Robert Mugabe is renowned for many things, but his starchy dress sense and Savile Row suits are considered the lesser of his crimes. And yet “dictator chic” has found a niche among young people in Zimbabwe.
Wearing a beret, T-shirt or golf shirt bearing the signature “RG Mugabe” is not only a fashion statement but an act of rebellion in major cities where denigrating “Uncle Bob” or “the old man” has almost become de rigueur.
The newest item in the collection is a cap emblazoned “1924”, the year of Mugabe’s birth – suggesting that, far from being a liability, the 89-year-old’s status as Africa’s oldest leader is a point of pride.
Under the brand House of Gushungo – Mugabe’s clan name – the 89-year-old president’s signature is splayed in silver studs across caps, T-shirts, coffee mugs and berets. Some items show his birth year, 1924, in Roman numerals. (AFP)
This improbable successor to Che Guevara or Barack Obama in cool iconography is the work of House of Gushungo. “It’s a bit daring,” says Jason Moyo, a journalist at the Mail & Guardian newspaper who last year visited Yedu Nesu, the company behind Gushungo. “It’s rebellious: everyone in the cities is supposed to be against Mugabe. People don’t expect urban young professionals to support him.”
The design is hardly spectacular, Moyo adds, but the Mugabe signature appeals to a particular group, typically around 30 and running their own business, who feel they are doing just fine under his 33-year rule.
House of Gushungo sales have been slowly rising over the past three years. The T-shirts, starting at $10, umbrellas and other regalia were a big hit at Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party’s last conference. Saint Mahaka, the label’s designer, told the BBC: “The young guys are into fashion. They talk about label, label, label … he [Mugabe] is already a brand himself. We decided, there is Versace, there is Polo, there is Tommy Hilfiger, people are putting on these labels, but don’t know who they are and what the story is. We know President Mugabe’s story, we know who he is.”
But Gushungo may be a victim of its own success. Zanu-PF reportedly wants to cash in on the brand and the justice minister is seeking to patent the RG Mugabe signature. In another stunt aimed at wooing young voters born long after his liberation struggle, a new video shows Mugabe, accompanied by a hip-hop beat, putting a phone to his ear and asking: “What’s up?” – Guardian News and Media 2013
A trio of friends from Soweto, Vuyo Mpantsha and twins Justice and Innocent Mukheli, started a photo/fashion blog to document “South Africa as they see it”. They shoot in different areas around Johannesburg with the aim of recapturing moments of their childhood. Visit iseeadifferentyou.tumblr.com to see high fashion meet history.
Salma is tired of running her mitumba (pre-owned) clothing stall in Umoja, Nairobi. She says business isn’t what it used to be and she spends too much time chasing the credit deals she has with her regular clients. They love the clothes, she says, but they never want to pay.
And when it rains, she has to go to the clients, through the endless traffic jam, rather than wait for them because they are reluctant to venture into the mud and sludge of the rickety market where her jua kali (informal) stall stands. And it’s been raining a lot again.
Salma’s clothes come from the huge bales offloaded at Mombasa, dispatched by Oxfam and similar charities around the world. The bales are transported from Mombasa and emptied by the mamas at the Kikomba market, near town, where Salma is a regular.
At Kikomba, most of the clothes are sold for a hundred shillings (R10) or slightly more. But then there are the numbers that the mamas know will sell at five times the 1 000 shillings that Salma’s willing to pay. These are mostly from design-house job lots. Burberry, Guess and Next are common, and lots of Italian names she doesn’t even know. Among the shoes, she sometimes finds Prada. In Nairobi, Salma is one of few sources for prêt-à-porter clothes from Paris! Her clients know it. And her clients will pay. In time.
In the afternoons, Salma usually leaves her stall in the care of three unemployed youngsters whom she pays 100 bob each (R10) for the shift. They tolerate the afternoon teens who come to the stall, try everything on, but never buy a thing.
But Salma will be back in Umoja in time to meet her regular clients as they come past in the evening. She knows her clients well, and knows who to call when she’s found what. And she’s usually right. But once she’s agreed on a bargain price with a client, she’ll often be told, “Sina pesa saa hii!” (I don’t have money now!). And this usually happens after Salma has packed the garment. So she gets tied into another credit deal that runs for a month at least. Salma says that business isn’t what it used to be.
“Maisha ni ngumu!” (Life is hard!) she exclaims. “I work for my small money.”
Salma at her stall in Umoja. (Brian Rath)Clothes for sale at an informal market in Nairobi. (Flickr/computerwhiz417)
Her stall opens at 7am. It stays open till 7pm. After packing up and paying the guy to take her stock to the store, she’ll go shopping for fresh vegetables and groceries, and get home by 8pm. She’ll cook and eat, and by 9.30pm will have fallen asleep in front of the TV. She’ll maybe wake around 2am and drag herself off to bed. And she’ll be up before 5am again.
She says she can’t carry on doing this for little return. Business is not what it used to be.
Ultimately, Salma wants to settle near the sea and she wants to learn to swim. She loves the beach and she swears she would quickly lose the extra 10kg just because of the ‘coasto’ lifestyle.
She’s Muslim, so she’s salama (at peace) among the Swahilis at the coast and she’s thought of opening a mitumba stall in Mombasa, where there are few stalls. But her ideal business would be to sell African print-couture in the upmarket coastal town of Malindi. If she could get enough money for Malindi, she would concentrate on her own designs.
She knows she could do well because every time she gets the cash to buy fabrics, and the time to guide the sewing fundi in making up the dresses, she sells them within a day, before her bigger clients have even seen them. She could make her eclectic African necklaces in Malindi too, but she just doesn’t have the time in Nairobi.
Salma has a sister living in the States, another in South Africa, and both are doing well. But her dad is old and he wants her nearby, so Salma is struggling in Kenya. Still, she enjoys her life. When the clients have paid, usually in the first week of the new month, she goes out to have fun with her late-twenties and 30-something friends. They’re a mixed bunch, Muslims and Christians alike, a few with kids but most not. One or two of them are married. They usually go clubbing and might dance to house or R&B at some place in the hip suburb of Westlands. Salma prefers drinking spirits to beer – Napoleon brandy and Sprite.
Even if Salma drinks and doesn’t ever wear the austere black abaya (popularly,the ‘bui bui’) or veil when out, she’s an otherwise devoted Muslim: She’s up every morning before five in her ‘bui-bui’ and a thick red scarf that she wraps around her head in the style of a Tuareg nomad. She puts her red Maasai blanket on the floor as her prayer mat and she reads passages from Qur’an for an hour, daily before daybreak.
Salma tells me that during the holy month of Ramadan, she was at the head-grinding blender from 4am so she could make her fresh vegetable ‘smoothie’ and eat a chapatti before the sun was out. She cooks many dishes but admits that she lacks the patience to make good chapattis. And she laughs a bit when relating how the noise of the blender drove her neighbours nuts before sunrise. It was only the Somali sisters in the flat upstairs who understood.
On the advent of Eid ul Adha in October last year, she cooked the customary pilau rice and goat meat as a special treat for a few invited friends. It was an honour to be invited but I could see she had battled to provide. With no alcohol present, she bought Coke and Sprite, warm, from the shop across the dusty road. But afterwards, tired and stressed, she admitted that “a Guinness would be great”.
Salma is tired of running her mitumba stall in Umoja, just outside Nairobi. “It’s time to leave this place,” she says. Business is not what it used to be.
Brian Rath was born and raised in Cape Town. He now lives and writes in Kenya, and has a novel due to be published shortly.
The generosity to be found at busy intersections on the streets of Mozambique’s capital can be puzzling to first-time visitors.
My Canadian-based partner, Imelda, was hardly a first-time tourist — she grew up in Maputo. But she was still caught off guard when a couple of shoe-shine boys crouched down and set to work on her best stilettos while we were waiting for a robot to change.
For a moment she thought she was lucky — perhaps it was a new local custom, a way of offering compliments of the season? But when she looked down she was shocked.
Her clean white shoes had been covered in black-tan shoe polish. Before she could recover, the leader of the shoe shine brigade stood up with his waxy brush and demanded: “100 Meticais, menina [sister].”
In a fit of rage typical of a backhome diasporian, Imelda waved down a municipal police officer. Climbing off his motorbike the burly officer burst out laughing when he heard Imelda’s complaint. When he calmed down, he addressed the chief waxer: “Do Santos, sort out your customer!”
Then, leaving no doubt about whose side he was on, he told the boy: “At least today you can afford sardhinhas [tinned fish].” He started laughing again as he climbed back on his bike and rode off. Imelda was left fuming about corrupt police and — more immediately — about how she was going to address the meeting we were on our way to with any dignity in her smeary black-brown heels.
We were going to Maputo’s Alumni Scholars Club where Imelda was to give a speech describing her experiences as a young Maputo girl who had moved to Canada where she was doing an MBA at a top university.
Clearly the guest speaker needed to look her best and live up to the “returning banking alumni” image.
Her nails and make-up were immaculate and when she got dressed that morning she had settled on a white Giorgio Armani suit — complete with matching stilettos. She cursed the shoe polishers. “I am not gonna throw you a single dime. Just look at what you’ve done to my shoes!”
But the polish boys simply threatened to apply another layer of liquid black wax. The leader spoke: “If you don’t give us 50 Meticais we will confiscate your shoes. Do you know how much wax costs?” While he presented his ultimatum, the other boys tried to grab Imelda’s shoes off her feet. The situation was getting crazier and eventually I threw a 100 Meticais note (about R40) towards the boys, grabbed a sobbing Imelda and rushed for the nearest taxi.
Maputo’s streets have become synonymous with the unwelcome attentions of shoe-shiners. Waiting for a robot to change at a busy intersection makes pedestrians easy targets. Most of the time the boys don’t even use genuine shoe polish, but a dense industrial liquid that often corrodes shoes. Most disturbingly they don’t care about the colour of the reluctant customers’ shoes. They apply whatever they happen to have.
Having cleaned your shoes, it is common to threaten to seize them unless the ransom is paid. As we hurriedly looked for replacement white shoes in Maputo’s boutiques, Imelda could not come to terms with the change in her shoes — from crisp white to greasy black. People like Imelda — returning diasporians and tourists — are the most likely victims of the shoeshine boys.
We locals have adopted a more cautious approach to robot crossings in our seaside capital. 100 Meticais for a compulsory shoe polish? That’s a good day’s business in Maputo.
Skand Felicio is a pharmacist in Maputo. This post was first published in the M&G newspaper.
There is a new kind of man on the streets of Tanzania’s biggest cities. In Dar es Salaam, Arusha and Mwanza, these men wear designer clothes, shoes, belts, bracelets, rings and chains. They talk about their new Calvin Klein jeans and Fila shoes and see no problem in buying a pink floral shirt and wearing it with light-blue sneakers. They do not bother with the big Tanzanian musicians. It is Hollywood names that roll off their tongues as if they were speaking about a neighbour.
These men, who work for private companies or non-governmental organisations that pay them well, leave work early on Fridays so they can rest before starting another shift in the nightclubs, where they drink expensive cocktails instead of beer. You can smell their expensive imported fragrances from several metres away. You will find them with a Blackberry in their left hand and an iPhone in their right.
Spending a lot time at their local barbershop has become a must for these metrosexual men, for whom a simple haircut without oiling, massaging and scrubbing is just not enough. Gone are the days when men would get their hair cut or their beards trimmed by an old man with a mirror, a bench and a chair under a big tree. No, our metrosexuals spend more time in barbershops than women do in beauty salons.
Because of the metrosexual, the modern barbershop seems to be one of the fastest-growing businesses in the cities. A friend of mine recently sunk about R40 000 to open one in an upmarket suburb in Dar es Salaam. He has no doubt that in the next few months the business will pay him well.
From the interior of these modern shops, you get an idea of the services provided and what they cost. The nicer the place, the more expensive – and expansive – the selection. But in most you will find a big flatscreen television – or two, depending on the size of the shop – to entertain those waiting their turn. A fancy sofa and a music system are essential, as is a shelf full of creams, oils, powders and other male-centric beauty products.
The basic service is, of course, the cutting of hair and the trimming of beards, which are done by male barbers. The customer can decide whether he prefers to have his beard shaved with a razor or with “magic powder”. This special mixture is used with water and is more expensive because it leaves a man’s cheeks softer that a razor and it can take up to four days before the beard starts growing again. A normal haircut can set you back R15 but using the magic powder costs you double.
After the barber is done with his customer, a beautiful young lady will approach service available on the menu.
“Are you scrubbing?” she will say in a very polite soft voice. Any man will agree to the proposal, even if it sets him back another R8.
The scrubbing process starts on the face and the neck and usually takes 15 to 20 minutes. And then, as a customer waits for the next step, the girl will ask again: “Brother, what about your nails? Would you like a manicure and a pedicure?” Another R5 for each of those services. At the end of all this, a man will be taken to another small room with sinks for the cleaning process. The young lady washes the customer’s head and face before applying creams and sprays.
Women do not really like the idea of their partners going to these new barbershops. After all, the beautiful women in cute outfits who work at the barbershops might easily steal their partners from them. Some women wait outside for their partners to finish so that they can protect them from the beauticians. They might be right in one way or another. The young women try hard to make sure that they keep their customers happy so that they are left with a tip after the service.
Still, every modern woman in Tanzania would die to have her very own metrosexual man. Most of them do not mind having men who look as beautiful as them. After all, their good looks do not come cheap and the metrosexual man has the flash and the cash to keep the barbershops, and his woman, smiling.
Erick Mchome is a 2011 winner of the David Astor Journalism Award. He lives in Dar es Salaam. This post was first published in the M&G newspaper.
