"So what?" is the question that forces its way to my lips when I notice the constant reference to disgraced ANC former Chief Whip Tony Yengeni's dress style in many of the media reports.

Throughout the coverage of Yengeni's trial, which ended with him admitting to misleading Parliament about the exact circumstances surrounding his acquisition of a 4x4 vehicle, reports kept on telling us about his designer clothes. So what, I ask?

Most people know by now that we Africans like to dress expensively, whatever our social status.

Speak to shop assistants at places such as Edgars, Miladys, Bee Gee and Topics. Visit the various malls and boutiques; they will tell you that most of their customers are black. In fact, for many people, especially women, a large chunk of their budget goes to clothing. In many cases, as the Credit Bureau can attest, this love for beautiful, fashionable clothes has landed many people in hot water.

Even during the darkest days of apartheid, most people dressed well. I remember at one time coming across a heated debate among a group of comrades as to why it was that most white liberals, the people who appeared to understand the black man's predicament under white minority rule, nearly always wore shabby clothes when visiting townships or villages or when they were attending meetings of progressive organisations.

One observed that quite a few activists felt personally offended by this habit of their liberal friends.

Good clothes and fashion have always preoccupied many people, to the extent that at times they have threatened to cause full-scale battles.

Until recently, when it became fashionable to wear unisex clothes, there was a very strict dress code. Men knew what to wear and women did not dare to wear pants. In fact, pants sounds sexy; let's call them trousers.

You could always distinguish between those guys who were known in township lingo as ulova, umjita, uguluva, utsotsi, ukleva, umthaka, u-auti, etc, by what they wore. Many people will undoubtedly remember the feud between the Pantsulas and the Dudes during the eighties.

The former referred to the Dudes as "sissies" because of their tendency to wear tight-fitting clothes such as Bang Bang jeans and sleeveless shirts with shoes that had no laces. What made it worse was that the Dudes permed their hair and wore expensive cologne. I was never sure what their worst sin was as far as the Pantsulas were concerned: wearing these kind of clothes or the fact that women, for some strange reason (at least as far as the Pantsulas were concerned), preferred to hang around with the Dudes rather than with the obviously street-wise Pantsulas.

A Pantsula would be seen wearing a Stetson hat that half covered his eyes, a pair of Brentwood trousers (with turn-ups) and Florsheim or Crockett & Jones shoes. The shirt would be a Darks of London or a Pringle, with button-down collar.

Here in Mphiti, or Maritzburg for you, while the Dudes shopped uptown at stores such as Just Men and Pizzaz (both of which have long disappeared), the favourite store for Pantsulas was Hollywoods or Manhattans, which are both situated below Retief Street.

Besides the distinction of these two groups in terms of clothes, the other distinguishing feature was that a Pantsula nearly always carried an Okapi knife or some such weapon. This did not mean that the Dudes did not arm themselves. I used to observe that the karatekas at the dojo behind the now closed Astra Cinema were mostly Dudes.

Any observer of today's social scene will notice that the behaviour of most kwaito musicians resembles that of the Pantsulas.

So maybe, in judging the Yengenis of this world and their stylish and fancy clothes, we should just pause for a while to remember that their love for the 'wear" is shared by many of us and dates back much longer that our almost 10 years of democratic rule.

With acknowledgements to Bhungani Kamzolo and The Natal Witness.