A filthy rich Zanu PF chef in ill-fitting party regalia is comical - still we must end the brainwashing culture!

There is nothing more pathetic than a filthy rich Minister wearing an ill-fitting cheap cotton print suit with portraits of President Mugabe. There is nothing fashionable about looking like a circus clown. It is rather a surrender of fashion for the unfashionable; a metaphor for the surrender of one's individuality and ability to think for oneself to become one with the identical-looking and brainwashed herd.   

I have always felt uneasy at the sight of a group of women wearing wrap-on cloth, mazambiya, with the portrait of political leaders be it Kenneth Kaunda in Zambia, Kamuzu Banda in Malawi or our own  Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. The wrap-on were upgraded to dresses with matching head scarf and a sea of these women similarly attired at rallies, grovelling on their knees at the Airport to see off President Mugabe or to welcome him back from his many travels became the norm. 

Someone then decided to make man's shirts out of the same cheap cotton print and that was expanded to jackets, trousers and tie – a complete suit complete with a baseball cap to match!

David White Head in Chegutu and Kadoma used to make the cheap cotton print material (used to, who knows with President Mugabe's look East policy, they must be facing stiff competition from the Chinese) and must have made a fortune.

It is not so much that the material is cheap, rough and ready that makes me, even to this day, queasy; that plays only a very small part.

There is something utilitarian about the cotton print and the wrap-on it was used for original. The wrap-on was meant to keep the woman's dress clean just like the labourer's overall, a doctor's white coat or a butcher's apron. Therefore turning the wrap-on into a dress, shirt, jack, etc. was like wearing an overall over nothing!

There is something comical about a Ministers, a multi-millionaires in his/her own right from all the years of looting, putting aside their Italian design suits to wear cheap ill-fitting cotton print suit with blurry portrait images of some tyrant! It is normal to see President Mugabe and his wife wearing matching cotton-print shirt and dress and soon many party members will be wearing identical design shirts and dresses.

The photograph of Psychology Maziwisa, then Zanu PF deputy spokesman, is his cotton-print suit at the party congress last year; made me laugh. I laugh to myself just remembering it. Talk of singing for one's supper that was tantamount to singing none-stop all day just for a glass of dirty water!

What makes me physically sick at the unsightly uniformity of the sea of party supporters in their cheap cotton print party regalia is their blank faces accentuating the totally brainwashed blank minds behind! The parrot fashion the people will sheepishly repeat the empty meaningless slogans, without ever stopping to ask what the slogan means, will remove all doubt that mentally these people have been transformed from thinking human beings to nothing more than a brainwashed flock of sheep!  

We must end this political culture designed to brainwash ordinary people into uniformly dressed conforming zombies there to worship the great leader and do as he pleases! We want a political culture that celebrate and promote the essences of our humanity; our ability to think for ourselves and value the fact that each one of us is totally unique and thus afford the chance be different and leave their own individual foot print.

Uniforms are bad enough in school and the army even though they help focus the mind on the task in hand of learning or unity of purpose. Public life, politics is but a variation of public life, should be about debate, informing, educating, etc. the public so they are able to make informed life choices; it is not about brainwashing and forcing people into straitjacket of political conformity!