The issue of hair style and hair cut has been a contentious one not only in Zimbabwe but in South Africa, post-independence in the former and post majority rule in the latter.
Church-related schools especially, have been at forefront of the rejection of hair styles and haircuts other than those they approve of themselves.
And by so saying I am not for one moment implying that the school authorities are wrong or that they are right.
I have this peculiar bent for bringing into the public arena not only topical, but contentious issues regardless of where the issue originates.
Some hair styles are religious whereas others are cultural or traditional.
Some parents have approached the courts for a ruling on the issue and spending thousands of US dollars and rands in the process.
Some readers may have read former South Africa chief justice Pius Langa’s (who was the first black Chief Justice post the apartheid era in that country) judgment on the issue of hairstyles by students , meaning inclusively by learners for the avoidance of repetitiveness.
The learned judge framed his judgment in the simplest of languages, though in English. Let us celebrate our majority rule and freedoms together, for we all deserve them.
I could have put the words in quotes but fear that I might distort the import and essence of the words used.
The Benches, they say, enjoy utmost sanctity.
That is very true up to a point! In Zimbabwe hairstyles and haircuts have been just as contentious.
A couple of cases may be cited: “Muslim pupil’s beard, of contention, “was the heading of a story by Fatima Bulla and “When law and religion meet…” was another by legal practitioner Rumbidzai Venge (both published in The Sunday Mail of June 16, 2019).
Fatima Bulla was reporting as per assignment while Rumbidzai Venge was proffering a perspective based on the law of Zimbabwe.
Although I am not a lawyer by any stretch of the imagination, I can say that I find Rumbidzai’s version not convincing and solid enough.
The reason for that is not of her own making as it is to do with the culture of the system itself.
The system is irretrievably dysfunctional having similarly been saturated with political content.
The High Court judgment was without a scintilla of doubt predictable. The High Court and the ConCourt cited on the “…. Pupil’s beard of contention …” were patently at variance if not in contraction with each other based as they are in the same constitution as the supreme law of Zimbabwe which, inter alia declare that “……. Any law, practice, custom or conduct inconsistent with it is invalid to the extent of the inconsistency”.
I don’t see anything difficult in this crystal clear language. I have been a parent-cum guardian in various institutions of learning including pre-schools, primary, secondary schools and not omitting to mention tertiary institutions, and holding senior positions in the process stretching back to the hay days of colonial rule and l can safely say that there is a world of difference between the two systems.
The colonial education system was based on race; it constituted a “trinity” of races; black, white, coloured (and Indian\Asian).
To accentuate my point let me make a deliberate analogy.
Evil as it was perceived to be by some, the racial “trinity” system it cannot be convincingly gainsaid that it was conterminous at the terminal end where separation was simply impossible except in the spheres of societal activities.
And also, an evil system or practice when it is well managed and transparently executed gets respect and tolerated and only the fundamental differences linger on.
Bad systems are tolerated and even accepted, albeit grudgingly, when they contain not necessarily equality but equity, at least in practice.
We cannot say, today, that our education system is anywhere near the colonial systems (they were three as alluded to above).
In Zimbabwe the superior courts, to use an archaic term, tend to hand down judgments as though the dispensation of justice is a process and not an equalizer or a terminal point in a suit.
Furthermore judges whose beliefs are rooted in their traditions and cultures tend to be too rigid in judgments in cases requiring flexibility. It is also interesting to observe that the religions in contention in Zimbabwe are foreign, and so are the churches.
Frankly, I fail to understand it!
The former and late president of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe would charter a plane to travel to the Vatican in Rome just to catch a glimpse of the pontiff standing in the veranda in the Basilica.
The chartered plane cost the tax payers millions of dollars for a two day trip. We have four granddaughters, two whom were born in Zimbabwe and have very long hair.
One, the oldest, was hounded till the parents removed her from Montrose High School to a private school. The other one was with us here at Lupane. She encountered the same problem both at Lupane primary school and Fatima High.
At Lupane and doing grade 5 aged 11years she was punished for keeping hair at shoulder length.
She was made to dig a deep pit in the ground up to her waist. Imagine an 11–year-old!
Eventually her parents took her with them to a foreign country somewhere to the north of the continent for her upper secondary and further.
While in secondary school and before university her hair came down in length to rest on her posterior, and looked beautiful and free as a summer swallow gliding the air. She encountered no adversity whatsoever.
In Zimbabwe the harassment as mentioned above originates at responsible authority levels cascading down through the SDCs and school heads to head boys and head girls, and to the bully boys and bully girls and even to some church members at which level all hell breaks loose.
Unlike the High Court, Supreme Court and the ConCourt in SA which are professional and independent and where the laws are interpreted to the letter and spirit and observing the supremacy of the constitution equally to the letter and spirit.
Zimbabwean High Court, the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court tend to play dolly house with the laws of the land.
The differences between the southern African and the Zimbabwean apex court at least in so far as their judgments are concerned is domiciled in the fact that the former three tiers of the superior courts have been staffed by judges who studied law when they were in prisons or detention (e.g Dikgang, Moseneke, et al) and those who were associated with liberation movements such as Edwin Cameron, Mogoeng Mogoeng, Sachs the art lover, Pius Lang , etc., etc.
The evils of crime notwithstanding, the South African society is largely liberated in mind, it is educated and enlightened and upward mobile all round.
If one follows South African court judgments one notices unmistakably that there are cases of gruesome murders, of domestic spats or a criminal case, a civil case or labour dispute.
It’s germane here to cite cases such as Zuma vs Khwezi which was heard before Judge Villem van der Merwe with attorney Michael Hulley for Zuma.
The case was live on TV. In the court the atmosphere, the simplicity characterizing the proceedings and the exchange of questions and answers between legal representatives injected an aura of camaraderie in the court.
Judge van der Merwe was not intimidating nor shifting in his seat as an expression of fatigue or impatience: It wasn’t really about impartial, objective judgment, but rather (about) competing narratives.
It must have been clear from the start that l would not have allowed myself to be influenced or distracted by anything or anybody, the judge announced post the hearing.
The case in addition to live screening, was subsequently published in a legal journal.