Mini-skirt fashion

via Mini-skirt fashion – The Zimbabwean 15 April 2015

Nowadays, we are free to possess 50 inch LED televisions, electric gates, electric lawnmowers, ovens, and fridges.

But the freedom to buy all these modern conveniences is meaningless without electricity. Water gushed from the taps in every urban home. The word ‘cholera’ was one we learned in high school biology class.

Under Mugabe, ‘cholera’ is a word known even to four-year-olds and ‘Typhoid’ may very well be the name of a seven-year-old boy at Zuva Radoka Primary.

In the 60s and 70s, women in Zimbabwe joined the mini-skirt fashion, which came along with bellbottoms and Afros. We are free to wear what suits us – in theory. Women in a supposedly independent Zimbabwe are harassed more nowadays for wearing any skirt with a hemline above the knee, which gives rise to the burning question: where is the independence?

Pre-independence, the media was censored by the Rhodesian government. Not much has changed. The Rhodesian Herald has been renamed The Herald. Rhodesia Broadcasting Corporation is now Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation. Both government owned entities constantly churn out propaganda.

Itai Dzamara is missing. He might never be seen alive again. His crime is exercising his right to free speech, expressing his own thoughts. Despite the constitution having a provision for freedom of protest, the police commissioner insists on being the final arbiter on which protest march, which rally is permitted.

Each time Mugabe sees a microphone and podium he launches into a speech about ‘our sovereignty.’ After ruining its own currency, Zimbabwe depends on the bank notes of America and South Africa. With very little revenue entering the exchequer’s pocket, we “independent” citizens are very much dependent on the goodwill of donors, the likes of America and Britain.