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Opinionista

Dressing up or dressing down: what’s in an overall?

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Marianne Thamm has toiled as a journalist / writer / satirist / editor / columnist / author for over 30 years. She has published widely both locally and internationally. It was journalism that chose her and not the other way around. Marianne would have preferred plumbing or upholstering.

Robert Mugabe prefers Savile Row suits to traditional African garb. Winston Churchill occasionally wore a velvet overall he called a “siren suit”, the four pockets and buttons of the Mao suit are all imbued with political significance, while in the US in the 1940s Zoot suits were a sign of rebellion. If you thought the battle over the EFF’s red overalls was political, think again; sometimes it’s all about theatre.

We must begin by first acknowledging that both the suit and the overall – like the Breitling, the Mercedes Benz and Moet – are all foreign; inventions conjured in the minds of Western imperialist Capitalists and colonisers.

There.

Hope that’s cleared the air and helped to remove one of the slalom posts as we ski down this sartorial piste in search of some meaning in the current ruckus about the EFF’s insistence on wearing red overalls decorated with party slogans in the Gauteng legislature.

In “Dinner with Mugabe”, her excellent 1998 psychological biography of Zimbabwe’s leader, the late author and journalist, Heidi Holland, recounts an incident that occurred shortly after the country’s independence in 1980.

At his first cabinet meeting, the new ministers, many of whom had participated directly in the independence war, turned up in what they thought was appropriate attire: African shirts or combat fatigues. Mugabe was in a Savile Row suit,” wrote Holland

President Mugabe made it immediately clear that he did not think it appropriate for any of them to wear anything else.

Gentlemen”, Mugabe told those gathered, “if you wish to be members of the cabinet, you must dress like members of the cabinet.”

Afterwards, Holland observes, no one ever wore anything except an English-style suit. (At this point it might be sensible for us to acknowledge and agree that Robert Mugabe is an authoritarian leader as opposed to a participative or delegative one.)

Authoritarian leaders (both on the right and left) like the old Nats who were partial to dark suits and Homburg hats, or Chairman Mao, whose now famous Mao Suit came to symbolise Chinese nationalism and ideology, are unlikely to tolerate sartorial displays that detract from the so-called “decorum” and “patriotism” expected from loyal political acolytes or subjects.

Just a quick aside. The four pockets on the Sun Yat Sen suit (later updated into the Mao suit) represent the original “Four Cardinal Principles” of Chinese conduct; propriety, justice, honesty and a sense of shame, while the five centre buttons represented the five powers of the Constitution of the Republic and the three cuff buttons, the Three Principles of the People; nationalism, democracy and people’s livelihood.

With regard to Mugabe, Holland points out that unlike other African leaders who have defined themselves by their opposition to colonialists from Europe, Mugabe has never adopted traditional African dress. Former President Thabo Mbeki too never once wore traditional attire during his term of office, unlike President Jacob Zuma who regularly and proudly wears Zulu traditional dress during cultural occasions (and as a groom at his numerous weddings). Even Helen Zille has co-opted traditional African garb when she’s out campaigning and is not averse to stirring up the pap in a homestead, resplendent in a Xhosa headdress.

It was Nelson Mandela, ever the forward-thinking 21st Century innovator, who managed to create for himself a way through this sartorial quagmire of how garments can be and indeed are imbued with enormous meaning and symbolism. As soon as he could, Mandela simply invented his own dress code – the Madiba shirt – that has now become synonymous with the man and his style of leadership.

In choosing the Madiba shirt (although he certainly was not averse to wearing suits or traditional Xhosa regalia when politically required to do so) Mandela set his own unique terms of sartorial engagement.

Nigeria’s President, Goodluck Jonthan, has managed also to combine a touch of the traditional with the modern in his dress style – a tunic usually black – with three gold buttons including the now trademark wide-brimmed hat

Africa’s female leaders, it seems, are less inclined to pomp and theatrics in the wardrobe department. Liberia’s former president, Ellen Sirleaf Johnson, former Malawian president, Joyce Banda, and our own current AU chair, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, all manage to combine updated traditional silhouettes with distinctive African headscarves.

Playwright Arthur Miller, in his published essay “On Politics And The Art of Acting” observed, “Political leaders everywhere have come to understand that to govern they must learn how to act.”

And we all know that actors all need costumes. And so in the contemporary world, what political leaders choose to wear in public now has less to do with real authority and leadership and more to do with a performance of these elements. It is all part of the ritual of political persuasion and role-play.

And in the end suit is as much of as a symbol as an overall, military fatigues or a flashy military uniform.

British historian Andrew Roberts has pointed out that one of Hitler’s highest-ranking officers, Herman Goering, favoured flamboyant military dress, usually white and ornately decorated with gold braid, epaulettes and a variety of medals, some of them designed by himself, in order to “stand out” and imbue his personage with importance. Uganda’s dictator, Idi Amin, had the same penchant for ostentatious sartorial displays and medals. Quanto, Tanto – so little within, so big without.

Adolf Hitler himself though understood the appeal of “dressing down” opting to generally wear bland monochrome uniforms with no accoutrements, apart from two small badges.

He was sending a message to people that unlike other leaders, he was so powerful that he didn’t need special uniforms or insignia to emphasise it,” writes Roberts.

So, what are we to make of clamour about EFF leader Julius Malema and other members’ insistence on wearing red overalls to parliament and the Gauteng legislature? And what lies behind the abreaction in this instance?

Malema and the EFF, of course. believe that the overalls, an American invention, represent and symbolise the country’s unemployed and working classes. While those male members of the country’s ruling classes all generally enjoy wearing suits – some of them in lurid yellow – these suits too represent something – they are Western accoutrements symbolising civility, decorum and power.

Deputy President Cyril Ramphosa – as a representative of capital – always looks fetching in his dark suits. President Zuma, on the other hand, seems less comfortable and as he has aged, so have his suits become less styled and fitted. But we all know, looking at him, that he’s very comfortable in skins.

Julius Malema, of course, is himself no stranger to the appeal and meaning of expensive designer clothes. In his past life as ANCYL leader Malema loved his suits (purple at times) and wore his shoes fashionably pointy. So when we see him filling out his overall like the Telletubby Po, we know that he has felt and likes the sheen of silk and pure wool on his frame.

In the 21st century the overalls, the black workman’s cap favoured by Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, the Cuban guayabera some communists enjoy wearing in warm weather, the battle fatigues, the tunics – all of the costumes – have been rendered empty hollow symbols, devoid of meaning. It is all theatre and artifice.

When it comes to the EFF, the apparent argument is that it is not the red overalls per se but slogans like “Asijiki” and others emblazoned on these. But the slogan holds no more meaning that the flash of a “Armani” or “Gucci” or “Versace” label on the inside of a well-cut, expensive suit.

Voters in the 21st Century know how to read and see through these rituals of political performance – often accompanied by sound tracks and speeches written for leaders by others. We recognise it all for what it is…singing for your supper and our vote.

The distraction on the sidelines, the marches, the threatened arrests of EFF members are all a sideshow indicative perhaps of a ruling party that is, in some ways in Gauteng at least, feeling insecure and under threat. A confident government does not allow itself to be distracted by artifice. It is ideas that matter and their implementation.

Forcing people to wear what you deem “acceptable” and creating rules that prevent people from making their own sartorial choices is a mindset that belongs to another century.

Malawi’s Hastings Banda prevented women from wearing pants and men from growing their hair longer than collar length. The old Nats hated denim jeans. Prescribing a dress code, whether it is secular and fundamentalist (as in France were citizens may not wear any outward sign of religious affiliation) or religious and fundamentalist (some Muslim countries with a strict dress code) is anti-democratic.

Luckily in South Africa we have a Constitution that towers over all of us keeping watch. In this country most of us feel perfectly free to wear our traditional or religious garb or other outward accoutrements that reveal the contents of our heads at that particular moment.

In the end EFF’s red overalls are no more threatening than hipsters with their beards, checked shirts and black 50s spectacles. Let them wear them. They’ll soon get tired of it all. In the meantime could we please just get over it and get on with the business of governing? DM

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