IN a recent interview, Valerie Tagwira spoke about the concerns that influenced the novel.
She says in the interview: “It is a novel set in contemporary Zimbabwe.
It looks at poverty, homelessness, HIV and AIDS, domestic violence and a host of other socio-economic challenges of the day.
It is also a story about surviving against the odds and, hopefully, gives an insight into the intricacies of contemporary Zimbabwe with respect to how people are trying to survive.
When I initially started thinking about writing, I had a desire to do something different … something creative and, because I’m something of a ‘mild feminist’ at heart, I always knew that I would write something featuring strong female characters.
Writing about contemporary Zimbabwe was a natural choice because I am very much attached to ‘home’ and I travel back quite frequently.
At each visit, it strikes me how the living standards are deteriorating, and at each visit, I never imagine that things can get any worse, but they do, and people still survive.
I was particularly concerned about how women deal with the challenges that are thrust upon them.
When I started writing the book, being a woman was my motivation, but I also had a strong interest in socio-economic, developmental and health-related issues that affect women.
I wanted to highlight the plight of the disadvantaged in modern day Zimbabwe … the poor.
This encompasses the homeless, be they adults or street children, the unemployed, and all the employed and ex-middle classes who are now living below the poverty datum line.
It includes everyone who cannot afford basic necessities like food, clothing, education and access to healthcare.”
The first observation is the author’s confession that she is a ‘mild feminist’ — whatever this means!
You will recall from our previous interactions that I said a work of art can only be best appreciated by looking not only at the background (which we did last week), but also the ideologies that inform the author.
I am sure you still remember Emmanuel Ngara’s dichotomies in his Art and Ideology, namely dominant ideology, aesthetic ideology and authorial ideology, the latter being a compound product of the former two plus the author’s personal experiences too.
I want to emphasise that the main reason the novel omits reference to the political and economic forces that author the conditions that our author deplores is a direct result of the fact that she has taken a particular ideological position, feminism, which does not permit her to challenge Western imperialist narratives for indeed, feminism itself is one of the narratives of empire.
Have this at the back of your mind as we look closely at the rest of the novel.
Look at how the author describes her setting, including her purposeful selection of setting, events and characters.
She has chosen women because ‘they have been disempowered, and have very little or no means with which to make their lives better’.
She believes that ‘the issues discussed in the novel have touched most people either directly or indirectly because there is now so much poverty in Zimbabwe’.
And this is how she describes the situation:
“To me, it feels as if most things are collapsing, be it industry, the health system, or the education system … you name it, it’s going … deteriorating.
Even the judicial system is struggling.
The current political situation and the country’s negative publicity certainly don’t help.
All these have the combined effect of making life very difficult for the people.
Also, women are more likely to be unemployed, less educated, and less in control of their lives because of cultural and biological reasons, all of which make them even more vulnerable.
The collapsing health system in Zimbabwe has placed an even bigger burden on women, who are naturally expected to be caregivers.
For example, childbearing necessitates the provision of obstetric services which, for the greater proportion of women, are now out of reach, even at a very basic level.
I can see a situation where pregnancy and childbirth are soon going to be gratuitously risky. In addition to this, women’s role as caregivers now brings with it the extra burden of looking after family and friends with HIV and AIDS.”
I repeat: see how the whole analysis fails to factor in the larger political picture.
It is as if the local leadership is solely responsible for the rot.
Now that you are clear about the ideological limitation of the novel, you can appreciate that the incisive observations made in the novel are true in as far as the situation on the ground is concerned.
The story is realistic and perhaps the author may have left the causes to our investigation.
Let us examine the novel now.
The novel’s protagonist, Onai, is a woman who suffers many dilemmas in her roles as wife, mother, breadwinner and ordinary Zimbabwean living through the harsh times of 2005, where hyperinflation, queues for scarce commodities and the deathly effects of the Murambatsvina operations colour the hopelessness of a once prosperous nation.
Through the lives of Onai Moyo, a market woman and responsible mother, and her best friend Katy Nguni – a vendor and black-market currency dealer, we acquire an insight into the challenges that face those who only survive by their wits, their labour and their friendship.
This richly detailed novel reveals how precarious the future was for the poor in 2005.
However, if the lives of these two close friends are situated in a high-density suburb, Tagwira also introduces us to a wider cross-section of Zimbabwean society: Tom Sibanda, a young businessman and farmer, his girlfriend, Faith, a law student, Tom’s sister Emily, a doctor, and Mawaya, the ostensible beggar.
With depth and sensitivity, Tagwira pulls these many threads into a densely-woven novel that provides us with some of the many faces of contemporary Zimbabwe.