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Mr Charamba

Tendai Mugabe recently in PORT LOUIS, Mauritius—
There was nothing amiss in President Mugabe wearing a long-sleeved Cuban shirt during the official opening of the African Economic Platform Summit in Mauritius on Monday as it was in line with the prescribed dress code requested by the event organisers, Presidential spokesperson Mr George Charamba has said. Mr Charamba said the shirt reflected the President’s ideological thinking.

At the onset of the meeting, the master of ceremonies lauded President Mugabe and said he was one of the high-profile figures who had adhered to the prescribed dress code.

Social media was abuzz with messages querying the President’s dress code after pictures of him were captured by journalists.

“The dress code has been prescribed namely that there should be smart, casual and the President indeed adhered to that dress code,” he said.

“The trouble is that we are so schooled in British dress etiquette that any departure from it amounts to scruffiness and its more interesting that the President was putting on a Cuban shirt. In their estimates, those critics’ estimates, anything that departs from British sartorial tradition passes for scruffiness. That’s how colonised we are.”

Mr Charamba’s comments were echoed by the chief operating officer of the African Union Foundation Mr Dumisani Mngadi who said: “We love President Mugabe because he kept to the script. As African, he is among those who have read the prescribed dress code when we ask specifically that we do not want a suit, we do not want a tie, we do not want a jacket. We want accessibility. We want our people to be able to access people. But more than anything, these suits we wear in our meetings do not impact in our communities. When people are wearing the shirt like I am wearing now it means it impacts on the communities of our continent because these things are produced by us.”

Mr Mngadi added: “So if the President is wearing things like this it means the President is greeting, is saying he has confidence in our people. This is about intra-African trade. We want to see us also wearing our own things.

“It is only then that our economies can move forward. It’s about the food we consume. We must begin to consume locally. The suits dress code that we said we don’t want speaks exactly to intra-African trade. It seeks to boost the economies. It makes an impact on the communities because it’s our communities that produce the clothes that we wear not the suits.”