Women, nation and voicing in Sharai Mukonoweshuro’s Shona novels

Maurice T Vambe

doi:10.4102/lit.v34i1.20

Abstract

The article explores the fictional representation of women in two of Sharai Mukonoweshuro’s novels, Akafuratidzwa Moyo and Ndakagara Ndazviona. Traditional Shona expectations of how a woman should behave have prescribed the roles that women are expected to play in society. In Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), colonialism invented customary laws in which women were further downgraded to social positions akin to those of minors. Although the nationalist struggle was essentially meant to guarantee freedom for all Black people irrespective of gender, the male elites constructed the identity of Black women as their inferior ‘other’. Against this background this article argues that Sharai Mukonoweshuro’s novels struggle against these male sanctioned stereotypes. However, as will be shown, Mukonoweshuro’s mode of resistance to female stereotypes is ambivalent in the sense that the author constructs young women who defy patriarchy on the one hand and, on the other hand, old women who do the unthinkable act of poisoning their own sons.

Highlights

Women in male writingsShona traditional culture has prescribed roles for women
In Ndakagara Ndazviona (Mukonoweshuro 1990), the irony is that the same rebellious Revai is prepared to sacrifice her life when she chooses to live with Jemisi who nearly killed her
The author blends the Shona idiom (Ndarema – [I am pregnant]) with modernist jargon (Ndingatenda nhema – [You think I will believe those lies]). It seems that in Ndakagara Ndazviona and Akafuratidzwa Moyo the author has indulged in the use of the Shona language without some corresponding critical perspectives to question the female stereotypes that she creates and exposes

Summary

Introduction

Women in male writingsShona traditional culture has prescribed roles for women. For example, in some versions of Shona culture (Chiwome, cited in Gaidzanwa 1996), a good woman is a stoic, self-effacing, loyal and biological mother. The author has created in Revai an ambivalent image of a Black woman who can love deeply, is deceitful, but forgiving to the man who poses a physical threat to her life. The author’s negative portrayal of women like Revai challenges feminist critics such as Gaidzanwa who believe that women’s writing is necessarily and inherently progressive in the ways that images of women and nation are composed.

Results

Conclusion