Journal of Southern African Studies, 2013

Vol. 39, No. 3, 511–526, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2013.826069

‘Respectable Women’ versus ‘Small Houses’:

Feminist Negotiations of Sexual Morality,
Marriage and the Challenge of HIV/AIDS in
Zimbabwe
Lene Bull Christiansen
(Roskilde University, Denmark)

This article investigates the gendered cultural politics around HIV prevention in Zimbabwe
through an analysis of feminist narratives of sexuality, marriage and HIV/AIDS. The analysis
employs a cross-reading of three texts, including two novels: Whose Daughter, My Child? by
Grace Mutandwa (2006) and The Uncertainty of Hope by Valerie Tagwira (2006), and a
regular newspaper column ‘Let’s Talk About AIDS’ by Beatrice Tonhodzai in the Herald.
Written between 2005 and 2006, these texts reflect the social and cultural crisis of AIDS and
the social and cultural politics of the Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) –
ZANU(PF) – government in power at the time. Although all three texts challenge and
renegotiate cultural norms of sexuality and marriage in response to the crisis of AIDS, they
do so from within a position of ‘married respectability’. This places their critiques in an
ambivalent position regarding the institution of marriage and the cultural norms of
respectability upholding this institution. I conclude that ‘respectably married women’ can
challenge the norms of marriage only by setting themselves apart from ‘un-respectable, non-
married women’ – women who are referred to using the term ‘small houses’, compared to the
‘main house’ of the married woman.

Introduction
African as well as global feminist movements have grappled with norms of female
sexuality, social respectability and class, often as points of contention, for decades.1 This
article describes how these issues appear at the forefront of local feminist debates in
Zimbabwe. My point of departure is the question of the particular ways through which HIV
prevention is linked to the marriage institution and subsequently how public and
intellectual debates about HIV/AIDS focus on abstinence, faithfulness and marriage.
Against the backdrop of a national prevention programme and the pre-2009 nationalist
political agenda, I examine how three Zimbabwean authors in the context of AIDS
negotiated the cultural constructions of gender and power on which norms of sexuality are
based. I view this as part of a discursive formation within which Zimbabwean feminists,
non-governmental organisation (NGO) workers, health professionals and intellectuals

1 B. Skeggs, Formations of Class & Gender: Becoming Respectable (London, Sage Publications, 1997); C.T.
Mohanty, ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and the Colonial Discourses’, in C.T. Mohanty, A. Russo
and L.M. Torres (eds), Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism (Indianapolis, Indiana University Press,
1991), pp. 51 –80; L. Haram, ‘“Prostitutes” or Modern Women? Negotiating Respectability in Northern
Tanzania’, in S. Arnfred (ed.), Re-thinking Sexualities in Africa, (Uppsala, Nordic Africa Institute, 2005),
pp. 211–32; H. Gunkel, The Cultural Politics of Female Sexuality in Southern Africa (New York, Routledge,
2010).
q 2013 The Editorial Board of the Journal of Southern African Studies
512 Journal of Southern African Studies

negotiate the assumptions about sexual morality within marriage inherent in the ‘abstinence
and faithfulness’ rationale of national HIV prevention strategies. These negotiations also
paralleled debates about the role of women in the Zimbabwean nation under the
leadership of ZANU in its role as a social movement.2

Gender Power and HIV Prevention in Zimbabwe

In Zimbabwe the spread of HIV/AIDS affects everyone3 and is acknowledged as a national
challenge.4 Although after 2000 the economic and political crisis overshadowed the national
political agenda, the problems associated with HIV/AIDS did not go away and in fact grew
during the crisis. Unlike neighbouring South Africa, where struggles for treatment dominated,5
the focus in Zimbabwe has been on prevention.6 Inspiration here is drawn from the so-called
‘ABC model’ – referring to ‘Abstinence, Being Faithful and Condom Use’ – which has been
adopted widely in African responses to the pandemic. The priority is abstinence, with a
particular focus on marriage.7 This approach is criticised in African contexts for its assumption
that messages of abstinence and faithfulness will lead to behaviour change and for its blindness
to power relations within marriages.8
In Zimbabwe, reproductive health, family ideals and women’s sexuality have been
connected with nationalist discourses since the 1950s. Amy Kaler depicts ‘an indestructible
link between fertility and nation-building’,9 originating in the belief that Rhodesian family
planning was intended to reduce the African population and disrupt family structures.10 Kaler
demonstrates that these ideas lived on in the post-independence period, when the African
government used ‘a politics of reproduction’ to regain ‘control over the resources of the

2 When referring to ZANU as a movement rather than simply the political party ZANU(PF), I draw attention to
broader historical linkages between the party and various branches of the state and civil society. See L.B.
Christiansen, ‘Versions of Violence: Zimbabwe’s Domestic Violence Law and Symbolic Politics of Protection’,
Review of African Political Economy, 37, 167 (2010), pp. 421 –35; L.B. Christiansen, ‘“In Our Culture” – How
Debates about Zimbabwe’s Domestic Violence Law Became a “Culture Struggle”’, Nordic Journal of Feminist
and Gender Research, 17, 2 (2009), pp. 159– 75.
3 The first national survey in 2003 found HIV infection in 24.6 per cent of all adults. In urban areas this number was
28 per cent and in certain rural areas as high as 35 per cent. UNAIDS stated that new infections decreased
between 2003 and 2005; however, it is doubtful that this has continued, particularly in light of the social crisis and
‘Operation Murambatsvina’, which the UN estimates affected approximately 700,000 people, many of whom
were HIV positive. See UNAIDS, ‘Evidence for HIV Decline in Zimbabwe: A Comprehensive Review of the
Epidemiological Data’, (Geneva, UNAIDS, 2005); A. Kajumulo Tibaijuka, ‘Report of the Fact-Finding Mission
to Zimbabwe to Assess the Scope and Impact of Operation Murambatsvina by the UN Special Envoy on Human
Settlement Issues in Zimbabwe’ (2005) available at www.unhabitat.org, retrieved on 1 March 2006.
4 See P.D. Parirenyatwa, ‘Foreword’, The HIV and AIDS Epidemic in Zimbabwe (Harare, Ministry of Health and
Child Welfare and The National AIDS Council, 2004).
5 E. Oinas and K. Jungar, ‘A luta continua! – South African HIV Activism, Embodiment and State Politics’,
Development Dialog, 50 (December 2008), pp. 239–62; K. Jungar and E. Oinas, ‘Beyond Agency and
Victimisation: Re-reading HIV and AIDS in African Contexts’, Social Dynamics, 37, 2 (2011), pp. 248 –62.
6 As reflected in the national strategic response to the epidemic. See The Ministry of Health and Child Welfare and
National AIDS Council 2004, The HIV and AIDS Epidemic in Zimbabwe (Harare, The Ministry of Health and
Child Welfare, 2004).
7 The Ministry of Health and Child Welfare and National AIDS Council 2004, The HIV and AIDS Epidemic in
Zimbabwe (Harare, The Ministry of Health and Child Welfare, 2004).
8 See S.W. Sinding, ‘Does ‘CNN’ (Condoms, Needles and Negotiation) Work Better than ‘ABC’ (Abstinence,
Being Faithful and Condom Use) in Attacking the AIDS Epidemic?’, International Family Planning
Perspectives, 31, 1 (2005), p. 38; S. Cohen, ‘Beyond Slogans: Lessons from Uganda’s Experience with ABC and
HIV/AIDS’, Reproductive Health Matters, 12, 23 (Special Issue: Sexuality, Rights and Social Justice, May
2004), pp. 132–5; M.V. Donk, ‘“Positive” Urban Futures in Sub-Saharan Africa: HIV/AIDS and the Need for
ABC (A Broader Conceptualisation)’, Environment and Urbanisation, 18, 1 (2006), pp. 166, 175.
9 See A. Kaler, Running After Pills: Politics, Gender and Contraception in Colonial Zimbabwe (London,
Heinemann, 2003), p. 179.
10 Ibid., pp. 179–80.
 Respectable Women Versus Small Houses 513

country, which had been appropriated by the white regime: resources which included the
reproductive abilities of African women’.11 Thus, women’s sexual freedom became a
contested site of national interest, and insofar as it undermined men’s control over women, it
was seen as threatening the nation.12 Control over women’s sexuality within ‘traditional’
family structures therefore became a matter of national interest, and women’s bodies
(metaphorically) became the site for regaining control from the white regime.13
In debates over HIV/AIDS, I argue that women’s sexual morality and their role within
marriage must be seen in light of the role women have been ascribed within the nation-
building ideologies of ZANU as a social movement. I argue that women’s sexuality became
linked to an ideal of African marriage which is a cultural construction of norms that are the
product of lengthy historical processes of social change and cultural negotiation which
connect Christian ideals of marriage to notions of ‘traditional’ African marriage.14
Zimbabwean feminists have criticised the idealisation of a patriarchal power within nation-
building ideologies mainly via debates over women’s legal rights.15 The main critique is
aimed at a system which is made up by ‘entrenched social and cultural norms that
perpetuate the gender inequalities between the sexes’.16 The legal struggles of Zimbabwean
feminists have been threefold: attempting to roll back discriminatory legal frameworks,
challenging the place of customary law in the constitution and challenging the underlying
assumptions of this legislation.17 Tandeka Nikwane argues that a ‘patriarchal’ set of norms
works via framing the marriage institution as a ‘traditional’ domain. Therefore, legal
struggles for women’s rights must tackle articulations of ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’ in relation
to marriage.18
This outlook on gender equality in Zimbabwe might be surprising, even deemed
‘unpatriotic’. Because gender equality was part of the official nation-building ideologies of
ZANU as a social movement, and while in practice commitment to these principles has been
ambivalent, the self-understanding of the party has always been that it championed gender
equality.19
The ambivalence of ZANU(PF)’s commitment to gender equality can be ascribed to an
ambivalence within the nationalist ideology itself, caught between envisioning Zimbabwe as
a ‘modern’ socialist nation while emphasising cultural heritage and ‘traditional’ social
structures. Much has been written about the nationalist ideologies of ZANU(PF) since the

11 See A. Kaler, ‘A Threat to the Nation and a Threat to the Men: The Banning of Depo-Provera in Zimbabwe,
1981’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 24, 2 (June 1998), p. 348.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid., pp. 375– 6.
14 See C. Summers, ‘Mission Boys, Civilized Men, and Marriage: Educated African Men in the Missions of
Southern Rhodesia, 1920– 1945’, The Journal of Religious History, 23, 1 (1999); D. Jeater, Marriage,
Perversion, and Power: The Construction of Moral Discourse in Southern Rhodesia 1894– 1930 (Oxford,
Clarendon Press. 1993); L.B. Christiansen, ‘The “Good African Woman”, Bad Sexuality and Social Change in
Chakaipa’s Garandichauya (1963)’, English Studies in Africa, 50, 1 (Special Edition: Land, Nation, Self: New
Critical Approaches to Zimbabwean and Rhodesian Writing 2007), pp.75–87.
15 See, for example, A.P. Cheater and R.B. Gaidzanwa, ‘Citizenship in Neo-Patrilineal States: Gender and Mobility
in Southern Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 22, 2 (June 1996), pp. 189 –200; T.C. Nkiwane,
‘Gender, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism in Zimbabwe: The Fight against Amendment 14’,
Citizenship Studies, 4, 3 (2000), pp. 325–38; F. Banda, ‘Women, Law and Human Rights in Southern
Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 32, 1 (March 2006), pp. 13–27; S. Ranchod-Nilsson, ‘Gender
Politics and the Pendulum of Political and Social Transformation in Zimbabwe, Journal of Southern African
Studies, 32, 1 (March 2006), pp. 49–67.
16 P. Made and N. Mpofu, Beyond Inequalities 2005: Women in Zimbabwe (Harare, ZWRCN & SARDC, 2005),
pp. 3 –4.
17 Banda, ‘Women, Law and Human Rights’, p. 17. Banda is here referring to other neighbouring countries,
particularly South Africa; Nikwane, ‘Gender, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism, p. 326.
18 Nikwane, ‘Gender, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism’, p. 329– 36.
19 Ranchod-Nilsson, ‘Gender Politics and the Pendulum of Political and Social Transformation’, p. 51 –2.
514 Journal of Southern African Studies

dawn of the so-called ‘Third Chimurenga’.20 A recurrent theme is the connection between
‘cultural heritage’ and a metaphor of the nation as a family in which the president inhabits the
role of patriarch.21 In the symbolic imaginary of nations, Anne McClintock has argued,
‘women are represented as the atavistic and authentic body of national tradition . . .
embodying nationalism’s conservative principle of continuity’.22 This patriarchal narrative
casts women as ‘mothers of the nation’. In Zimbabwean iconography, the mythical Nehanda
is positioned as ‘the mother of the nation’.23 However, a gendered division of labour is
created within the government: women are included in positions that mimic the patriarchal
family, occupying the domestic sphere of care giving and reproduction, while male cabinet
members hold posts associated with public spheres, such as the military.24 The metaphor of
the nation as family also rests on a masculinised iconography of guerrilla soldier masculinity,
associated with the liberation and protection of the nation – the family.25
Lizzy Attree has described how this image of strong and virile Zimbabwean patriarchal
masculinity is being challenged in the course of the AIDS epidemic.26 The social crisis of
AIDS reconfigures the social power dynamics, as norms of legitimacy and power become
renegotiated under the shifting circumstances. Norms of gender and sexuality are particularly
called into question, because AIDS puts pressure on the heart of the social structure: the
marriage institution. However, as this article will demonstrate, there is no easy transition from
one norm set to another, nor is the direction of change obvious. Challenges to social norms are
a discursive battle over the definition of new norms in new and changing social
circumstances. I will explore how the three authors – Grace Mutandwa, Valerie Tagwira and
Beatrice Tonhodzayi – attempt to negotiate the cultural constructions of gender and power
that guide norms of gender and sexuality in relation to AIDS. I focus on how their texts
simultaneously struggle to formulate a challenge to existing norms while simultaneously
seeking a platform from which to speak.

Literary Responses to HIV/AIDS

The social challenges faced by Zimbabwean society as a consequence of AIDS are
increasingly being tackled by writers and journalists who have fostered a budding literature
and public debate which deal with the social consequences of AIDS. This article deals with
the debate on AIDS as a ‘discursive formation’ which consists of media debate,

20 See for example: L.B. Christiansen, Tales of the Nation: Feminist Nationalism or Patriotic History? Defining
National History and Identity in Zimbabwe. Research Report No. 132 (Uppsala, Nordic Africa Institute, 2004);
R. Muponde and R. Primorac, Versions of Zimbabwe: New Approaches to Literature and Culture (Harare,
Weaver Press, 2005); R. Primorac and S. Chan (eds), The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of
International Affairs, 95, 384 (Special Issue: Zimbabwe and the Space of Silence, 2006); K. Muchemwa and
R. Muponde, Manning the Nation: Father Figures in Zimbabwean Literature and Society (Harare, Weaver Press,
2007).
21 Parpart, ‘Masculinities, Race and Violence in the Making of Zimbabwe’, in Muchemwa and Muponde (eds),
Manning the Nation, p. 103; L.B. Christiansen, ‘Mai Mujuru – Father of the Nation?’, in Muchemwa and
Muponde (eds), Manning the Nation, pp. 88–101.
22 A. McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context (New York, Routledge
1995), p. 359.
23 E. Ngara, ‘Vision and Form in South African Liberation Poetry’, in E. Ngara and A. Morrison (eds) Literature,
Language and The Nation (Harare, Baobab Books, 1989), p. 64.
24 Christiansen, ‘Mai Mujuru’.
25 Ibid, p. 90–1; J. Parpart, ‘Masculinity/ies, Gender and Violence in the Struggle for Zimbabwe’, in J. Parpart and
M. Zalewski (eds) Rethinking the Man Question: Sex, Gender and Violence in International Relations (London,
Zed Books, 2008), pp. 181–97.
26 L. Attree, ‘The Strong Healthy Man: AIDS and Self-Delusion’, in Muchemwa and Muponde (eds), Manning the
Nation, p. 58–9.
 Respectable Women Versus Small Houses 515

professional AIDS information materials (mainly produced by NGOs) and literary

responses to AIDS. Although this discursive formation is very broad and encompasses a
number of different materials, here I will focus primarily on three texts: two novels –
Whose Daughter, My Child? by Grace Mutandwa (2006)27 and The Uncertainty of Hope by
Valerie Tagwira (2006)28 – and the column Let’s Talk About AIDS by Beatrice
Tonhodzayi, published in the government-controlled daily, the Herald.29 I selected these
texts from the broader range of AIDS-related texts because they contain in-depth
negotiations of marriage, fidelity and infidelity in the context of AIDS. By focusing
attention on texts which belong to different genres, I seek to analyse the discursive
interrelations across this discursive formation, which may lead to a greater understanding of
the social and political spheres from which discourses on female sexuality emerge. In their
engagement with different social spheres, the texts and authors differ. Tonhodzayi’s
column was widely read because the Herald functioned as the dominant government media
outlet of the time. The two novels were narrower in their dissemination. Mutandwa’s novel
was ‘self published’ and made available via NGOs as part of HIV prevention initiatives.
Tagwira’s novel was published by the notable Weaver Press, which gave it both national
dissemination (however, limited due to the economic crisis) and launched the book
internationally within the Zimbabwean diaspora. Rather than viewing this disparity as an
obstacle for the analysis, I am interested in reading these seemingly unconnected texts as
parts of a wider discourse on AIDS and sexual morality: the texts are selected because of
their differences both in genre, dissemination and intended audience.
Both the column and the novels attempt to challenge and deepen existing understanding
of AIDS in Zimbabwe and ‘break the taboo’ that relates to sexual matters. It can well be
argued that this has indeed been the case, especially with regard to the column.30 I will also
argue that these texts belong to a critical didactic discourse on AIDS, which struggles to find a
position of authority on sexual matters. I view the texts as didactic spaces for negotiation of
social norms. This sets them apart from earlier Zimbabwean feminist literary giants such as
Yvonne Vera and Tsitsi Dangarembga, whose work has been held up as subtle yet powerful
challenges to traditionalism and patriarchy, which deconstructed the foundations of
nationalist discourse.31 By contrast, the didactic drive of the three texts I examine here places
them uneasily between challenging patriarchal notions of African marriage and, at the same
time, upholding certain moral norms associated with marriage.
The title of this article, ‘Respectable Women’ versus ‘Small Houses’, refers to this claim.
The term ‘small house’ is derived from historical practices of polygyny in which men have
senior and junior wives. However, today it functions as popular slang for single women who
have relationships with married men. The term implies that the relation between the ‘small
house’ and the married man is relatively fixed – a modern version of a junior wife.
Nevertheless, while there is a semantic difference between the term ‘prostitute’ and the term
‘small house’, the two often overlap in the AIDS debates and at times are used
interchangeably. The terminology of these debates is further complicated by the wide range
of different practices of connecting love, sex and money, and the naming of these practices

27 G. Mutandwa, Whose Daughter, My Child? (Harare, Amerdon Media, 2006).

28 V. Tagwira, The Uncertainty of Hope (Harare, Weaver Press, 2006).
29 The column ‘Let’s Talk About AIDS’ by B. Tonhodzai in the Herald (selected articles between December 2005
and August 2006).
30 The Herald is the largest government-controlled daily, giving the column a widespread circulation.
31 See, for example, A.E. Willey and J. Treiber, Emerging Perspectives on Tsitsi Dangarembga: Negotiating the
Postcolonial (Trenton, Africa World Press, 2002); H. Cousins and P. Dodgson-Katiyo, Emerging Perspectives on
Yvonne Vera (Trenton, Africa World Press, 2012); L.B. Christiansen, ‘Yvonne Vera: Rewriting Discourses of
History and Identity in Zimbabwe’, in Primorac and Muponde, Versions of Zimbabwe.
516 Journal of Southern African Studies

among young people in southern Africa in general.32 For the purposes of this article, it is
important to stress that the ‘small house’ category is contrasted to the ‘main house’/married
woman, whose husband cheats; therefore ‘small house’ is defined by the married status of the
man, wherefore his wife, by definition, functions as the wronged party in this triangle.
In a nationalist narrative of ‘fathers and mothers of the nation’, the ‘small house’ would be
deemed disruptive of the social fabric of society. So too, are they deemed destructive in HIV
prevention strategies that rely on the ABC model. In this discursive context, Zimbabwean
feminists attempt to formulate a critique of the ‘traditional’ marriage institution while at the
same time negotiating the boundaries of the discursive space for such debates. This space is
most found in NGO work on HIV prevention. The interdependency of feminist advocacy and
HIV prevention also relates to feminist literatures that deal with AIDS.33 My three texts
belong to this body of Zimbabwean literature that deals with AIDS from a feminist activist
perspective.34 This literature depicts AIDS from ‘the woman’s point of view’ as a social crisis
that holds women back. A dominant rationale is ‘empowerment’ through control over one’s
body and sexuality. This is stated outright by Mutandwa:
When women start telling themselves that they deserve the best and that they too deserve
happiness, only then can they set themselves standards of life that they want and the quality of
health and life they deserve. It is my sincere hope that one day women of all ages will give
themselves the freedom of choice and the right to map out their lives.35
The same ideas are found in Tonhodzayi’s column, which aims at raising awareness about the
spread of HIV and the social problems associated with the pandemic. The texts deal
differently with marriage and sexuality in relation to AIDS. The common theme is the
vulnerability of married women to HIV as a consequence of the norms of sexual morality,
which are dictated by ‘culture and tradition’.
Mutandwa’s novel, Whose Daughter, My Child?, describes the life of Taurai, who is a
successful professional woman and mother. She suddenly finds herself HIV-positive when
her womanising husband Daniel dies from an AIDS-related illness. In the style of Mirama
Ba’s classic novel So Long a Letter (1989),36 the novel consists of a string of letters. She
begins with her best friend, who has had an affair with Daniel, and then writes a letter to
Daniel himself. After these, she writes letters to the members her family, to her friends and to
her colleagues. The novel consists of the sorrowful, confused and often incoherent thoughts
which come to the protagonist as she attempts to convey her feelings. The novel is short but
deals with a wide range of complex problems attached to AIDS, without arriving at any clear-
cut answers. It depicts the ambivalent feelings of a mature woman living with HIV.
The style of Whose Daughter, My Child? is very different from that of The Uncertainty of
Hope. This novel’s long and rich plot depicts the two women, Onai and Katy, who are best
friends and neighbours in the township Mbare. Katy has a loving and faithful husband and a
grown-up daughter, the university student Faith. Onai has three young children and a
drunken, violent and unfaithful husband, Gari, who is involved in a ‘small house’

32 See B. Oxlund, Love in Limpopo. Becoming a Man in a South African University Campus (PhD thesis, University
of Copenhagen, 2009); M. Hunter, ‘The Materiality of Everyday Sex: Thinking Beyond “Prostitution”’, African
Studies, 61, 1 (2002).
33 T. Westerhof, Unlucky in Love (Harare, Public Personalities Against AIDS Trust, 2005). This book is edited by
V. Kernohan from the Southern Africa HIV/AIDS Information Dissemination Service; E. Hwede (ed.), Light a
Candle: A Collection of Short Stories by Zimbabwean Women Writers (Harare, Zimbabwe Women Writers,
2006). This book was published with support from Hivos and the National AIDS Council.
34 For an extensive analysis of this literature, see L. Attree, The Literary Responses to HIV and AIDS in Literature
from Zimbabwe and South Africa 1990 to 2005 (PhD thesis, SOAS, University of London, 2007).
35 Mutandwa, Whose Daughter, My Child?, p. 88.
36 M. Ba, So Long a Letter (London, Heineman, 1989).
 Respectable Women Versus Small Houses 517

relationship with a ‘notorious’ woman named Gloria, who is HIV-positive. The women both
lose their livelihoods during the 2005 ‘Operation Murambatzvina’. While Katy and her husband
manage tolerably, Onai struggles to keep her children fed and in school. During this time,
Katy’s daughter Faith becomes engaged to a successful businessman, while her best friend
Melody, in order to take herself through university, has a ‘small house’ relationship with an
older man. During Murambatzvina, Gari’s lover, Gloria becomes homeless, and she persuades
Gari to evict Onai from their home. However, Gari dies, and his relatives take possession of
their home, forcing Onai to move in with Katy. The story comes to a surprisingly happy ending
when a rich friend of Katy’s fiancé employs Onai as a wedding dressmaker. In this novel the
problems of marriage in a time of AIDS are the catalyst in the plot. AIDS is, however, only one
alongside a range of different political issues tackled by the novel.
Beatrice Tonhodzayi’s column Let’s Talk About AIDS belongs to a different genre.
Tonhodzayi uses a ‘tell it like it is’ style under the credo: ‘most among us seem to be of the
belief that this is no longer the time to promote the culture of silence – for long practised
where it comes to HIV and aids matters’ [sic ].37 She mixes her own sometimes knowingly
provocative views with letters from her readers. The issues range from discussions about how
HIV is transmitted, to questions about ‘conventional’ wisdom about sex and challenges to
male authority. The diversity of the column cannot be adequately covered in this article. I
have therefore selected a few articles where Tonhodzayi focuses on issues of marriage,
prostitution or ‘small houses’.

Pride and Shame: The ‘Traditional’ Marriage Institution and AIDS

‘Marriage: Death Knell’ is the title of one of Tonhodzayi’s articles.38 This dramatically sums
up a common theme in the critique of the traditional marriage institution voiced by
Zimbabwean feminists, at the heart of all of the three texts. The reasoning goes as follows:
because men perpetually cheat on their wives, and women are morally bound to accept this
fact quietly, faithfully and without questioning their husbands’ actions (for example by
demanding the use of condoms), marriage constitutes a veritable death sentence for women.
Tonhodzayi puts it this way: ‘If it happens [HIV infection] and we are in a country like ours
where treatment is not accessible to all, what does that mean? You got it right – we are
goners’.39
This theme is echoed in Mutandwa’s novel so as to dismantle prevailing ideals of ‘African
marriage’ that contribute to the spread of AIDS. The protagonist, Taurai, anguishes over her
own role as ‘the perfect black African woman’ because this ideal has hindered her from
taking control over her own life and health:
I lived my life like the perfect black African woman who never questions the actions of her
husband, smiles when she is slapped, blames herself when her husband sleeps around and counts
herself lucky when he finally remembers to come back home after several nights in another
woman’s arms.40
Mutandwa’s critique of ‘African marriage’ is primarily aimed at older generations, depicted
by Taurai’s grandmother in the novel. Her generation upheld values of obedience and silence
in the face of violence and infidelity. Such norms are detrimental to happiness in marriage and
deadly at a time of AIDS:

37 ‘Openness Vital to Fighting HIV and Aids’, Herald, 29 December 2005.

38 Herald, 17 August 2006.
39 Ibid.
40 Mutandwa, Whose Daughter, My Child?, p. 74.
518 Journal of Southern African Studies

Remember ambuya [grandmother], when I told you of his philandering. You told me to ‘shut up’
and be a good wife and mother. You told me to cook for him his favourite foods. You urged me to
keep his bed warm even after a major fight. You told me not to answer back when he yelled at me
and bitched about almost everything.41
I never brought shame to the family granny. I was the good child, wife and mother you taught
me to be. I followed through my marital vows as you told me to. I welcomed pain with open arms
and learnt to smile through my searing pain.
[ . . . ] I did it all for the family, for society, for peace, for the world and to remain in your good
graces granny. I did it all for you granny. The family you told me, was supreme and we all had a
responsibility to keep the family name clean. I know you are proud of me granny but I am not
proud of myself.42

The normative framework of ‘traditional African marriage’ is described as functioning via a

code of shame, silence and endurance. Mutandwa’s construction of Taurai’s regret also
contains ambivalence. She regrets having failed to protect herself, but she also occupies a
moral high ground based on her resilience in the face of her husband’s philandering. The
social rewards of adhering to the normative code, which is policed by family elders and
society at large, are substantial and enduring: ‘I never brought shame on the family’.43 Taurai
is constructed as a suitable vehicle for social critique: innocent, yet the victim of the vices of
others, Taurai occupies a moral position that is unquestionable. At no point in the novel do
her husband’s indiscretions count as ‘bringing social shame’: only women are capable of this.
The question of bringing shame on the family and yourself by breaching acceptable norms
of marriage is also dealt with in Tagwira’s novel. While recovering in hospital after one of
Gari’s violent attacks, Onai defends her own reluctance to leave the abusive relationship in the
following way:
She did not want to be coerced into revealing things which had the potential to destroy her
marriage. She would not be able to bear the shame of being a divorced woman. How could she
possibly face a world that despised divorcees; looked down on single mothers? Marital status was
everything. It did not really matter how educated or otherwise skilled a woman was. A woman’s
worth was relative to one man, her husband: westernised values about women surviving outside
marriage held no authenticity mumusha [at home]. In her whole extended family, nobody had
ever had a divorce. She would not let herself be the first.44

For Onai, the respectability of marriage versus the shame of divorce outweighs an abusive
relationship. She also questions why doctors, her friend Katy and her own children challenge
this calculation. This is narrated against the backdrop of her daily suffering, humiliation and
danger (from having an HIV-positive husband). The reader fully grasps the immense shame
Onai attaches to divorce, but Tagwira also depicts a ‘new way’ of viewing marriage. Not
unlike Mutandwa, Tagwira offers a critique of the normative codes which demand of women
that they should endure violence and infidelity. In the words of Katy:
Gari had a reputation for womanising and violence, she was well aware that both could kill her
friend. She really needed to make a concerted effort to persuade Onai to leave her husband, if her
conscience was to remain clear.45

Tagwira and Mutandwa alike are careful not to construct their abused women as weak; they
equip them with a resilience which enables them to overcome the abuse and deceitfulness of
their husbands’ infidelity, and subsequent exposure to HIV. The women are inspired by their
husbands’ infidelity to find lovers on their own; agency here equals endurance, perseverance

41 Ibid., p. 32.
42 Ibid., p. 35.
43 Ibid.
44 Tagwira, The Uncertainty of Hope, p. 46.
45 Ibid., p. 83.
 Respectable Women Versus Small Houses 519

and at times negotiation. Taurai’s letters contain a tone of bitterness mixed with pride about
her own resilience in the face of hardships, a sense that she has lost opportunities for freeing
herself from moral constraints but also an insistence on the ‘moral high ground’ attached to
her obedience. Thus, Taurai is described as ambivalent about her own sexuality:
Imagine I prided myself in that when we married I was a virgin but today I wish I had also
explored before I married maybe it would have prepared me adequately for a life with a man like
you. . . . Imagine all those years we made love, I never had an orgasm and I still thought it would
happen one day until I started having self-doubts about my ability to please you in bed.46

Any consideration of sex outside marriage is premised on preparing herself for marriage.
Female sexual exploration is thus not connected to sexual pleasure but to sexual skills, which
are thought necessary to cater to male sexuality. Thus the moral high ground is not only
upheld (she only toys with the idea), but enhancing her chances of success in marriage is the
reasoning behind thinking of extramarital sex.
The version of the social realities of married life, presented in Tonhodzayi’s column,
differs from Mutandwa’s depiction. She has articles devoted to married women’s infidelity.
For example, in the article entitled, ‘Women Turn to “Painkillers” . . . Cheating between
Spouses Threatens to Get Out of Hand’, the practice of women taking lovers as ‘painkillers’ is
described as an increasing phenomenon.47 Tonhodzayi criticises men and women alike for
infidelity and other weaknesses, often represented via ‘letters from readers’.

Sexual Morality – A Class Issue?

In most of her articles Tonhodzayi describes the logic of women’s economic incentives for
having sex outside marriage. Thus, while male infidelity might decrease in times of economic
hardship (an unaffordable luxury in times of crisis), it would be logical in her view that
women’s infidelity would increase. She explains:
While men are gradually reducing the number of ‘Mai Lindas’ and ‘small houses’ they have in
order to cut costs because life has become expensive for ordinary folk, some women are actually
increasing the number of boyfriends or ‘painkillers’, as they call them, to augment their income.
Yes, for women they are called ‘painkillers’ because, according to those sisters into this kind of
thing, they only get into such unions to relieve pain . . . . However, unlike men, most of those who
opened up said it was not an easy choice to stray from the marital bed . . . . Their cheating, they
say, is not born out of the way they are made but out of need.
‘What do you expect me to do when I am married to a man who is doing it with the whole of
Harare except me: a man I know is renting three flats for his small houses?’ said one woman. 48
As a journalist, Tonhodzayi attempts balance in her columns. While Mutandwa’s and
Tagwari’s heroines are depicted as ‘long-suffering’ and occupy a moral high ground based on
their sexual restraint, the ‘reality on the ground’ as Tonhodzayi sees it is quite different.
Tonhodzayi does not diminish women’s active role in their own sex lives, and she often finds
it difficult to understand why men are such ‘cheating bastards’. Nevertheless, she devotes a
string of articles to explaining why women ‘sleep around’. The impetus behind sex outside
marriage is still different for men and women, however. While men are perceived to regard
extramarital sex as a luxury, women are perceived as acting out of necessity. Thus, while it
might appear that she takes a ‘neutral’ position, the bulk of her columns speak from a
standpoint where Tonhodzayi, like Mutandwa, views married women as primarily invested in
their marriages, upholding the family and not engaging in sex for pleasure.

46 Mutandwa, Whose Daughter, My Child?, p. 27.

47 Herald, 30 April 2006.
48 Ibid.
520 Journal of Southern African Studies

At times, Tonhodzayi takes a moralistic stance. She includes comments from pastors or
priests, and in her ‘tell it like it is’ style gives both male and female cheaters ‘a piece of her
mind’:
My hope is that some girl out there might just decide to stop sleeping with her married lover for
the sake of her health, her partner’s and that of his wife.
The hope is that some married men (though many people tell me I am crazy) might pause and
think twice next time they feel they must have sexual relationships outside the home.
That they will pause and take a long, hard look at their children and the women they have
married and say: ‘No, it’s not worth it’.49

The ‘No, it’s not worth it’ rationale could very well have been the title of many of
Tonhodzayi’s articles. She explores what leads women into the arms of married men, and
particularly the causes behind prostitution and ‘small houses’. Her style of writing and
openness about sexual matters implies a morally liberal approach to sexuality. However, the
only way to rationally account for women’s infidelity – whether it be ‘taking painkillers’ or
being ‘small houses’ – is to ascribe it to economic hardship. The only other rational
explanation for being a ‘small house’ is ignorance or the prospect of marriage.
The prospect of marriage is described as a driving force for women entering into ‘small
house’ relationships in the novels. Mutandwa describes Daniel as charming and persuasive
and his lovers as naive and infatuated, thinking they have a chance at marriage. For example,
in Taurai’s letter to ‘the other woman’, she speculates that the woman had hoped that Daniel
would leave Taurai:
Yes, Daniel was very charismatic and a charmer to boot but where was your sense of self worth
when you let him spend so many nights away from his family? Did you seriously think that he
would leave me for you?50
Self-worth is thus ascribed to married women, while ‘small houses’ appear to suffer its lack.
The quotes in the Herald articles, and the literary renditions of the emotions of ‘scorned’
married women, are seen from the perspective of these ‘wronged respectable woman’, and
they are not contradicted. In the letters from Tonhodzayi’s readers, sarcasm is used to
describe the difference between the moral high ground and social standing attached to being a
married woman compared to being a ‘small house’:
I think the main reason why single women date married men is desperation.
Single men don’t approach them for they can tell a desperate and used up girl so they latch onto
married men hoping they will divorce their wives and they can take over.
Small houses where were you when those men decided to marry their wives, why didn’t they
pick you?
Here is the answer for you since you obviously can’t get it right yourselves: ‘It’s because you
are not marriage material, that is why you are strung around for years by a man who never
destroys what he has build [sic ] with his wife? “MAIN HOUSE”’51

This quote concludes an article which Tonhodzayi entitles ‘Small Houses: One of the
Top Igniters of HIV Infection’. The woman who is quoted here appears to be venting her
frustration over men’s infidelity onto the women with whom they cheat, just as the title of the
article places blame on ‘small houses’. This theme is echoed by Mutandwa in her description
of Taurai’s feelings towards Daniel’s last ‘small house’, Angie. The social status ascribed to
marriage allows the woman in this quote to retain not only the moral high ground over the
unmarried ‘small house’: marriage symbolically separates women who are ‘marriage

49 ‘Do Cheats have a Conscience?’, Herald, 15 June 2006.

50 Mutandwa, Whose Daughter, My Child?, p. 68.
51 ‘Small House: One of the Top Igniters of HIV Infection’, Herald, 22 June 2006.
 Respectable Women Versus Small Houses 521

material’ from worthless women (‘not marriage material’). Marriage in itself is worth having
in spite of the dangers attached to it in the context of AIDS. The ‘main house’, though at risk
of HIV infection, still has such social standing that it allows her to depict women who are ‘not
marriage material’ as inferior.
Tonhodzayi, in her attempt to ‘level the playing field’, puts a lot of effort into understanding
the reasons a woman might choose to be a ‘small house’. Her primary diagnosis is poverty. While
her ‘cheating wives who take painkillers’ seem to belong to the struggling middle class, she
describes ‘small houses’ and ‘prostitutes’ as poor. In an article entitled ‘Eradicate Poverty to Beat
the Spread of Aids’ she writes:
I ended last week’s piece by saying: ‘If ever a woman finds herself with no choice but to prostitute
her body, so that she eats so that her children eat’, she must use a condom.
I ended this way not because I support prostitution, but because there are many people who are
doing it while they detest the whole idea of selling their bodies.
I ended this way, because, like it or not, the reality is that there are many sisters who are
peddling their bodies to put someone through school; to keep their children well fed; and to pay
hospital bills for their siblings.52

She then reverts to ‘the good book’, which says that:

‘this is the type of person who is wearied by life’s troubles [who] must learn ‘not to worry [about]
what to eat, what to wear or put on their feet’. They should, instead, ‘trust and pray and do their
best then leave it in the hands of the Lord’.53
By quoting scripture, Tonhodzayi ascribes religious authority to her arguments, and she
balances the social indignation and understanding of the ‘poor women’s’ situation with the
moral imperative of the religious text. She then inscribes herself into this moral and economic
matrix by stating as a middle-class woman that her only moral recourse is the religious moral
code. This also demands of her an expression of compassion for her poorer ‘sisters’. She
qualifies her moral high ground with a salutary caution: they must refrain from ‘taking the
easy way out’.54 Fidelity is perceived as the natural recourse of respectable middle-class
women, and poverty should be eradicated in order to combat the spread of AIDS.
This reasoning is also depicted by Tagwira in The Uncertainty of Hope. The setting in the
township Mbare and the ground-breaking descriptions of Operation Murambatsvina are
testimony to social indignation, describing the suffering of the urban poor. Two of the ‘small
houses’ in the novel are indeed poor, pitiful characters. However, the link between the ‘small
house’ phenomenon and poverty, which Tonhodzayi describes, is more complicated in
Tagwira’s novel. The focus on the two ‘not well off’ but respectable married women, Onai
and Katy, indicates a different view from that of Tonhodzayi. In The Uncertainty of Hope
poverty does not lead directly to prostitution: indeed, the fact that Onai never contemplates
prostitution suggests otherwise. Further complicating matters, the economic incentive
towards having a sexual relationship with a married man is also depicted via the middle-class
university student Melody:
‘He’s a married man, Mel. He’s the one who’s using you. Why don’t you just let him go?’ . . .
‘Faith, this man paid my university fees for this semester, and has pledged to do this until I
graduate. Unlike you, I still have another year at university. He buys me clothes, groceries, and
gives me money for food. Now tell me, which twenty-two-year-old single man could do all this
for me?’55

52 Herald, 10 August 2006

53 Ibid.
54 Ibid.
55 Tagwira, The Uncertainty of Hope, p. 79.
522 Journal of Southern African Studies

Melody is not forced into the relationship by bitterness and despair. Rather, she chooses to let
her married lover pay her university fees because it is less demeaning than begging her
relatives for money. In Tagwira’s universe, the latter course would have been the honourable
route. Indeed, after having been exposed by her lover’s wife, Melody ‘wisely’ decides to do
this: ‘My fees will be taken care of. There’s more dignity in begging from my father’s
brothers . . . and they’ll make me beg all right’.56
Thus, casting ‘small houses’ and prostitution simply as a class issue is not what is at stake
here; rather, poverty is the only morally comprehensible reason to revert to a ‘small house’
relationship, while a young woman’s aspirations, laziness or vanity is not, and sexual pleasure
is not even an issue worth considering.
Tonhodzayi attempts to understand poverty as a reasonable incentive towards ‘small house’
relationships and prostitution; however, she is far from condoning the practice. Rather, in the
article ‘Small Houses: One of the Top Igniters of HIV Infection’,57 she sets out to eradicate it:
Today I just want to share what different groups of people think about the small house issue –
which (like it or not) has emerged [as] one of the top igniters of HIV in this country.
Despite this, research shows that it is very difficult to kill the culture: people continue to do it.
However, we will not give up but keep intensifying our efforts for I believe someone
somewhere might see the light.58
. . . small houses do not have a conscience or any self worth. To accept to be a ‘trash can’ or
‘the moment’s thrill’ and not get any commitment shows that.59
Here the weight of the epidemic is placed on ‘small houses’ as a practice – as ‘the culture’.
While men do not come out looking very good here, their sexuality is naturalised (not worth
questioning), while a woman in a ‘small house’ relationship is depicted as lacking self worth
to the point of being ‘a trash can’ for a man’s sexual desires. This suggests the view that
married women do not please their husbands sexually, which is the reason that men cheat in
the first place. This is the theme of Taurai’s letter to Daniel’s last ‘small house’, Angie: ‘You
have laughed behind my back, massaged my husband’s ego, cooked him exotic meals and
outdone the Kama Sutra in lovemaking’.60 Taurai is certain that she has somehow failed in
her conjugal responsibilities and ‘driven’ her husband to infidelity by her own sexual
inability. This does not mean, however, that moral condemnation over ‘small houses’ is
diminished. Rather, pleasing a man sexually is rarely explored in narratives of married life.
One exception is the relation between Katy and her husband. In The Uncertainty of Hope,
socially well-functioning couples are described as having sex for pleasure. Such a suggestion
is absent from Mutandwa’s novel which, like The Uncertainty of Hope, depicts the sexual
capabilities of ‘small houses’ as based not in female sexual pleasure but in sexual techniques
that please men. The difference between married women and ‘small houses’ is depicted via
Gari’s relationship with Gloria:
Thinking about Gloria lifted Gari’s spirits considerably. ‘Small houses’, the new euphemism for
mistresses, were the best thing to happen to a man. Spending some time with Gloria was
guaranteed pure bliss . . . .61
Gari is throughout the novel described as an unforgivable brute. Not only does he cheat on
Onai with ‘the most infamous of prostitutes’62 whom he (or another man before him) has

56 Ibid., p. 173.
57 Herald, 22 June 2006.
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid.
60 Mutandwa, Whose Daughter, My Child?, p. 67.
61 Tagwira, The Uncertainty of Hope, p. 37.
62 Ibid., p. 125.
 Respectable Women Versus Small Houses 523

infected with HIV, he also beats Onai and rejoices when his violence puts her in hospital
because this leaves him free to spend time with Gloria. He drinks and has no scruples about
letting his wife take in his former lover – who is sick with AIDS – as a lodger. The attempt
to describe Gloria’s point of view is relatively limited, considering the scope of the novel.
She aspires to move into Gari’s home as his wife, which is described as an attempt to
safeguard herself from further poverty due to her own inevitable illness. Gari, however,
fails to understand the dynamics of his relationship with Gloria. His only redeeming quality
is his stupidity, which prevents him from understanding the desperation that underlies
Gloria’s pleasing manners and sexual readiness. In contrast, Gloria’s attitude toward her
relationship with Gari is described as understandable given her desperate situation. The
tension between the two women in the plot is a moral one: while Gloria has chosen to
engage in a string of ‘small house’ relationships in order to survive, thus persistently
undermining Onai, the heroine of the novel, Onai through the virtue of her moral
convictions and her perseverance ultimately overcomes her situation and remains a
‘respectable woman’ throughout the novel. Class, here, is then not only an economic issue
(as it is in Tonhodzayi’s version). The didactic point of Tagwira’s plot is that the norms of
‘a good African woman’ can elevate that woman out of poverty.

Marriage and the Risk of AIDS – Finding a Position from which to Speak
In her postscript entitled ‘Why It had to be Written’, Mutandwa gives a personal account of
the pain associated with losing loved ones to AIDS and dedicates her book to
all the women who have buried loved ones and have found strength to go on with their lives . . .
all those women today caring for their loved ones suffering from HIV/AIDS . . . all those women
who have taken control of their lives and are making the most of the time left to them in a positive
way.63
The context of AIDS is also a determining factor in Tagwira’s plot: not only does AIDS
eventually kill the evil and abusive Gari, it is also the catalyst for Gloria’s insistence on
solidifying her relationship with Gari beyond a ‘small house’. The dangers of the ‘traditional
marriage institution’ under these conditions are described through Onai’s fears, when she has
learned about Gari’s relationship with Gloria:
A beautiful face like Gloria’s . . . Gloria who was quite likely to have AIDS . . .
The threat of HIV hung over her like a hangman’s noose. There was no guarantee that Gari
would not force himself upon her without a condom one of these days.64

The issue of using condoms with one’s husband is central in both novels and a topic
to which Tonhodzayi returns frequently in her articles, which is natural given that the
name of the column is ‘Let’s Talk about AIDS’. Tagwira constructs a situation whereby
Onai ‘saves herself’ from contracting HIV by refusing to sleep with Gari unless he uses
condoms:
Her biggest failure as a wife lay in refusing Gari his conjugal rights . . . unless he agreed to use
condoms. In a rare moment of rebelliousness, she had told him clearly no condoms, no intimacy.
She felt a twinge of guilt, then immediately forgave herself. What was a woman supposed to do
with a philandering husband when the risk of HIV infection was so real? So real that everyone in
a relationship was at risk?65

63 Mutandwa, Whose Daughter, My Child?, p. 86.

64 Tagwira, The Uncertainty of Hope, p. 126.
65 Ibid., p. 69.
524 Journal of Southern African Studies

The moral of this monologue is that the type of marriage Onai suffers is deadly, and that she is
saved from HIV by taking matters into her own hands and demanding the use of condoms.
Here Tagwira echoes the ABC model for preventing the spread of HIV. This is yet another
didactic feature of the plot, the message being: ‘Look, if this oppressed and violated woman
can muster the strength to demand her husband use a condom – so can you . . . ’.
Mutandwa also praises the use of condoms within marriage and argues for a softening of
the general condemnation of divorced women. The personification of this is Taurai’s cousin,
Linah, who has divorced her cheating husband:
For years, I have not been sure how to treat you after you left your husband. It has taken me the
death of my husband to appreciate why you left your husband and what you went through because
of his infidelity.66
Mutandwa here goes further than Tagwira: Onai remains in her abusive marriage and is still
able to save herself from AIDS by insisting on condoms. Meanwhile, Taurai reproaches
herself for not having left her husband. In Mutandwa’s version, that would be the ‘easier’ way
than to persuade a philandering husband to use condoms, or rather, to persuade a married
woman that she should even broach the subject of condoms with her husband. Indeed, Taurai
reproaches herself, and others, for not putting to use the knowledge they had been given of
AIDS. This comes out in her reluctant praise of the ‘office slut’, Maureen:
Remember all those seminars we had on the virus and we all used to just sigh, laugh, and say we
were married and faithful so we did not need to be bothered. Today I actually thought about
Maureen – the office slut. Do you remember how she used to go on and on about the women’s
condom being her best friend? And we all thought she was mad!
We used to shun her and laugh behind her back. She was the only one who took the seminars
seriously.
Do you remember how even after she married she told us that she had negotiated condom use
with her husband because he had been unfaithful. That girl was really clued in. We were the ones
who were major fools.67
These didactic interventions convey the possibility of acting on the knowledge of the
‘smartest thing to do’, either using condoms or leaving an abusive and/or philandering
husband. The marriage institution is not beyond reproach. This calls into question the focus
on marriage and abstinence in the national HIV prevention strategies. In the texts, marriage is
far from being part of the solution to the social crisis of AIDS; rather it is described as the root
cause of many women’s vulnerability to the disease.

Conclusion
The critical feminist narratives that result from linking HIV prevention and feminist critiques
of the marriage institution in Zimbabwe, as read from these texts, sit uncomfortably between
the need for carving out a space in the national narrative for such a critique, and feminist
ideals of ‘sisterhood’ and ‘solidarity across social divides’. The married women depicted in
Mutandwa and Tagwira’s novels appear as tragic heroines. They suffer due to other people’s
vices, and they persevere through unbelievable hardships. This articulation of female
suffering caused by the norms of ‘married respectability’ poses a strong critique of these
norms. Because these heroines are married women, however, readers are not invited to
sympathise with ‘the other women’. The novels contain sad tales of the misfortunes of those
women: they come to bad ends and are generally to be pitied. In Whose Daughter, My Child?,

66 Mutandwa, Whose Daughter, My Child?, p. 56.

67 Ibid., p. 71.
 Respectable Women Versus Small Houses 525

the protagonist has more love left for her cheating husband, who has infected her with HIV,
than for her cheating best friend.
These stories carve out a space in the nationalist narrative for a critique of the marriage
institution, but it consists solely in articulating ‘a moral high ground’ from which to speak.
This moral high ground derives from sexual abstinence: single women should abstain
entirely; married women should be faithful and also insist on condom use (since men are
naturally unfit for fidelity). Even though fidelity is not a safeguard against HIV, it is a moral
imperative. Sexual exploration, if not unthinkable (one protagonist does contemplate it), is
neither preferable nor advocated. When the texts depict sexually explorative women, they are
‘small houses’ or outright ‘sluts’. Tonhodzayi’s defence of poor women who prostitute
themselves or become ‘small houses’ does not extend to women of her own class, and she
wishes that ‘poor women’ would ‘think the better of it’ and rely on religious norms instead.
Likewise, condom use is depicted as a last resort. People who have extra-marital sex should at
least use condoms. For married women who cannot trust their spouses, condoms are a
necessary evil.
In order to critique the norms of sexual morality imposed on women, Mutandwa and
Tagwira depict a scenario in which the readers are invited to identify with an utterly unfair
situation: ‘the morally pure individual who is sentenced to death and socially scorned as a
consequence of the actions of others’. The social critique constructed here is not only that
which is straightforward: ‘extramarital sex is morally wrong’. Rather, it targets the social
norms themselves, which demand of women that they tie their sexuality and social status to
their husbands, at whatever cost.
However, the texts display a crucial ambivalence between the moral high ground of
married respectability and the critique levelled against the marriage institution as ‘deadly’
to women. We could read it as contradicting the didactic purpose of educating women about
the dangers of blindly accepting the cultural norms and power relations of marriage. We
could polemically ask, are the women who opt out of marriage not the avant-garde of a
feminist rebellion against the marriage institution? And if so, why do these texts insist on
inviting readers to identify almost entirely with ‘virtuous married women’?
In order to understand this insistence on the moral high ground of married respectability,
we must read the texts against their discursive background: the social crisis of HIV and the
dominant national narrative in which the patriarchal family is the metaphor of the nation. The
writers place their texts in an insider position vis-à-vis the nationalist narrative. The
protagonists are not cultural outsiders – traitors, sell-outs, tainted by western ideas and
subsequent moral degradation. By depicting the pain and hardship these women suffer
because they are ‘respectably married’, the critique of the traditional marriage institution can
speak ‘from within’ and avoid being dismissed as ‘outside interference’. In thus avoiding
being dismissed as cultural outsiders and as ‘loose women’ out to destroy the marriage
institution (which would have put Tonhodzayi, in particular, into an exposed position vis-à-
vis gendered power relations in the media under the ZANU(PF) regime68), the trope of the
respectable married woman places the texts as ‘indigenous’ rather than foreign, and as forms
of didactic engagement with individual choices rather than as political critiques of gendered
power relations.
The cost of constructing this insider position, however, is an ambivalent articulation of
feminist ‘sisterhood’. The texts construct new ideals of gendered morality and represent an
attempt to reform the marriage institution by including ideals such as openness to divorce,
free speech about sexual matters and an insistence on using condoms within marriage.

68 For a further discussion of this gendered power relationship, see Christiansen, ‘Versions of Violence’ and
Christiansen, ‘“In Our Culture”’.
526 Journal of Southern African Studies

However, this is only made possible and culturally acceptable by taking on the viewpoint of
the ‘respectable married woman’ from which other female experiences of love, sex and
relationships are seen mainly as treachery, sin, greed or desperation, and almost never as
joyful and liberating, or as acts of solidarity.

LENE BULL CHRISTIANSEN

Institute of Culture and Identity, Roskilde University, P.O. Box 260, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark.
E-mail: bull@ruc.dk
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