Gone are the days when a private affair remained behind closed doors. Private parts have now become public viewing. Pokello Nare’s sextape went viral whilst she was on the Big Brother reality show in South Africa and just as the dust was starting to settle, Tinoponda Katsande’s sextape also leaked. What is this world coming to and what example is this setting to young girls?
In Zimbabwe, the people are highly conservative and sex is a taboo topic which has posed as a threat to sexual health education. Resultantly, when Nare’s sextape was made available on the internet, people took to social networks to blast her behavior. Pokello was branded ‘un-Zimbabwean’ and a petition was created on a Facebook page to advocate for her eviction from the Big Brother house.
In America, Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian both shot to fame after the leakage of their sexual ‘home videos’ and this has further aggravated the stereotype that for a woman to make a name for herself she must be naked. Coincidentally, Halle Berry was the first black woman to win an Oscar award after getting bare-naked in a movie. This is a clear sign of moral degradation and sheer desperation for attention.
Dealing in pornographic material in Zimbabwe is against the law. This further emphasizes how conservative we are in Zimbabwe and yet there was no legal retribution for the two ladies. Allow me to highlight the loophole I personally identified. According to the Oxford dictionary, pornography is, “printed or visual material intended to stimulate sexual excitement.” Based on this definition, the sextapes by the two ladies were firstly, intended to be a documentation of their ‘good times’ and secondly, their videos were neither stimulating nor sexually exciting. They were simply disgusting.
These sextapes are hindering the cause spear-headed by the feminists. It is worthy to note that these sextapes are never named after the male participant. This resembles the story in the bible about the adulteress who was brought to Jesus for stoning whilst her married male counterpart was not mentioned.
B-Metro once covered a story about school children that were recorded having sex by their peers through an open window. Clearly the situation is already out of control and now they have contraception from as young as ten years of age. Zimbabweans need a resurgence of role models that did not have to undress to be addressed by the titles they earned through honest hard work. Women play an important role in society as mothers and nurturers. They instil values into children and reprimand them to make respectable individuals. It used to take a village to raise a child but nowadays the global village has assumed that role in the form of the internet and Western media television programmes. Mothers are the best weapon to counter moral degradation and they must play their role viciously and instil values of self-worth in young girls to be somebodies not somebody’s.