By Bridget Mananavire
Zanu PF awarded President Robert Mugabe’s wife, Grace, the job to design the party’s new regalia, which was unveiled at the Masvingo annual conference yesterday.
The First Lady has always bragged that she is a fashionista, with her husband claiming she even makes her own clothes.
Previously, Zanu PF’s regalia has been designed by the party’s youths.
Grace said proceeds from the regalia sales will go to Zanu PF women’s league, which she heads.
In her explanation of the fabric’s print design — which includes Mugabe’s face — Grace said she captured essences of Zimbabwe and its 92-year-old leader.
“We decided to come up with this design as the women’s league so that we can fundraise for our activities. The philosophy behind the fabric design is that we wanted to do away with the razor on our cloth and replace it with the map of Zimbabwe, which represents a tea pot from which we all drink,” she said.
She went on to say that “inside the map is a mealie cob because we are an agrarian economy and there is also the country’s flower, the Flame Lily”, adding that “if you are not properly dressed in these garments, then you must be prepared to pay a $100 fine, but now I want to call upon men and women who have an impeccable sense of dress to come forth and parade their regalia”.
Grace said the design also captured Zanu PF’s much-hyped economic blueprint Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (ZimAsset)’s clusters, among them, infrastructure development.
Models that included Tabetha Kanengoni and her husband and Kuwadzana legislator Betty Kaseke, among others, paraded the regalia in different colours and designs.
Zanu PF secretary for administration, Ignatius Chombo, joked that some might even steal the regalia from colleagues after discovering the designer was the First Lady.
“We used to hire designers for our cloth whom we paid a lot of money but we have realised that we have got talent amongst us,” Chombo said before inviting Grace to the stage to explain her works. Daily News
