Nomazulu Thatha Ms. Belinda Chowa: you are a star in the face of absolute ignorance. I read your article on Bulawayo 24 in disbelief: are there still women out there who are role models to our young growing girls. I loved your article Madam; I hope you keep the work going in sensitizing our women regarding the white bleaching of their faces and sometimes chemical-treating their hair to be like Europeans.
Skin-bleaching is actually removing the black pigment in your skin. Some even take in as capsules orally so that this pigment removes the whole body. Ms. Chowa rightly put it well, and it is scientifically proven that in these creams there are traces of mercury, an element that is hazardous to health, indeed it causes kidney failure in most cases. We thank you for this very articulated article and very educative indeed. We hope that you continue educating us in many aspect of women’s health.
Skin-bleaching creams are a multi billion industry and the women who use these creams are from South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria and the wave is slowly coming to the shores of Zimbabwe. It is appalling to see role models like Mrs Elizabeth Tsvangirai in total denial of herself. At the early time of her marriage to the former Prime Minister Richard Morgan Tsvangirai: she was used to wearing Indian Saris in political rallies? Sure, Saris from India and she is wife the “Can be President of Zimbabwe” any time now! What precedence is she giving to the growing girls of Zimbabwe? She is abnormally white, and her hair is European hair? Do we really need to go so low as to deny ourselves in that absoluteness? Ms. Chowa puts it well: better than I will put it on paper. We women do have a low self-esteem.
When the Black Americans said: “Say it loud; I am black and proud” they were trying to tell the black population that we should be proud of what we are: black naturally skin and kinky hair given by god as it is: Our hair is kinky can’t we be satisfied with that? Our skin is black: can’t we satisfy with that? We have thousands of African material from Nigeria till South Africa: did we need to wear an Indian Sari to be conspicuously different from all of us women? We make ourselves a laughing stock in this global village. There are news media we read: in Europe and many other places that actually mock Africans for their outright self denial of their colour-skin! Industries take advantage of this stupidity of Africans and make billions of dollars: because they know a black woman can do anything to get her skin white. An African loathes her/his skin evidently.
Coming back to Mrs. Elizabeth Tsvangirai: her husband is so black, black and beautiful in his own right, what makes his wife go out of her way to bleach so much that it obvious to all that her whiteness is wholly artificial and not worth admiring at all because a naturally light-skinned person is attractive in as much as a naturally black shined person. Is Mrs.Tsvangirai saying to her husband: “Nutten-Black nun- Good!” These bleaching skin-lightening creams: present in the composition is Mercury and Hydroquinone. Hydroquinone actually kills the skin-cells and this is non-repairable because the cell- making melanolyte will have permanently died: this may also cause skin cancer and many other diseases we are not aware of: because these creams are consumed in developing countries, whose deaths are not comprehensively researched due to un availability of finds.
The madness of skin-lighting use is intertwined with detrimental effects not only on health as we have seen but the question of identity, self-image, race-supremacy and absolute colonial mentality. There is a common concern about yearning for beauty: beauty of the skin that must be white like a European, beauty of your dressing: iffi wear aa Sari, I will different from everybody else around me, if I wear a European wig or treating ones hair to that of a white person I will be beautiful. Such problems are a serious problems of nations in Africa. We need to address physical, mental slavery, symbolic remnants of light-skinned superiority and the notion that dark skin is inferior. This must be done at national level: now I do not see how we in Zimbabwe can achieve that because our future first Lady, Mrs. Tsvangirai is in deep denial: her artificial face- skin-bleached, her European wig, her Sari dressing had died down thanks to those to told her about this Sari dressing in rallies. Is Mrs, Tsvangirai the face of a Zimbabwean woman or the mixture of a British hair/Indian Sari attires?
There is not much to say what Ms. Belinda Chowa has not highlighted already in her today’s article. I did not need to repeat what she has already said in her beautiful article that was spot on. We need 10 more of Belinda Chowas in our socities. We are deeply concerned about the message Mrs. Tsvangirai is putting across to younger generations.