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Tichaona Zindoga My Turn
I am a 28-year-old African male. well, this profiling may not sound relevant in our everyday lives in this part of the world; maybe elsewhere, too.
However, the profiling may help my interlocutors understand the background that colours my judgments and, chiefly, my writings, for better or for worse.
Of course, I did not choose to be born in, and belong to, Africa but do not consider it either a biological or geographical error or aberration, Lucifer Mandengu-style.
I am an African, as Thabo Mbeki would put it.
That is quite important especially when tackling issues relating to African existence as some people may probably get it twisted.
Writing is one of the simplest ways to court controversy.
Sometimes I court it inadvertently because of my being an African male, which condition predisposes me to certain worldviews which may not be an easy swallow for others.
That is why such issues as the recent Ugandan law that prohibits homosexuality, and in particular the defiance shown by President Yoweri Museveni, capture my imagination.
I cannot help but admire Museveni for his bravery and his moral uprightness in light of the bullying from Western countries that even threatened to withhold aid from this “poor African country”.
The surfeiting love shown by the west to Africa in recent times on the issue of gay rights follows a well-worn trajectory.
They gave us slavery.
They gave us colonialism.
They gave us neo-colonialism.
Now it is gay rights and these kind people, in showing us the way, will not give us aid if we do not accept homosexuality!
There is something rather curious, though, about these rights that they seek to project to Africa.
First of all, the leaders of these states are born of biological mothers and fathers in unions that are naturally made for the purpose of procreation.
Yes, US President Barack Obama is born of his father and mother — the father being African like me — ditto David Cameron and other Western leaders.
Secondly, even in Western countries homosexuality does not have universal acceptance and western countries have not imposed sanctions or withheld services to states that prohibit homosexuality. Questions abound as to how creation will subsist, at least in Africa, when the poor Africans get starved for rejecting the unnatural and unscientific, as Uganda taught us, or are enticed by few crumbs of bread and pieces of silver to accept the same.
Asian countries, as conservative as Africans, are not being pressured and cajoled into accepting homosexuality.
Why Africa?
Is this another way to check and decimate the poor black race?
Why are we so blest?
Should we owe our nature, humanity and existence to these Anglo-Saxon super gods?
But President Museveni literally gave the western countries a rude finger — which they must understand very well — and stood by the principle that so many African countries have set in rejecting same-sex marriages.
By the way, President Museveni also expressed revulsion at the idea of using the mouth in ways other than “picking food” or kissing. He just could not understand it. Many Africans understand, and have applauded, President Museveni.
He at least showed us how we could be Africans and be our proud selves in light of cultural imperialism and threats to sovereignty; both moral and political. And right now, even the proponents of the so-called gay rights, admit the tactic of trying to bully Africans into accepting alien concepts can backfire spectacularly.
Africans are a proud people; even when we are perceived to be poor and backward, we that hail from the dark continent. This pride teaches us to identify Soddom and Gomorrah when we sense them, as conspiracy against laws of nature when one the queer (figuratively and literally) takes place.
We also see real beauty in our African women, and sorry to say, Western ideas about beauty do not quite wash with us although a whole cultural battle is now on. I am thinking of a particular picture that I saw on Monday. The picture aroused my young African male interest. It was of one Lupita, as the world has come to know her. Her full name is Lupita Nyong’o, a Kenyan woman born in Mexico 31 years ago and raised in Kenya while she was educated in the USA.
Her claim to fame is her acting career which has seen her sweep several awards, including an Oscar for the best supporting act.
I was not able to follow the ceremony on TV, but a picture of her which appeared in the UK Guardian got me revisiting the debate about beauty — and Lupita presented quite a curious subject. She was photographed clutching her trophy in the right hand, laughing sumptuously while her slender figure stood out in an outfit that barely covered her shimmering upper body: hands uncovered; chest bare but for scant covering.
Her back was also largely bare until just to certain point above the waist.
The dress was full skirted.
Lupita would not be different from other female parsonages and guests on the red carpet: she has on very few occasions appeared covered generously in the upper body.
In the world of celebrities and red carpet the females usually try to outdo each other in terms of exposure and it is this attention-seeking that led one Lady Gaga to wear a dress completely made of meat, whatever the science that helped create such a curiosity.
The said bare chest of Lupita’s was bony and sinewy; like her arms. (US president Barack Obama’s wife Michelle is often admired for her strong arms, too.)
Lupita is said to be a fanatic of the gym and no doubt worked out ferociously for her appearance at the Oscars. I immediately opined on my social network that I thought African women were better off fuller and more dignified and matronly than Lupita of the picture. I got sympathetic responses from some male interlocutors.
A female friend, though, chided me for reducing women to objects whose only value is in how they look and “lumping everyone under the label ‘African women’ whose beauty is only defined through your eyes”.
Which brings to the fore the issue of beauty — African beauty.
Zimbabwe is one of the places that have seen a surge in “beauty enhancing” products from facial creams that bleach the skin to almost look like that of white people to hair pieces that are anything from dead white people’s hair to animal fur.
This is not a new phenomenon.
For a couple of generations now, people have grown used to images of “American Girl” or such like white beauties being held up as the beauty gold standard.
We have seen crazes in skin lighteners from, as far as I can recall, Amby to “Movet” (or some such name), although these things have been in the company of unintended side effects such as the super blackening of the skin and other disorders.
The problem may lie partly in slavery and colonialism which dehumanized and devalued black people and now Africans feel eternally chastised for being who they are and the colour of their skin or texture of hair. It is called mental slavery.
Africans need to outgrow that. Rejecting alien concepts is one good way and Africans must not feel ashamed for making and maintaining African cultural, scientific and political norms. Just like one should not feel ashamed for being an African male that loves an African woman with whom they should have children and children of children and their children in the manner nature willed and our ancestors followed.
The dogs and pigs, too, know how to follow this natural order of procreation.
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dyton mupawaenda