Mai Denzel will be live on air with Olla today, the shenanigans of one Harare lady identified as Tariro or Mai Denzel has set Zimbabwe’s social media alight.

Apparently, her antics read like those of Sylvia Maria Kristel, the woman behind the eponymous character Emmanuelle of the French movie series by the same name which ran from the 1970s through the 1990s, pushing boundaries of what could be watched on mainstream television, even if it were at night when innocent eyes are supposed to be asleep.

In what is believed to be an act of revenge, Mai Denzel cheated on her husband with, an army man, Daniel Parangeta of Chimhanda Village in Rushinga, Mt Darwin, and another unidentified man.

What happened?

During happier times, it appears that Parangeta and Mai Denzel used to capture some of their best moments in their birthday suits.

They even recorded a tape, which later went viral, thanks to the jilted Parageta who is said to have sent the video and nude pictures to Mai Denzel’s husband in a fit of pique.

She apparently dumped him for Parangeta’s friend.

“I was dating someone my brother, so I later dumped him and started dating another one. I didn’t know they knew each other. So, he discovered that affair and told my husband. He also showed him some nude pictures of me that I had sent him,” Mai Denzel says in one of the audios that have become hot.

She also confessed to her aunt.

Baba Denzel had enough of her cheating ways and asked her brother to take her away. He had no bus fare, so it was resolved that she moves in with her mother in Harare’s Budiriro suburb.

“I was surprised when her boyfriend Daniel told me about his relationship with Mai Denzel. As if that was not enough, he then sent my wife’s nude pictures as proof that ‘we were, indeed, in love’. I then confronted my wife about the issue and asked her about Daniel and she ran away, only to seek refuge at the landlord’s house,” Baba Denzel narrated to Mai Denzel’s aunt.

How the public reacted

Padare/Enkundleni Men’s Forum on Gender Programmes development and fundraising manager Thando Makubaza said only women have been shamed because of infidelity, but with the advent of social media, the tide was changing.

“Infidelity cuts across both genders as it is not only done by men or women. Anybody can be associated with infidelity. However, the various issues trending on social media usually highlight the infidelity of women because in our Zimbabwean background and African culture it is not expected for a woman to cheat,” Makubaza said.

She added: “Maybe it is the change of time and women now say it was not okay and never was okay to accept that man can cheat without being held accountable. Women were always told that it is what marriages do and that is what men do.

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“However, in my opinion, it has never been like that. It was just a case of power issue which was never acceptable to women. There is no woman who would say ‘it is okay, you can go ahead and do what you want’. It only happened because there was no choice for women. That is why now when a woman cheats it blows out of proportion and it goes viral because she is not expected to do that.”

Makubaza said infidelity has always been there, but only that back then, women were not doing it or if they cheated, it was not brought into the limelight like it does now.

“If you track most of the cases of infidelity, at one time or the other, men would have cheated and the woman was expected to understand. In the past, when a man cheated, it was praised and everyone would know about it, but culturally when a woman did cheat, it was hidden, but in this generation of social media, people are now doing whatever comes to mind,” she noted.

As a solution, Makubaza said there should not be encouragement of one gender over the other to tolerate cheating.

“Let us call infidelity wrong, whether done by a man or a woman. There is a lot that happens when infidelity issues arise, so let none of the spouses be encouraged or praised when they do it,” she said, adding that it was high time people look at infidelity as a cancer.

“Conversations of why men do it or why women do it should be openly discussed. The root causes are where the problem is. The solving part includes churches and various institutions openly talking about it, so that we openly understand what is happening,” she noted.

“Some people think that it is revenge cheating, but I disagree because I believe there is no revenge cheating. It is very important to look at these things from an objective side rather than a subjective eye.”

Makubaza said the marriage institution was always the job of a woman to keep intact.

“Although there might have been infidelity happening, women were always expected to keep the marriage presented as if it is perfect. Indeed, back then, the marriage was sacred and respected. It was usually the job of a woman to ensure that whatever happens under the roof is kept there,” she noted.

“However, the woman we have today is also someone who goes out there to hunt and bring in resources for the family. Thus, there is nobody who is always going to have time to build and mend the marriage full of infidelity.”

She added: “The fact that everybody is out there working and trying to survive has left the several marriages vulnerable because women are no longer there to shield the shortcomings in their homes including infidelity.”