Let ’em eat cake!

It was rumored that Marie Antoinette, wife of King Louis XIV of France said these words; but historians have stated that the attribution is incorrect. It was Maria Theresa who actually said it.

Anyway, no matter who said it, the infamous statement was made with regard to the peasants of the era who were complaining that there was not enough bread to go around, so whomever said it meant to be pompous and arrogant by suggesting they eat something that was even more expensive than bread.

It was intentionally callous and that is the way Grace Mugabe, First Lady of Zimbabwe and wife of President Robert Mugabe. essentially put it when she made an awkward attempt to state that she did not care for the idea of young girls being raped and suggested that rapists go and purchase readily-available whores instead.

At heart, the statement seems to say “Why don’t you pay for it rather than take it from some unwitting and unwilling child?” but that’s not the way The Zimbabwe Vigil, a local pressure group, chose to interpret it.

In the face of the kind of economic struggles that are forcing women into prostitution just to put bread on the table, Mrs. Mugabe’s comments came as close to unsympathetic and callous as did the allegation of Marie Antoinette/Maria Theresa being thoroughly and uncharacteristically unsympathetic to the plight of the poor.

“Let them eat cake!” was a pun intended to sting and jab at the people who could ill afford bread, and “Let them buy prostitutes!” goes along with that same vein.

Considering that the women in Zimbabwe are turning themselves over to illicit earnings in order to stay alive, the fact that the men are raping the little girls may indicate that maybe they can’t afford a prostitute.

That’s not to say that little girls don’t get raped whatever excuse some man wants to make, but Mugabe’s point – though seeming to provide a ‘solution’ to the problem only rubbed salt into the wound.

The idea is supposed to be that little girls should not be raped, AND women and girls should not be forced into prostitution just to keep from starving to death in such an economic downturn.

However, that statement from Mugabe the Missus alone says a lot about why many of the people of Zimbabwe are sensing that the current administration is no better than the Zanu PF faction – credited by some with causing the poverty situations currently running rampant in the African nation.

Suffice it to say that Mrs. Mugabe won’t be offering up her personal services to help alleviate the overtly sexualized troubles of such dastardly men who would go so far as to take what is not theirs instead of paying for what is being offered for a price.