A National Dress Code Will Be a Tall Order
- Category: The Comrade
- Date 05-07-2021
- 508 views
The government of Tanzania announced, last week, her intent to introduce a national dress code for all citizens (see: “National dress code to be introduced soon – House told”, The Guardian 30th June 2009). What kind of thing is this? It is going to be a monotonous and boring country, won’t it?
The deputy minister for information, Sports and Culture, Joel Bendera told Parliament that the process of introducing a national dress code was in high gear. He conceded to Mh Hafidhi Ali Tahir, the legislator from Dimani, that young Tanzanians are inebriated with indecent dressing, which does not only offend the nation’s character but denigrates society’s ideals.
In 2004, The Comrade toured the University of Dar es Salaam, accompanied by his beautiful, elegantly dressed wife. What they saw at the university was very odd. Most young women were dressed in lengthy skirts and dresses. The shortest of skirts covered a girl’s entire calf and many others’ flowed to ankle level.
The Comrade and company were amazed at the total absence of miniskirts and the singular incidence of tight jeans, save for a few white ladies licking at ice-cream. This contrasted sharply with their familiar lifestyles at Uganda’s universities where miniskirts and tight jeans are in vogue; “off-layers” is the descriptive jargon in reference to the dying species of girls whose skirts and dresses cover any piece of their calves.
A parliamentarian or minister who considers Tanzanians’ dressing indecent deserves a full-paid trip to Nairobi, Lusaka or Pretoria to study what indecent dressing means, in sooth. Globalisation has rendered cultures gaga, with the influence of the mass media through popular television and internet. The Comrade pledges his prayers for Tahir and Bendera to surmount the gigantic wall that they have offered to scale.
Yes, let the dressing policy come into force; whereupon we can separate aliens from residents. Two things can then happen, however. Some Tanzanians will forge documents to present themselves as visitors who know little or nothing about the official dress code and thus cannot abide to the rules. Others could resort to hide and seek games: carry spare outfits all the time, pull on the official attire when authorities are in sight and revert to the illegal code anon.
The tale of a public dress code revives one’s memory of school life where uniform was a rule but very unpopular. All the time, students looked forward to a weekend when they would walk around the school compound, donning all manner of shirts and trousers and leaping like newly acquitted jailbirds. None could wear uniform on vacation, at a seminar or party. Perhaps the situation has not changed till today.
Government may have to appoint a headmaster to enforce the national dress code for the citizenry but one can bet that it would be quite a tall order. At school, we were punished for reporting for studies in dirty uniforms. The hairstyle too was defined: if you jumbled a bushy, unkempt head with school uniform, you would be severely flogged, sent out of school, given work on the school garden during class time or all the above.
Mh. Bendera must be prepared to erect roadblocks and plan for a special police unit to supervise the implementation of and adherence to the national garb. It is certainly good but difficult to sustain; not when globalisation is pressing hard, destroying cultures and breaking national boarders. The Comrade knows that such a policy was successfully executed in Uganda by Idi Amin Dada.
To wear a hippies or miniskirts was criminal and men committed no offence if they raped or assaulted women they considered to have violated the dress code. Thirty years later, miniskirts are on knob among the Ugandan ladies while the dictator is long gone. Yes, a dressing code is a women’s affair.
By Venansio Ahabwe
Source: The Comrade, The Guardian on Sunday