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and hearty crow of The Herald, as part of the conquering Zimpapers stable.
Hard on the heels of being crowned king at the Superbrands, a market survey this week showed the paper again ruling the roost at nearly 50 percent of readership. The second, is a sister paper, H-Metro, 28 percent and the weekly Sunday Mail commanding 31 percent.
Another daily under the stable Chronicle commands 18 percent. That the rest follow at a yawning distance, tell we are worlds apart.
Now the rank outsiders, the closest being a distant second with less than half the readership and half the size and half the price and half the coverage, etc.
Talking of the others, where this villager’s greatest critic rakes in the murky waters, they have a mere 5 percent in towns and a mere 1 percent in the villages. My foot! This villager is not bothered by the criticism, which borders on envy. This villager does not regret, leaving behind his donkeys and cattle to write for this stable.
The village beauty vs Miss Zimbabwe
Back in the village, and especially yonder in the land of milk, honey and dust or Guruve if you want to be prompt, there is always anything for everyone. Miss Zimbabwe provoked the villager in me.
The village is, as we have always demonstrated here, a land of plenitude all, in the course of a continuing rustic idyll.
It is no different when it comes to girls: the lean and the tall; the short and plump; the pint-sized, mid-sized, rickety or match-stick-straight and whatever description fits in between.
And the village has names for all that too: inter alia, zvitsikanyoka, chododo, chideya, hunduhwe, mutsigori wehandakamwe, musvosvanyongo, chigagairwa, ndonda, etc.
Even some faces are “long” while others are “short”; some have dimples, some have pimples, some, if not most, haven’t. The faces are just plain. Some have flat noses; some have long, almost European-like noses. Then there is that girl with the famous gap between her front teeth.
The hair is usually kinky, plaited red-hot, stone-straightened and, with the proliferation of hair-singeing chemicals, almost European-like.
In the latter case, the hair is in perpetual rebelliousness, always trying to claw back to the original African state. Ikoko isharaude!
The beauty is in the eye in the beholder, as the saying goes and there is as such every suitor and man for each category and individual of girls.
Even then, there are those who are snapped early by suitors while others are seen later, even dangerously so sometimes as there could be some worry that a certain girl might never get married at all.
Then when the time comes, the girl gets married at this late stage when she is called a tsikombi.
Such is the varied face of village beauty that more or less is replicated elsewhere, even in the city, which happens to be the adopted home of some of us.
Here there is always some kind of beauty that does not tally with the village perception; and there seems to be different parameters of the same too.
Can it not be pointed out that in Zimbabwe and in Africa where the majority of people are girls and women, for that matter, the parameter and the paragon and the value of beauty only has to come from the village or replicate the village if it is to be representative?
Soon or later, we will have Miss Africa, says the soothsayer and I believe him.
Beauty parades
Of course, in the village there are no beauty contests, or parades.
The closest we have is the subtle competition by the girls themselves as they try to look the smartest they can, spending much time at Dande River or in the bath.
The result of which, of course, are the shining shins and visages.
Suffice to say that the idea of beauty contests is quite a rarity; and one which you get to hear of from some far-off African village.
When you get to think of the beauty pageants of Harare’s world you know you have a different kettle of fish.
This villager won’t get into the finer and oft not so flattering details of the contests. But some things can be pointed out.
This villager followed with interest the Miss Zimbabwe pageant, run in a non-village friendly place – called the Harare International something, something. There were too many ghosts there, no girls and women in the crowd but ghosts of his sisters. There is this one who looked much like a Barbie doll, fake eyelashes, fake fingernails, colourful hair with heavy highlights, as the villager learnt this is what they call it and heavily powdered faces. Good heavens! Is this what they call beauty? Has beauty changed?
Turning to the ramp, the villager was shocked by these thin and wiry figures parading as ‘‘beauty queens”. In the village, we call them ndonda and we should consult a traditional healer to deal with the worms in their stomachs, appetise and place them on feeding schemes.
Surely, such a poor spectacle cannot command royal presence and reference?
And as the Europeans they copy have become so obsessed with building their formerly anorexic figures what will our own sisters do next?
This villager has had it that European women are now so obsessed with getting fuller figures that they are now doing all sorts of bust and butt enhancement procedures some of which have been fatal.
In the other extreme revelation, they are now said to be consuming poultry products to get a bit of fat and get shapely or curvy. Hail the new species of broiler!
Perhaps the Miss Rural contest (whatever happened to it?) should become our flagship contest. We have turned full circle.
And it is time to seriously look into the idea of Miss Africa contest. The soothsayer says there is nothing like that at the moment.
This should surely introduce a different ball game altogether: a game not ruled by the dictates of the former slavers and colonialists. We will soon remove the colonial spectacles and see properly.
We can’t continue subjecting ourselves to the parameters of these cultural, social, political and economic imperialists.
Better still, we can do without the inane contests altogether. Can someone tell me what we will lose? What does parading our sick-looking, wiry and ghostly sisters benefit us?
When love is forever
Speaking of alien cultures and practices the villager cannot help talking about the craze of what they call Saint Valentine’s Day, which was on Monday.
Whatever the history of this day, which of course has no roots on the continent, one would be surprised at just how people could be so obsessed with this passing fad (just like Christmas, you may add).
Some people have, and you hear this even on radio, named (was about to say “christened”) February “the month of love”.
In the village we count this as our second moon and we call it Mwedzi waKukadzi, which this villager’s forefathers so called after noticing the tendency of women to exclude men in eating the fresh delicacies of the fields, thus early in the ripening stage of crops in the fields.
And now the month of love! Is that not too Eurocentric?
We thought one should love their spouse all year round? Yet this villager is not lost to the depredations of the commercial world given such gullibility.
And you hear of a school making kids wear Valentine’s special clothes and pay for it. What curriculum is that? The village soothsayer says this is a pagan belief and that is it continues being promoted our children will go for early sex at the expense of academics.
Zimbabwe must wake up and stem this dilution of our proud African culture by some alien culture driven by corporate greed.
Of Goliath and David
When a whole bloc of 27 nations, rich with the fat of exploiting others in the past 500 years and representing hundreds of million people, gang up on a little teapot-shaped country of no more than 15 million inhabitants, it is a classic case of Goliath and David.
The Goliath tries all within its mighty evil power to strangulate, rape, plunder, pillage and punish the little David that has only asked to be humane and human and possess his God-given endowments.
It is clearly an unbalanced act of might: the other thinks might is right while the other thinks it is righteousness that is right.
The righteousness of the right to possess and own, all made sweeter in the face of dispossession.
But Goliath has some modicum of shame in the limited way of inherent evil.
He says he is going to relax some of his evil hold on little Goliath.
But it doesn’t seem to make any difference.
And thankfully David holds on just for the moment when he delivers a sucker punch. But Zimbabwe is not for sale and will never be. MDC-T has suddenly gone quiet. But we know that after the grandstanding and stage-managed violence in recent weeks it is a fait accompli. Maoko, maoko, maoko mudenga! Hezvoko, bwa bwa, one time!
Reclaiming our legacy
This time around this villager went right into the soothsayer’s mud-and-pole hovel, having been invited. The soothsayer, a ghostly figure, sat on reed mat, pulled out a tobacco pouch, snuffed and frowned to push the powdered stuff down the nostrils, his hot-red eyes almost popping out.
The soothsayer says Zimbabwe is good and will get much better, when the great revolutionary party, the epitome of our livelihood, humanism and freedom delivers a sucker punch to the Western puppets at the next plebiscite.
This, says the soothsayer, will be achieved through service delivery and people-centred projects. With food abound due to the rains that have visited us at the benevolence of the ancestors.
Since two moons ago, the ancestors have been very kind and forthright, watering every part of this land of Munhumutapa with their saliva, sweat and blood.
The soothsayer, however, warns the great party against complacency, even when it is clear that the puppets are down on their knees. The soothsayer also warns those abusing the great revolutionary party for their own personal gains at the expense of the people. Those are not the values that pushed us to go to war.
Here this one from the soothsayer verbatim: “If all of us were like Mugabe, this country would be great. They searched for his bank account all over the world and found no coin, kana tiki zvayo. All Members of Parliament who have not been delivering will lose in the primary elections and this could be the end of their political career. I bet to my last goat!”
Not yet mubarak
When one comes to think of it, the heady days that characterised Egypt in the last three weeks appear so hollow at least from a bird’s eye view whence we are watching.
It’s not yet mubarak, the soothsayer says!
So the man of that homophone finally stepped down and the army, the one army he was commander-in-chief just yesterday, took over.
The army that is massively hand-held by the US by way of training and equipment and aid.
The army that was created to create a buffer against its own people and people of the Egyptian likeness, the Arabs.
But we hear the shouts of “mubarak!” ringing across the desert.
The soothsayer says another Mubarak is in the offing and unfortunately when the cosmetic reforms that are likely, flake off in due time and the people see the fraud, there won’t be a chance to do another uprising.
The status quo and America have learnt their lessons and people-power will be no more.
Maybe it’s time the people of Egypt and Africa sought to reclaim the land of Pharaohs for the good of the continent and the world.
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