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R/£ Mugabe's brutal 'clean up' operation is setting for debut novel
June 15, 2008 Edition 1
Chris Dunton
The uncertainty of hope
By: Valerie Tagwira (Jacana) R135
Valerie Tagwira is a Zimbabwean medic currently studying in London. Not surprisingly, her debut novel is imbued with rage at the current state of medicare in her country - but it also glows with pride in the staff who persist in dedicating themselves to their people.
Set in the high-density suburb of Mbare, Harare, in 2005, the novel has as the pivot of its plot Operation Murambatsvina, the government's urban clearance programme (there are interesting parallels here with a number of Nigerian novels and poems that centre on Abacha's destruction of the Lagos settlement of Maroko).
Tagwira's main character is a vegetable seller named Onai Moyo, whose husband, Gari, is unfaithful and abusive. Her best friend, Katy, is better off - largely on account of her illegal trading in foreign currency - and always ready with emotional and financial support.
There are a number of sub-plots, astutely tied to the main narrative line. Katy's daughter, Faith, is a university student, engaged to one of the wealthy new black farmers, Tom. A beggar, Mawaya, who is clearly from a privileged background, but who has been begging for three months after the death of his wife, is supported by Onai when she has a little left-over cabbage and sadza to offer him.
Tagwira is painstaking in mapping out the terrain of wretchedness in which Onai has to try to survive. Criminal activity is rampant: as Katy's husband puts it, "The line between what is legal and what is not has never been so blurred as it is now." Load shedding is frequent (this is the euphemism Tagwira uses, so it seems not to have been an invention of Eskom).
There are interminable food queues. Tagwira's account of the repeated disappointments and humiliations incurred during these is relentless, but so it should be - this is what endless suffering is like. Hospitals lack even bandages and, in one episode, a Caesarean has to be carried out by candlelight, the doctor so nervous he cuts a major artery.
Early on in the narrative, Gari beats his wife so badly she is hospitalised, leaving him free to concentrate on his mistress (or "small house"). The general consensus among his male colleagues is that "It was a man's prerogative to run his household as he wished, with no allegiance to any rules, especially those dictated by a woman."
Despite advice from all sides to do so, Onai refuses to report her husband or to seek shelter. Meanwhile, his treatment of her becomes increasingly sadistic - eating biltong in front of her while she has to make do with sadza and beans.
As the plot develops, Katy gets involved in currency deals with a crooked policeman. Tom and Faith, living in the virtual Zimbabwe inhabited by the rich, take a holiday at Vic Falls. Faith expresses at least some concern at Tom's complacency regarding the state of the state.
Then the announcement comes that shack owners and stallholders must pull down their premises within 24 hours. The market where Onai and Katy trade becomes a battleground for the police, looters and protesters. Though Onai's house is safe, she's ordered to demolish a shack she rents out - in a powerful episode, she sets about this with an axe, "a woman possessed".
As the last part of this long novel gets under way, Gari dies and Onai and her children are evicted from their house by his relatives - an episode shockingly revealing of the weaponry of patriarchy.
When Onai and Katy assure each other, "Everything will be all right", Onai recognises this is "an automatic response that [has] ceased to hold meaning" - but what else can one offer?
Yet these last chapters do contain developments that allow for hope.
The novel's blurb quotes The Zimbabwean as describing Tagwira as a possible young rival for Tsitsi Dangarembga and refers to her "confident inspirational prose". On both counts this is misleading.
Tagwira and Dangarembga are very different novelists pursuing quite different projects. And Tagwira's prose is the least of her assets.
Sometimes the writing is just plain bad ("He watched her as she sauntered off on incredibly long leg, appreciating her voluptuous body, and her neat micro-extensions resting on the promising curve of her firm bosom").
Narration and dialogue are seamless, because the latter allows for no idiomatic differentiation between characters. Again and again individuals tell each other what they must already know, for the reader's benefit.
On the other hand, the threads that bind the novel's multi-stranded plot are very well organised. Most importantly, as a record of what has been taking place in Zimbabwe - as indictment - The Uncertainty of Hope - has real value.
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