Savemore is a vendor in Harare. He says that selling roasted mealie cobs helps him pay for school fees for his siblings as well as the rent and food. His dream is to buy a car so that when the maize season is over he can buy fresh vegetables and sell them around the city. Because he has to put in long hours to make money to support his family, Savemore doesn’t think that he’ll get to see many soccer matches during the World Cup. Being proudly African, he hopes South Africa will win.

And then again, the wonderful Nyemudzai trumps the ugly t-shirt. We spotted her walking up the steps of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe to celebrate the International Women’s Day events. Way to go girl . . . walking the streets of Harare with funk and fabulousness.

Ok, so I’m not hot on censorship, but it was disturbing to see a guy helping with the logistics at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe on International Women’s Day wearing this t-shirt. We’ve got a long way to go.

Didymus Zengenene’s blog post titled is Lobola still valid in the era of equality? made me think. I consider myself a feminist, yet I want my future husband to pay roora to my family. Yes, that’s right, my family as a whole. The understanding of what roora or lobola is, and what it means has, through time and loose translation been lost to a generation that now considers English meaning of a shona or ndebele tradition to be Gospel. But what happens when that tradition’s real meaning is lost in translation? We get feminists, neo liberals and the like clamouring for the banishment of that tradition, using big words like equality and gender imbalance. Don’t get it twisted, I’m all for gender equality. But I also believe that culture is an important factor in personal identity.

Translated into English roora, means bride price. Of course then, on the surface, this tradition would appear to be a man buying a woman. I don’t deny that there are those who pervert that perception of this tradition to enrich themselves by selling off their underage daughters. Neither do I deny that there are men and women who believe that by having roora paid for her a woman must be completely submissive to her husband or suffer the consequences, violent or not. But these are the ill-advised actions of people, not the intent of the tradition. They reflect more on the characters of the individuals involved than on the culture they profess to practice.

The act of paying roora shouldn’t be looked at in isolation. It is part of a complex and formal process of negotiation that results in a mutual agreement of the bride price. Roora is not meant to extract ridiculous sums of money from the would be groom. In fact for true traditionalists, the exchange of money, which is foreign to our culture, is taboo. Roora is a tradition that is rooted in building a sense of community, both within the families that are marrying, and between them. A man cannot marry alone, the cattle he pays to his bride’s father are those cattle given to his family by his brothers in law. The ceremony itself cannot happen with out a number of members of the extended family being present, tete’s (the bride’s father’s sisters), Sekuru’s (the bride’s mother’s brothers), varoora (sisters in law to the bride) and hanzvadzi (brothers and sisters) included. Far from being transactional, this tradition is meant to establish and reinforce a relationship between the two marrying families to strengthen the new union. It is impossible for a good parent to place a monetary value on a child, so why should it be looked at in monetary terms alone?

In answer to Didymus’ question, as a card-carrying feminist who wouldn’t suffer the indignity of being dictated to by a man simply because he is one, yes I think it still is. I think the tradition of roora, as it was intended, is very important. In a time when divorce rates climb every day and our sense of culture and community is being lost through cultural alienation, migration and other factors I think it is more important now than ever.

I went to the International Women’s day events hosted by the National Gallery of Zimbabwe last Saturday.

The pond in front of the gallery has got a pathetic bit of water in it, but enough to float the debris from Zimbabweans who sit on the edge of it and chuck their litter overboard.

It isn’t only the National Gallery of Zimbabwe that needs to keep the litter in check, its also the folk who clearly couldn’t care less about treating one of our national institutions with respect.

C’mon Zimbabweans, clean up your act.

President Jacob Zuma has been called all sorts of names of late for making the choice to enjoy the privilege of being a polygamist which his culture permits, which the South African constitution does not criminalize and which the women he is married to have accepted much to public outrage.

While I have strong personal feelings against polygamy, I notice that during the hullabaloo that ensured – none of Zuma’s wives voiced dissent, none of them took to the streets in protest over their husband’s perpetual marriages, engagements and never-ending wooing.

It was to me, a case of the media crying louder than the bereaved – for if indeed there are any who are harmed or aggrieved by how Zuma conducts his love-life; surely it would be the women he has married, promised to marry and those he has fathered children with – all of whom have remained silent. The silence, presumably, of those who are in acquiescence.

But then people are entitled to their opinions, moreso if the opinions they wish to voice regard those who are in positions of power, who find themselves accountable to the public and whose private lives play out in the public domain as Zuma’s life has.

Now the British media called him a ‘buffoon’ who also happened to be ‘over-sexed’. Now to my way of thinking, buffoon is not high on the scale as far as insults go – in fact it is really nothing compared to some of the colorful invectives that have gone Zuma’s way.

Inadvertently, this insult has done more to turn the tide of public opinion in favor of Zuma, primarily because it was uttered by a white man, who happens to be non-African and whose contemptuous view of Zuma’s polygamous status has riled the afrocentric and pan-africanist sensibilities of some of us.

Though it may sound clichéd, Zuma’s conduct has a cultural premise – an African culture, which (whatever its flaws and imperfections may be) is our proud heritage and an integral part of our ethos as a people, as continent and as a race.

Where I come from, when we fight or disagree – we are allowed to do so without pulling punches knowing that what binds us is greater than what would divide us. I have often found that the only thing that quenches a family feud is the intrusion of an outsider, one who would presume to appoint themselves as the judge and proceed to proffer unsolicited advice or opinions on what is an internal affair.

And that British man has managed to raise my hackles by his superciliousness and the nauseating superiority complex that informs his interpretation of African customs, specifically polygamy.

Had he desired to make an informed judgment of President Zuma’s lifestyle, he would have done so within the confines of the African customs and culture that permits him to be a polygamist.

Anyone, particularly a non-African, would do well to show the appropriate level of humility that is reflective of his or her limited experience and knowledge of African mores when they make the choice to hazard an opinion. Logic dictates that it be so.

Voltaire once stated, I do not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. It is in the same vein that I am compelled to leap to Zuma’s defense; for while I (as an African) do not agree with how he chooses to conduct his life (and find polygamy to be unpalatable) I defend without qualms his right to marry many women as our culture permits and in the same breathe I would be duty-bound to defend the right of all his wives to be married to their one polygamous husband.

It is a personal choice they have made and whatever the consequences – it is not my place to hurl insults at them because I happen not to agree with the decisions grown, mature and adult women have made in picking a life partner.

So much for the gospel of tolerance that the has been preached by the West with advent of fighting for gay rights the world over and here is one who would scorn a man for marrying three women and find it palatable that two men ‘jump’ each other’s bones?

Whatever; that snide remark however goes beyond the issue of Zuma because really the issue is polygamy and polygamy is an African issue and surely any disparaging comment made about it reflects on the African people whose culture makes it permissible?

A buffoon, is he? What does that make the rest of us, I wonder? Or would someone care to explain how that remark has nothing to do with the rest of us; sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, aunts and cousins of polygamists – let me guess – we’re just a family of African ‘buffoons’.