationship work herself while Zimbabwe's economy moved through periods of severe instability, hyperinflation and currency collapse that destroyed many far larger businesses during the 2000s. She kept the company afloat through those years by focusing on training and reliability, arguing that a security guard's professionalism, not simply physical presence, was what clients were actually paying for.

Over time SECURICO grew into one of Zimbabwe's largest private employers, providing security, cash handling and related services to businesses and institutions across the country, and giving thousands of Zimbabweans, many of them women in guarding and supervisory roles unusual for the industry, steady formal employment during a period when formal jobs of any kind were scarce.

She became a prominent advocate for women in business across southern Africa, speaking often about the scepticism she faced starting a security company as a woman and arguing that entrepreneurship offered a path to independence that formal employment, however secure, could not.