Importance Of National Dress In Zimbabwe

1.2 Statement of the problem

Thirty six years after independence, Zimbabwe has not yet adopted a particular national costume by which the Zimbabweans can be identified. According to Kaiser (1990) “Clothes are cultural artefacts, embedded in current and historical sets of meanings, shaped by social and economic forces, reflecting current social and cultural concerns.” Diop & Merunka (2013) state that, “Many authors have accentuated the value of clothing in Africa as an expression of self and group behaviour.” They further argue that “Dress offers the concurrent coexistence of traditional and modern dress styles in many occasions and across consumer profiles.” “Wearing traditional dress may be a declaration of national, regional, tribal or religious

Which factors influence the acceptance of the national dress by the nation as a whole?

1.6 Significance of study According to Diop & Merunka (2013), “Dress conveys culture, and culture carries the entire framework of values by which individuals or societies identify themselves and their status in the world”. On this account the study will be of great value to Zimbabwe as a nation as it will promote the establishment of national dress based on the beliefs and values of the major sub cultures of Zimbabwe which are the Zezuru, Ndebele and Tonga. The collaboration of the aspects from these subcultures will serve as leverage for acceptance of the national dress by the people of Zimbabwe.

The present study will extend existing knowledge about the different cultural aspects of the major sub cultures and its recommendations will help to promote the design of national costumes with which Zimbabweans could be identified. The researcher hopes that this study will have a scholarly impact on the extensive study of national dress.

Through its recommendations the study would benefit fashion designers by widening their scope in designing and making the national dress based on different sub cultural aspects provided by the

As a result any conclusion about the relationship of the costumes in the sub-cultures may be applicable only to the range of those values employed in the study.

Some of the participants are young and not well versed with some of the cultural symbols used in dress and their earning due to westernisation, to overcome this challenge, participants will be grouped by age.

1.9 Delimitations

The study is limited to three Zimbabwean subcultures and their respective dress culture. The study is to be carried out in specific areas which these subcultures are highly concentrated thus Binga for the Tonga people, Mhondoro for the Zezuru and Mbembesi for the Ndebele tribe. The participants are composed of people who strictly belong to the chosen tribes by birth because the researcher intended to get the information which is not affected by a mixture of cultures which is the case in towns.

1.10 Definition of key terms

Dress – Manwa (2011) defines dress as a combination of body modifications and/or improvements exhibited by an individual in interaction with other members of the society or