SOON after the harmonised elections last Wednesday, it was business as usual at Mupedzanhamo Market in Mbare at 8am on Friday morning. We got there early because my cousin Piri had an appointment with her old friend Chandisaita. Or just Chandi. They planned to go into a joint business venture ordering and selling second-hand clothes from the bales, mabhero.
At Mupedzanhamo market, we were going to help Piri select clothes that will sell quickly and bring her profit. Customers eager to buy second-hand clothes  were all over the suburbs, the farms and the mines.

The true story of how mabhero get here varies from one seller to the other. But the recurring one is that the bales of clothes come in from America, the UK and Australia via Mozambique, Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia.

When people in these Western countries are tired of their clothes, they send them to the charity shops managed by the Salvation Army, Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists and others. Because people in Western societies have become such big consumers and spenders, the clothes are shipped to Africa to help the poor.  Zimbabwe does not accept old clothes, especially used underwear. But, one way or the other, mabhero come in. From up-market Sam Levy’s Village on Sundays afternoon right down to a growth point in Mberengwa, mabhero clothes are everywhere. These days, Zimbabweans are well dressed.

Chandi had already been in this business for the past three years. After her marriage broke down, she rented a room with her two children in Chitungwiza and sought work to pay school fees and rent. She tried plaiting hair, cooking sadza for sale and selling cheap Chinese-made sandals, but she could not make ends meet.

Then someone introduced her to mabhero.  Since then, Chandi has not looked back. Business is booming. Chandi says  the business needs active, smart and savvy people  with strong  skills to market and sell.

Chandi travels to Mozambique often. She leaves very  early and by mid-day,  she has crossed the border with the help of majoricho, the guys who facilitate immigration and customs, making life easier for cross-border traders. She  buys bales of shoes, any type of shoes from children to adults. Her shoes include sandals, full shoes, high heels, winter boots, Italian, Brazilian, Chinese, American, Spanish, she has them all.

Inside the market, close to the pre-wall along Remembrance Drive, there was a lot of noise and marketers shouting to attract attention to their pile of clothes. We immediately spotted a young man standing on a wooden platform amidst the cacophony of noises, wearing a pink petticoat on top of his jeans and a green T-shirt. In between cat walking and modelling  around his pile of lingerie, he danced and shouted that he had bras or bodices, including some almost new underwear with various prices to suit every woman’s budget.

In a chorus like voice he shouted, “dollar for two mabody! Dollar for two ma knickers. New ones and nice old ones. G-string for mama is one dollar for two! Night dress one dollar! Daddy’s boxer shorts underwear is only one dollar!” The women flocked to him, bending over to select the bras, underwear and various kinds of colourful lingerie and petticoats, and possibly  something for daddy.

One woman held a G-string at me and asked what it was, “Varungu vanoshereketa. Ibhurukwa here iri?” Before I could answer, others broke into laughter. The young man stopped shouting and said, “Oh yes, this is the new thing, madzimai. Why wear something that will make you so hot in this coming weather? A lacy string will do. Move with the times!” I examined the label on the G-string and Piri grabbed it from me and threw it back on the pile. She said, “Sis, why would anyone want to wear another woman’s underwear? Let’s go.”

But Chandi was not going anywhere. She turned to Piri and addressed her impatiently, “What is your problem? You have no education, no certificate and no husband with money. You see an opportunity like this and you want to walk away?” Piri then argued quietly that selling used underwear was unhygienic. Besides, what if the clothes belonged to dead people and their spirits will come back to haunt you? “Normally, we burn our old second-hand clothes, why are the Europeans giving us theirs?” Piri asked.

“What has that got to do with you? Take all that traditional belief back to the village,” said Chandi. Then Chandi explained that all the second-hand underwear responded very well to washing with soap and warm water. And as for the whites, she said you just add a little bleach into a bucket of water, soak for an hour and germs that travelled all the way from overseas would disappear.

She pulled Piri towards her and whispered, “And once you have your nice bra and underwear on, what man would know that it has been worn before by a foreign woman in some far away country? This is Zimbabwe, my sister, and we dance to the tune that is playing. Tamba iri kurira.”

Chandi said this was the best bhero for Piri to buy. Rather than pick each item one by one, they were going to ask for an unopened bale of underwear at wholesale price. Chandi asked the shouting young man who his boss was. He pointed to a woman leaning against the pre-cast wall, with eyes half closed wearing a heavy blue jacket and a long flowing wig, clutching on to her handbag. As Chandi and Piri engaged in conversation with her, I flipped through the underwear, checking the quality and the labels. Some of them had designer names like La Pelle and Victoria Secret, designers I could never afford during my days in the USA. Once the negotiations were over, Piri and Chandi paid US$200 for one big bale of lingerie.

Back at Chandi’s place in Chitungwiza, they spent the whole afternoon washing, ironing and folding the masses of bras, knickers, petticoats, night dresses and men’s boxer shorts.

On Saturday afternoon, I took Piri and Chandi to a farm not too far out of Harare. Chandi’s cousin Learnmore manages the tuckshop on the farm. He was expecting us. They  placed all the underwear on a mat under the mango tree near the old farm manager’s house. More than 20 women came  rushing from their compound houses to the mango tree. Some young men also came along. Learnmore ordered all the women to stand back and explained that they could buy now and pay at the end of the month. He would write down their names.

Before inviting them to select what they wanted, Chandi spoke slowly, telling the women that the underwear had come all the way from America and England, the home of Europeans. It belonged to good Christian women, mostly pastors’ wives and their missionary-type friends. She went on to explain that white people did not suffer from  many sexually transmitted diseases like we do. There were no germs here except the normal ones that can be washed with soap, cold or warm water. I shook my head disapprovingly at Chandi and she ignored me.  “What a heap of lies,” I whispered to Piri. “She could at least tell them the truth.” I said. “What truth? You tell them,” Piri said.

With the ball in my court, I wondered what truth I could tell. That these undergarments were sent to Africa by well-meaning European women because   many African women cannot afford to buy underwear, let alone sanitary pads? That we have allowed this picture of physical and spiritual poverty to be associated with us for centuries? I left them to their business and walked back to the car.

A mother with a baby on her back, perhaps in her late 20s, walked towards me with her bag of lingerie. She was skinny with a thin torn wrapper and a T-shirt  with John 3 verse 16 written on it. She was barefoot, smiling and looking happy with her new purchase. I got out of the car and asked what she had purchased. She took out a white polyester half petticoat with black lace and two full brief black underwear, also with lace and frills including little roses and hearts sewn at the front.

“Very nice elastic,” she said, pulling it and asking me to feel the strength of the half slip. For only two dollars, she said she had undergarments to last her a whole year. I nodded.

The woman then asked that I bring the two ladies again and next time they should bring full dresses, especially costumes and more underwear for men. “Do you feel bad about wearing these items that have been worn by someone else?” I asked her. She replied,  “If you think too much about the person who wore it before, you will not wear it because it hurts a woman’s pride to think that way.” Then she laughed meekly to herself, putting the underwear back in  the plastic bag. “The good thing is, we do not know where the clothes came from or who used to wear them. We just know that the people are white strangers not related to us and that is a good thing.

Zvakanaka zvakadaro.” It is good the way it is. On her face, you could see the pleasure of wearing something new, no matter where it came from and how it got here. It was new to her. It was a bargain.

Watching her walk away with her plastic bag, I felt a certain feeling of discomfort. How is it that we are wearing other people’s used undergarments? Why are we at the receiving end of clothes the Western world no longer wants? Is it because we desire something foreign that we prefer a distant old garment once worn by madam because we believe it to be somewhat cleaner and more civilised? Or is it poverty that makes us do this, kutipfekedza hembe dzekusi dzemumwe mukadzi?

In Shona culture, the clothes of a dead person are sacred. Only people related to the deceased on their mother’s side can handle the clothes and the underwear. Mishandling them can lead to ngozi, that avenging spirit of the dead seeking compensation for a wrong-doing.

And here we were, playing around and handling  strange women’s under clothes. Poverty is stripping away our traditional dignity in favour of something foreign, even when it crosses the boundaries of spiritual respect for the belongings of the dead or alive.

As we drove back, Chandi said: “We wear European undergarments because they are coming from afar and the embarrassment is less because we do not know or care who wore it before as long as it is from overseas. Do not think too much about what can bring you money to survive. Customers have the choice to buy or not to buy. Havasi kufoswa nemunhu.” She said nobody is forcing them.

Despite everything else in our past and present, we have an intimate relationship going on between the people of Zimbabwe and those from the US, Australia,  Britain and some countries in Europe. They are giving us, at very low cost, their undergarments, shoes, jackets, jeans, shirts, baby clothes, socks and everything else that can be worn on the body. We have put our cultural pride and spiritual beliefs aside for the sake of a lacy petticoat and a push-up bra from overseas.

This business of mabhero is big business. It strangely  connects us intimately with those wealthier citizens in this global village. At the end of the day, poverty and the desire for something foreign resulted in the pile of underwear, the indignity that we placed under the mango tree to sell to others.

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

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