Why Dorcas can’t be used as a mother

What is more devious and irresponsible is how she treats a constituent — the hairdresser during this matter. She shouts and threatens a suffering and hustling woman who works in her constituency. Look at the irony, Dorcas is more of a constituency mother than she is to her family. That is what she signed up for when she pleaded for the 3 500-plus votes she has always got. She has a sole responsibility of protecting suffering children in her constituency but in this instance, she was keen to devour the patience, hope and sincerity in this hairdresser — her constituency child, who has to put up with smelly hair and dandruff-infested heads to feed her family. I am talking about a woman who has to pay $150 for a chair, $150 for rent where she lodges, school fees, put food on the table, clothe herself and children, and probably put up with an unemployed and abusive husband. Her only hope of survival lies in sinking her respectable potential only to make someone’s daughter beautiful. Yet the mother of that daughter, who should be her inspiration of single mothers who have made it, women who are a beacon of liberating oppressed femininity turns and makes her prey, like what trash men do. I am sure she wonders what the purpose of feminism is if it’s transforming to intimidate and bully other women like her who should be protected. What Dorcas did on that miserable day was a disgrace to all mothers out there who work hard to pay for services that make their children happy. The hairdresser suffered for being poor. Where is the sisterhood when wolves

become sisters? The hairdresser, whether wrong or right is a victim in this instance, how Dorcas handled that situation is far from what is expected from a “sister’ who knows that the streets are rough for struggling women. It is women like Dorcas that we start to question if believing in women in leadership is worth it! I realise that she is not the best representation of good women we have in our leadership. She, like the trash men, is an isolated element we should not use to lump everyone because of their character. We expect that as a woman she understands the plight of struggling women by paying in time or not causing a scene for an already stressed and suffering hairdresser. Her womanly attributes seem to always divorce her whenever there is money involved. Remember that the Community Development Fund was scrapped in 2013 partly because of her suspected embezzlement of the funds with other defunct MDCs. I remember sometime in 2014 when she was involved in a fight with a reveller at one of her “amaSundays” (some Sunday party where beer is cheap usually run by Shebeen Queens) for refusing to give her back her change from a $100 note purchase. She reported the matter to the police in Ntabazinduna where she owns a bar and filed a $10 000 lawsuit against a Nkulumane Shebeen Queen Bekezela Nkomazana who she had a misunderstanding with. I am not saying that involving the law is wrong, but all I am saying is that the way she treats other women, especially those who are suffering and look up to her for protection, is disappointing. She has an arid way of using the law to bully women around, particularly those with miniscule knowledge of the law.

You have violated us, the citizens of Bulawayo Central

Instead of unleashing the woman legislature in her, she does a tremendous opposite; she hurls a kraken only found in trash man. When people elect you, they expect you to understand, protect, interact with them amicably and above all be a woman, which is one of the reasons they elected you. When you display a testimony of deserting your constituency role of being a mother to suffering hairdressers, you have desecrated the trust of all informal traders in the constituency. It is the salon workers who voted for you and their other customers. It is a direct attack to barbers, Shampoo girls, beauty therapists, airtime vendors, the lunch ladies, vegetable vendors and even thieves who thrive on selling in those salons. Those are the people you have violated, spit in their face and declared that you do not give a damn about them. Should we then ignore such irresponsible mothers like Dorcas? Should society then conclude that her banditry in refusing to be suspended in 2015 by MDC-T for indiscipline is reason enough to suspect that other good women are bad like her? Should a hashtag be created for her to call her out? Is she the best thing Bulawayo Central needs in 2018 with the memory that a hairdresser, a suffering woman, who is poor like Bekezela Nkomazana be violated for her services? Are we going to be silent and ignore that Dorcas Sibanda possesses a despotic behaviour signalling a propensity of intimidating other women, dishonesty and elements of barbarism? Isn’t she a pathological hoodlum that we need to eliminate to protect our sisters working hard but are threatened by the likes of “successful’ female politicians?