YOUR BUSINESS IS OUR BUSINESS: Secondhand underwear imports: curse or saviour?

Last week’s edition of The Citizen-on-Saturday devoted almost two pages to secondhand underwear issues in so far as they relate to Tanzania.

Also known as undergarments, underclothing, lingerie, nightclothes, etc., underwear is generally clothing that is worn by men and women under other clothes – typically next to the wearer’s skin.  

Another term – ‘undies’ – describes articles of underwear special for the female of the species. These include – but are not necessarily limited to – brassieres, petticoats/underskirts, and under-slips. Under-slips are worn beneath a lady’s dress or skirt, either as a full-slip (extending from the breasts down), or a half-slip (worn from the waist down).

Other types of women undergarments are G-Strings; Thongs; Hipsters; Boy-shorts (c.f. boys’ boxers); French/High-cut panties; Classic briefs; Control briefs, Brazilian briefs, etc., etc.

The report by The Citizen dwelt at considerable length on the health aspect appertaining to the use of secondhand clothing (‘Mitumba’), all of which is currently imported into Tanzania mostly from the United States, Europe and the Far East. [See ‘On Women buying secondhand underwear,’ by Jamilah Khaji; The Citizen-on-Saturday: November 10, 2018].

Noting that “Tanzania is among the countries in Africa with a high demand for secondhand clothes,” the writer went on to lambast stakeholders in the secondhand clothes subsector of the Tanzanian Economy: namely importers, dealers and retailers, mostly hawkers on street pavements and improvised points of sale.

This is largely because of the allegation – true or false – that wearing secondhand underwear results in skin and other infections which might have plagued the clothes’ original wearers in the exporting country. But, experience has shown that used clothing imports are thoroughly fumigated and otherwise disinfected in the country of export. Regulatory frameworks also provide for similar treatment at points of entry into Tanzania.

So, legally-imported secondhand clothing basically poses no inflectional hazard to subsequent wearers; quod erat demonstrandum (Q.E.D).

The Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS; read the ‘government’) banned secondhand clothing imports in 2009. In consequence whereof, it has been fighting a losing battle as it seeks to enforce the ‘ban-on-paper!’ The TBS exercise-in-futility reminds me of the equally-abortive crackdown on gay folk declared recently by the Dar es Salaam Region Nabob, Paul Makonda. But that’s a juicy tale fit to be narrated another day…

But, pray: shouldn’t TBS and RegCom Makonda redirect their time, energy, funding, tenacity and other resources at clearly productive socio-economic activities rather that chasing half-worn lingerie and demented homosexuals in ever-widening circles along the lines of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus of yore?

Tanzania was compelled to import used clothing after textile industries collapsed under post-Mwalimu Nyerere Administrations. The relevant authorities should be looking into ways and means of establishing viable textile industries so as to give succor to cotton farmers and jobless youths – many of the latter currently surviving on the ‘Mitumba’ business, hawking secondhand imports countrywide.

Oh… there are a bazillion repercussions in the ‘secondhand clothing vis-à-vis domestic textile production’ stakes that defy kneejerk reactions by the authorities.

Indeed, if the ban on secondhand clothing imports were to become effective on the ground, then rural Tanzanians would go back to wearing gunnysacks the way they did before Prime Minister Salim Ahmed Salim allowed ‘Mitumba’ importation in the mid-1980s…. Tears!