Sekai Nzenza
MY eleven-year-old niece Edna came home from school crying. Some kid called her “Sudan”, meaning she was very black. This was not the first time Edna had been called names like that. Edna is very dark skinned or simply, very black. Her eyebrows and eye lashes are very black too and so is her thick hair. Sometimes they call her “tsito”, or charcoal, negro, bantu and some other not so nice names.

To console her, my cousin Piri placed Edna on her lap and said: “How beautiful are these people who call you black? Are they whites or Coloreds themselves?” Piri asked.

Edna shook her head, her eyes red from crying.  Edna said she cannot wait to grow up and use lightening creams so she can look brown and beautiful.
When Edna was born, people said she was the spitting image of me because she was so dark. There are some similarities between us, especially in the skin colour, tone and some features.

But when it comes to measuring the depth of blackness, Edna takes the prize because the gums of her teeth are also black whereas mine are pink or reddish, the colour of most Africans.

This kid is strikingly black.
Piri stroked Edna’s face, gently soothing her.

Pointing to me, Piri said: “Long ago, that aunt of yours used to look just like you, except you are better looking than she was because this tete lived in the village with no running water or soap.

No bread with butter or meat. Tete was really skinny and ugly. Is that not true?” Piri asked with that “I dare you to challenge me” grin on her face.
I agreed because I suddenly had this vivid picture of myself in the village back then.

I remembered the trauma I suffered in those pre-independence days when beauty was measured by the shades of your skin. Brown or golden brown skin was beautiful and black skin was not.

In a family of eight girls, people said I was the most unattractive of them all. There was nothing going for me because I was too dark and very skinny with masses of thick unmanageable hair. To make it worse, we had cousins, my father’s brother’s children, who were so light skinned with brownish hair and freckles.

Yet they did not have any white blood in them at all. They were just so brown and everyone said they were very beautiful, kunge maKaradhi.
My blackness did not worry me that much, until the day Matirasa came to the river and made the comment about my blackness.

Matirasa was the beauty queen who lived in Salisbury. When her marriage failed due to infertility and nobody wanted to marry her, Matirasa had moved to the big city.

In whispers, villagers said Matirasa was a commercial sex worker or pfambi. After some months in Salisbury, Matirasa came back to the village for a visit with her face looking yellowish like the colour of a ripe mango or cucumber.

She used many skin-lightening creams. They said her new beauty was like a white madam, kunge mukadzi wechirungu.
One day Matirasa joined us down at the river where we swam, bathed and learnt the rituals of womanhood.  There were many of us girls from various villages and also young and older women.

We washed our hair with ruredzo that vine-like plant with thick thorns and purple flowers. We also used ruredzo as soap. We sat on the rocks scrubbing our feet with stones, taking turns to scrub each other’s backs. Our bodies were of various shades of black; from the very black like me, to medium black called mushava to very light skinned mutsvuku.

Matirasa slowly took off her dress with pleats and a zip at the back. Then she took off her Afro wig revealing her plaited hair underneath. She placed all her clothes and underwear in a nice pile and then she pointed to the clothes and said, in Salisbury, those were the type of clothes European women wore. After that, she called us all and lectured that we should not use ruredzo or any of the native herbs because European soap was so much better.

Matirasa also brought a toilet bag full of soaps and perfumes. She displayed the products for all of us to see. Lux beauty soap, Butone and Ambi skin-lightening cream.
Impulse for spraying her armpits so she did not smell when a man’s nose happened to get very close. We sat there, admiring Matirasa’s skin and outfits for a while. Then we left her talking to the older women while we jumped back in the river to swim.

Later on, we came back to bask in the sun on the rocks near the women. Then I heard Matirasa ask who among the girls the very dark and skinny girl one was. “Kasikana katematema ako ndekekwaani?” Someone said I was Mai Munyengetero’s child number six, the middle one between Charity and Paida.

Matirasa then casually said she did not know that there was another middle girl who came out so much darker than all the others. And everyone laughed, like it was a funny joke.

I remember that painful comment very well. The weather was very dry and hot. It was during Rhodes and Founder’s holidays. I can still see Matirasa’s pile of clean new clothes, Mariposa shoes, toilet bag and shampoo bottle.

My blackness was ugly. Because this was Matirasa, the woman who lived in Salisbury and knew everything about beauty and white people, what she said was painful.

I lay there on the rocks, thinking and asking why I was not as brown and golden-coloured like my cousins Millicent and Rutendo. Or why I was not a little browner like my mother, my sister Jessie or Constance?

Later on at boarding school, my confidence and self esteem started to improve because the missionaries loved me the way I was. They did not talk about blackness or anything like that. Even though the pictures of Jesus they showed us, he resembled a blue-eyed blonde-haired white man, they said we were created in the image of God.

I loved the missionaries and I loved Jesus. Sometimes I think that was the reason I became a very strong born-again Christian.
I got the attention of Miss Hutchinson, the missionary. She would often ask me to show my teeth and smile then lead everyone in the praise and worship song called,

“Have you got a sunshine smile? Wherever you may be, whatever you may do, have you got a sunshine smile?” I had good white teeth then and the white of my eyes were really white, not this yellowish colour that comes with age and drinking wine in smoke filled bars and night clubs during my student years.

Some years later, when I was in the village in 2009, Matirasa came back to the village when her body was in decline. She was much older now and no longer as light skinned as she was.

Her skin had gone back to its dark natural colour, but she had dark burnt spots on her cheeks caused by the lightening creams. She died soon afterwards. When we were burying her on the anthill near Chinyika River, I tried very hard to forget what she had said about me.  But that comment kept on creeping back into my memory. “Ko kasikana katematema ako ndekekwaani?”

But I had already forgiven her, hoping too that she had forgiven herself for being misled to believe that light skin is so much more beautiful than black skin. I forgave her because she was subjected to the same advertising and the Western notions of beauty still existing today.

We are all trying to conform to the Hollywood style of advertising.
Recently, South African musician Nomasonto “Mshoza” Mnisi proudly admitted to using skin-lightening cream because it makes her feel “more beautiful and confident”.

She said: “I’ve been black and dark-skinned for many years, I wanted to see the other side. I wanted to see what it would be like to be white and I’m happy.”
But for how long will she be happy?

Most people do not know about the poisonous concentration of the chemicals contained in the products sold on the black market.
In January 2013, a University of Cape Town senior researcher Dr Lester Davids showed that one woman in three in South Africa bleached her skin.

The same report showed that some of these creams cause blood cancers, leukaemia and various types of liver and kidneys disease. Not only that, they also cause a severe skin condition called ochronosis which is a high pigmentation resulting in a dark purple skin shade.

Who will educate people about these dangerous products? There must come a day when we shall see no skin-lightening creams masquerading as ointments for curing skin rashes at Mupedzanhamo, Gulf or the flea markets.

My niece Edna is so dark and so very beautiful like some of those Senegalese, Malian or Sudanese women. But Edna hates herself.
In this, she is not alone because we are continuously assaulted with advertising that challenges the belief and self esteem of who we are as Africans.

We are haunted by the notions and perceptions of beauty from our colonial past.
Edna and many millions of Africans like her carry the gene, pull of the first human beings to be created.  It is probably true that we, African women, belong to the original mother Earth and we carry the colour of God.

That our God has to be the same God who created black people in His own likeness.
The same God who was here with us long before the missionaries, the colonialist and advertising arrived in Africa.

How can we not be beautiful?
In this globalised world where the benchmark of beauty is set in Hollywood, women and men in Africa are using creams to run away from blackness. We do not know who the African woman looks like any more.  We want to conform to an ideal we do not know. Daily, we look in the mirror and we want to look like someone else.

“Uri mutema zvako asi wakanaka,” Piri told Edna, reminding her that she is still beautiful even though she is very black.
“You just study hard. As long as you have education and a job, men will find you attractive, no matter how black you are. Look at your Tete here, despite her blackness, she did not do so badly herself in the wide world of men.”

That was meant to provoke me again. But I let it pass as I often do when Piri does that.
I then sat there, watching Piri plait Edna’s thick hair in beautiful corn rows. The past suddenly appeared and disrupted the present.

Looking at this beautiful 11-year-old forced me to confront my past memories of self loathing.
When will the benchmark of beauty change, so young girls like Edna can grow up knowing that they are beautiful? We Africans have not healed from notions of beauty deeply embedded in our colonial past.

But we cannot continue to blame that past.  The journey to fully define and accept our shades of blackness and beauty has yet to begin.

Dr Sekai Nzenza is a writer and cultural critic. She holds a PhD in International Relations and works as a development consultant.

You Might Also Like

Comments

Take our Survey

We value your opinion! Take a moment to complete our survey