Hate between women in ‘A Struggle Alike’

Beaven Tapureta Bookshelf
Conflicts between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law are common but in the novel “A Struggle Alike” (2014) by Debra Vakira the conflict takes a sinister turn as tradition and hate disintegrate a certain family.Published by Zimbabwe Women Writers (ZWW), “A Struggle Alike” is based on a true story and dedicated by the author to “all women who survived hate against all odds”. It is written in a serious narrative voice which only occasionally dips into humour and satire. The story constantly moves from rural to urban settings with characters struggling to figure out the meaning of their ‘spiritual’ situation.

In Africa or elsewhere, everyone grows up being taught that mothers are important by virtue of our natural love and cultural belief.

The Bible even confirms this cultural truth by urging everyone to respect parents so that your days on earth may be increased.

The problem arises when the man marries and his mother feels she has been robbed of her deserved future rewards for the struggles she bore raising her son.

As is the object of ZWW to creatively highlight the plight of urban and rural women in different painful situations, the novel shares in-depth episodes of what happens when love which in the first place brings more than two people together suddenly turns sour against its own.

The hater is always persistent in looking for total elimination of the hated. Mbuya Masiyiwa, although old and supposed to be enjoying the times with grandchildren, is a “performer” who is fighting to “own back” her son Wellington from her muroora or daughter-in-law Berita. This is the crux of the story.

Berita is in for huge surprises from her in-laws.

There is a question that will haunt the reader throughout the story and that is, where are the men or relatives especially those traditionally representing Berita who endures her in-laws alone?

Her single mother is voiceless and this could be Berita’s soft spot.

Unlike in another 2014 novel titled “Revai” (Ropofadzo Mupunga) by the same publisher, in which a widow fights an overdrive of patriarchy and tradition,

“A Struggle Alike” interestingly has, as one of main characters, a widow/woman fighting against another woman.

No doubt feminist theory will have its own analysis of this cultural or traditional subordination of women by women in situations as found in “A Struggle Alike”.

Apart from her flowing language and adept description of action, the author Debra Vakira shows a great deal of knowledge on how tradition ought to be even in these modern times. Some traditional practices had always aimed to instil discipline in a people and respect for one’s elders, dead or alive.

The problems being faced by African families could be arising from the neglect or blatant abuse of some of innocent practices which do not disgrace a person’s rights.

Traditional practices such as ritually anointing a bull to embody a family’s ancestral spirit (bhuru remudzimu) as in “A Struggle Alike” exemplify how convincing some of traditional Shona practices were or are when properly done.

When the Masiyiwa clan unanimously arrive at the truth that bhuru remudzimu is the only answer to their problems, they right away do the right thing.

The bull will protect the family from evil but in the Masiyiwa family the evil is amongst themselves and this is just what the bull sets out to show them.

The bull knows Mbuya Masiyiwa is a trouble-causer in the Masiyiwa family and whenever it sees her, it charges at her. This happens several times with the old woman saving her life by fleeing! A time comes when Mbuya Masiyiwa takes it no more and she orders the bull be slaughtered but this again is an infringement of tradition.

Events unfold in the story but Berita and her 10 year-old daughter Masiyiwa (named after her grandmother) are on the receiving end.

The young girl is haunted by night spirits but those around her seem not to care.

“A Struggle Alike” cries out for the revision of the extent to which in-laws can control each other, especially in marital affairs. Without such cultural equilibrium in our society, the children are also doomed.

Mbuya Masiyiwa goes to the extent of initiating her own son Torai into a war against Berita. Torai, a dumb-head, rapes young Masiyiwa under his mother’s instruction to fix Berita for being the woman she is.

From Wellington’s point of view, all should be well as long as his mother is respected by Berita whom he claims to have salvaged from the dungeon of poverty. Berita was brought up by a poor single mother.

Somewhere along the plot, the narrator says, “Many times Wellington had accused Berita of bad-mouthing his mother and not according her the respect she naturally deserved. After such arguments or disagreements in opinion, Wellington often beat his wife up, sometimes physically wounding her.”Some men have found themselves in the middle of this storm where they struggle to balance between their love for their own wives and that love they have for their own mothers. Failure to strike such balance results in one of the two women suffering.

Formed in 1990, Zimbabwe Women Writers celebrate its 25th year, with 20 books, including “A Struggle Alike”, under its publishing stable.

The organisation has led a literary fight for intellectual space for women, basing its focus mainly on issues such as gender-based violence, human rights, HIV and AIDS, disability, education, poverty alleviation and orphans.

Of the 20 books by ZWW, five have won NAMA awards and these are “The African Tea Cosy” (2010) a novel, ‘Totanga Patsva’ (2005) a collection of

Shona short stories on HIV/AIDS, “Auxillia Chimsoro: The Unsung Heroine” (2009), ‘A Tragedy of Lives’ (2003) a collection of interviews with female prisoners in Zimbabwe, and ‘Light a Candle’ (2006).

In addition to the afore-said achievements, five books by ZWW have also been selected as Ordinary and Advanced Level set-books and these are “A Tragedy of Lives”, “Inkondlo” (1998) which is a collection of Ndebele poetry, “Vala Singafohleli Lesisilo” (2006) an anthology of Ndebele short stories on HIV and AIDS, “Vus’inkophe!”(1996), and “Masimba” (1st The rest of ZWW publications are a traditional food recipes book “Kubika Machikichori” (2007), a novel “Revai” (2014), a Shona poetry anthology “Ngatisimuke: Nhapitapi YeNhorimbo” which was once a set text for Ordinary Level, a novel “Rutendo: The Chief’s Granddaughter” (2009), “English Poetry and Short Stories” (1998 and reprinted in 2001), ‘Nhetembo’ (1998), a Shona novel ‘Kusara Kunze Huona’ (2013), recorded interviews with mothers and caregivers of children with disabilities “In The Wake of Our Shadows” (2009), a striking collection of women ex-combatants voices “Women of Anniversary” this Edition 1996).

“Resilience” (2000), and the anthology of over 100 poems and short stories by women from all walks of life published in 1994 and reprinted in 1998.

With its vision to promote literacy and appreciation of literature among Zimbabwean young women, ZWW has now embraced ICT to train women and school children in Digital Story Telling (DST).

This will see all publications being transformed into electronic books and reaching a wide audience.

It is indeed a fitting tribute to all the women writers who have passed through the hands of ZWW, those living and the departed, that today 25 years after the idea of imparting writing skills was sown, we are reading tales of our sisters’ and mothers’ different struggles.

Such enlightenment from reading changes lives!