Dear East Africa, beauty will always be controversial

For you to be able to read this on time I had to write it last month. That is how things work with the print media; you submit your story days before so the editors can do a better job before presenting a finished product. October has indeed ended on a rather high note from where I am sitting and watching the world. Just after I had written that it is the month in which big African names breathed their last in Ali Mazrui, Milton Obote, Fred Rwigema, Prince Louis Rwagasore, Julius Nyerere, Samora Machel, Thomas Sankara and Muammar Gaddafi, the month had more cards to play. Zambia made multi dimensional history in October when it marked 50 years of independence with its independence leader, Kenneth Kauda, 90 alive and kicking. Soon after that, news came in that the country’s president, Michael Sata had passed away in a London hospital. This is not the first time that a Zambian sitting president has passed away. As if that was not enough record breaking, the country went ahead to appoint the Vice President Guy Scott as the interim president. What is more important in all this is not that a white man is president of Zambia but that the constitution was respected without much trouble. From Zambia my attention was immediately grabbed by events in West Africa where for once in recent months, Ebola was not the biggest story. Instead it was the protests in Burkina Faso over moves to amend the constitution to remove term limits. At the end of it all Blaise Compaore who had led the country since 1987 was forced to resign. Away from Zambia and Burkina Faso, we, news hounds, had little to chew from East Africa besides complaints here and there. In Kigali the East Africa Legislative Assembly sat to basically bicker about mundane things that have nothing to do with regional integration. Sad that at the end of the day they will draw huge perks for doing just that. Still in Kigali, the recent strict enforcements of the noise pollution laws have many urbanites up in arms. Much as it is necessary to have a well planned city where no one complains about the activities of the others, some argue that this only kills off the city’s sick social life. However the one event that drew the loudest noise in the region was the Miss Uganda 2014 outcome. As soon as the winner Leah Kalanguka was announced, social media trolls (people who cherish online harassment) went to work with all sorts of nasty comments and memes. This was surely mean and uncalled for. The contest already had its controversies since for the first time it was managed by the army with the theme ‘promoting agriculture and entrepreneurship among the youth.’ Personally I do not believe there should be some kind of beauty template and for girls to parade themselves before judges. After all I understand this was a practice started during the days of slavery where slaves would be paraded before prospective buyers. Since beauty cannot be summarised and agreed upon though such contests, all we get is the controversy. In Tanzania the winner of Miss Tanzania turned out to be much older than earlier revealed. The new age revelations showed that she probably would not have qualified to take part in the contest. In Rwanda, the contest to find the current Miss Rwanda soon turned into one that unmasked girls who could barely express themselves in either English or French. Organisers were compelled to ask very simple questions that seemed rehearsed to avoid further embarrassment. Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder and the choice of a panel from a very small sample of girls cannot surely be something we can all agree on. Therefore it is pointless to argue about the results of these contests many of which are fixed anyway. We should instead invest more time and efforts in teaching our youth to yearn for skills and be confident to take on the world in a meaningful way. The combo of young boys focusing on sports betting while girls yearn for the latest in Brazilian hair extensions is simply not the way to develop our region. If I could borrow a phrase, I have a dream that one day we shall spend more time talking about winners of science contests and poetry sessions than beauty contests.

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Dear East Africa, beauty will always be controversial