Singer and songwriter Lady Zamar ,real name Yamikani Janet Banda, is very vocal, despite the daily criticism she receives on social media. She has stood her ground. She recently weighed in on the dating game and advised women to raise the standards when it comes to the caliber of men they date. "Men date according to how they see themselves," she says. "This is why they hardly ever settle for just any woman who loves them, no matter how sexy or beautiful she is. However, women tend to settle and date lower than they see themselves, usually deciding to get married to men who love them and treat them well, even though that man is below their standards in many important and significant ways," she said.

RAISING THE BAR

Lady Zamar’s advice to women is to date and marry in the same way men do. "Keep your standards high and don’t listen when people, especially other men vying for a chance with you, tell you that you’ll never find someone like that because trust me… you will and as easily as they do."

She says that some men want to keep women distracted so that they can be the only ones benefitting in relationships and be the only ones on the receiving end of goodness and satisfaction.

She advises that when a woman raises her standards, "she stops giving trashy, broken men a chance to her body."

SPEAKING UP AT ALL COSTS

In the last couple of years, Lady Zamar has had to practice a lot of self-love after she accused her ex-lover, Sjava,of raping her at the Porche-Villa Hotel and Conference Centre in Thohoyandou in 2017. In an expose on social media in 2018, she stated the sex she had with Sjava was non-consensual. The case was passed on to the National Prosecuting Authority( NPA) and later withdrawn by the Director of Public Prosecutions. In an interview with ZiMoja, the singer says she has since been criticised, called names, and bullied on social media. "I block negativity. My mind has been trained to see certain cues from afar. I have people who work on my social media and they know when to block negativity. I hardly see it anymore," she says. Lady Zamar says she is at a self-accepting phase of her life. "There is a lot of accepting I’ve had to do. A lot of introspection," she says, adding, "I used to think that other people’s actions reflected who I was. I used to believe that whenever someone treated me badly, it must have been something I have done. But I have learned that people’s actions are independent of me. They choose how they treat you and all you have to do is live your best life," she says.