THE Zimbabwe Heritage Trust (ZHT) has rapped African women for blowing billions of dollars on imported hair and dangerous skin lightening creams annually, instead of just being content with their natural looks.
BY OWN CORRESPONDENT
Addressing a youth workshop in Beitbridge at the weekend, ZHT chief executive officer, Pritchard Zhou, said Africans should stop regarding themselves as second-class citizens.
“Our women have been made to believe their looks are not the best, but we should remember that we are being exploited in the process. We spend billions on foreign hair because we want to change ourselves,” Zhou said.
Estimates put Africa’s dry hair industry at $6 billion a year and Nigeria, Cameroon and South Africa were known to be top spenders on hair and haircare products.
Zhou added that conflicts in Africa were triggered by Western countries to exploit the continent’s natural resources while Africans fought each other. He implored African governments to be wary of Western countries with regime-change agendas bent on removing all liberation war-based governments that stood in their way to exploit resources.
“That is why you see that many wars have been fought in southern Africa which has the largest mineral reserves in the world. Does it not surprise you we had war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Namibia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe which are rich in minerals? These wars are sponsored by Western leaders who are eager to put puppets so they exploit our resources, ” Zhou said.
He appealed to the youth to study their history and chart their political and economic destiny by preserving their culture and safeguarding their heritage.
