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Guest column: Miriam Tose Majome
WHAT is fuelling our growing infatuation with the wives of our political leaders and men in power? It could be the unavoidable strong influence of American politics or possibly a secret ploy by the United Nations to dumb us all down. Wives of princes and presidents make headlines all the time about absolutely nothing, and they even draw more attention than their husbands.
We barely know a thing about Angela Merkel or Theresa May’s husbands, but we know all there is to know about Melania Trump, Michelle Obama and Brigitte Macron. In the 1980s, the late Princess Diana made it seem as if it was Prince Charles who had married into the royal family. Previously, in Zimbabwe we had no such interest in the lives of our leaders’ spouses. They were just privileged women, who smiled a lot for the cameras and wore nice pearls and clothes. We didn’t even care to know anything about Janet Banana, our very first First Lady in independent Zimbabwe from 1980-1987. Then enter Robert Mugabe as President in 1987 with his two headline-grabbing wives, and Zimbabwe was never the same again. Grace was on fire, but Sally was not exactly a wall flower. Both were remarkable First Ladies in their totally different ways. Today, Sally lies interred at the Heroes Acre, while Grace is alive and well somewhere, but never to be forgotten in the Zimbabwean memory hall of fame and infamy. Much more of Grace later….
Not much is known about the country’s first First Lady, 83 year-old Janet Banana, because she lived a fiercely private life. She was the First Lady for seven years from 1980 to 1987, when her husband Canaan Banana was the country’s President. She was a very humble obscure woman and a mother of four, who avoided publicity and the scandals which later became a way of life for all her successors.
We had rare glimpses of Janet every now and then at State functions and in a few photographs. She was always in the background, a simple dignified woman smiling behind her husband. So humble was she that she was frequently spotted on the Harare to Bulawayo train, travelling just like any other ordinary person – something...