The Sunday Mail
At most big airports in Europe and the United States, as one stands in the concourse, there is often a huge clearly visible sign warning passengers; “Don’t leave your luggage unattended”.
I have heard those old fashioned aunts warning young girls not to tarry in dark corners even with their most trusted boyfriends.
They know what might happen; what people describe as one thing leading to the other. By warning the girls, our mothers and aunts are not in any way encouraging inappropriate behaviour by men or boys.
When the police warn us to avoid dark areas or shortcuts at night, I think it is only an idiot who then accuses them of depriving people of their right or choice.
The same when they remind us to adhere to the rules of the road and the appropriate speed limits.
That tells me that society has written and unwritten codes of life. There is the bad and the good, the beautiful and the ugly, the moral and the immoral and the appropriate and the inappropriate. These values exist independent of the wishes of each one of us as individuals.
Like the example of the airports would show, there is nothing narrowly Zimbabwean about these values. Rape has no colour, culture or tribe. So is theft, murder, marriage or violence.
As I write this piece, I cannot presume to fully appreciate the trauma which the young lady who was harassed and stripped by touts at the 4th Street bus terminus must be experiencing.
It is a feeling that most parents would not want to indulge, let alone expect on a relative. Yet that happened in Harare and someone was callous enough to record the amateur video and post it on social media as “free entertainment” to the world. It was all such fun!
That is how depraved the human mind can be.
What followed that disgusting incident were calls for the police to arrest the culprits, lock them in jail, fire all the jail guards and throw away the keys.
So far one person has been arrested and the police appear to be on the spoor of the others. Whether all those involved will be tracked down and punished appropriately, at best that can only be cold comfort for the young lady, which is why it is best to wish her the best in overcoming her trauma.
My gripe is with the hypocritical sisters who tell our young ingenuous daughters that social norms do not matter, that there is nothing like improper behaviour or inappropriate dressing yet they know what to wear when going to work or to a formal meeting or when going to bed.
They almost instinctively know what is appropriate for church and kitchen party. The distinction is as clear as the sun and the moon.
They shout the loudest when an incident like the one referred to above occurs.
They want the law to take its course but forget that the law is a product of culture, traditions, norms, values — all of which they purport to spurn when it suits their wayward behaviour.
They conveniently forget that without these shared commonalities there would be no law to enforce; only the fittest brute would rule the roost.
The young lady who was molested by kombi touts did not invite it on herself by wearing a mini-dress. It is like the warning at an airport concourse; that warning not to leave your luggage unattended is not an inverse justification for thieves.
Most likely the lady did not even think twice about what she was putting on at home. She simply had her mission in town and wore what was “appropriate” for her occasion.
When that misfortune befell her, there is no doubt there were many women and ladies around. None stood up to fight for her rights.
Many might even have looked at themselves if they were properly dressed lest they be the next target.
Some scampered for secure places.
So far it has not been established who recorded the amateur video. It cannot be ruled out that it could be the work of a woman.
Let not women try to play holier than thou. The infamous Uganda “monster maid” is a woman abusing a little infant girl.
She claimed to have been ill treated by none other than a woman, the infant’s mother.
I recently wrote about a Zvishavane woman who nearly murdered her husband by hitting him with a log on the head for reading her WhatsApp correspondence with her boyfriend!
The long and short of it is that we have become a crazy, heartless society where at a scene of an accident people rush to strip the victims of their valuables, record the sensitive images before posting them on social media. Help comes last.
Then this week, there was this insane narrative about the First Lady having incited attacks on women because of the comments she made alleging that she had images of former Vice President Joice Mujuru “inappropriately dressed in a miniskirt” at her house. It’s an example of political or personal hatred gone insane. It’s simply to turn logic on its head.
When mothers tell their daughters to dress appropriately they are not in anyway inviting their sons to molest girls who are inappropriately dressed any more than police who arrest miscreants who molest ladies who are inappropriately dressed are encouraging the same ladies to dress in miniskirts.
Men, and very often, women too, have made snide remarks, sniggered self righteously when seeing a fellow woman pass by inappropriately dressed. This is where the whole idea of the woman asking for it came about.
The First Lady can defend herself. But my point is that let us eschew shallow hypocrisy. The problem of the miniskirt has been with us for a very long time.
That is why it is associated the world over with a particular carnal, nocturnal profession invariably dominated by the so-called fairer sex.
The First Lady is not the first nor shall she be the last to make snide comments about the miniskirt.
For years Zimbabwe has observed the ritual around 16 days of activism against gender based violence. How does it suddenly become a problem of Dr Grace Mugabe? I mean violence against women and the miniskirt?
Would it not make sense if she were well-known for wearing miniskirts, in which case people could justifiably claim that she was a bad influence on young ladies, thus exposing them to attacks by uncouth rascals?
But she is preaching the opposite and leads by example.
So it is back to basics. So long as we accept to be gregarious humans, we shall be guided in our daily lives by norms, values, expectations and acceptable rules of engagement.
To say culture dynamic is not the same as preaching lawlessness in the name of individual choice.
There are penalties and sanctions for certain behaviour, some of which can not be resolved by the constitution.
Not all social codes are written down. And often the unwritten codes have greater influence on our behaviour and social interactions than the written constitution.
It is therefore self indulgent nonsense to try and argue that there is nothing like proper dressing because Zimbabwe does not have a national dress or because prelapsarian man moved around naked.
Let us not expose our little sisters to bad education and influences and hope to make up for that by turning them into victims of primitive men.
