The Uncertainty of Hope

The Uncertainty of Hope by Valerie Tagwira won the National Arts Merit Award (NAMA), Zimbabwe 2008. It is a novel which Charles Mungoshi calls ‘an astonishing debut’.

Through the various and complex lives of Onai Moyo – a market woman and responsible mother of three children, and her best friend Katy Nguni – a vendor and black-market currency dealer – we are given an insight into the challenges that face those who only survive by their wits, their labour and their mutual support. In doing so Tagwira aptly captures how precarious the future is for the inhabitants of Mbare, Zimbabwe in 2005. The story of these two close friends is situated in a high-density suburb. However, the author also introduces a much wider cross-section of Zimbabwean society: Tom Sibanda, a young business man and farmer, his girlfriend, Faith, a law student, Tom’s sister Emily, a health professional, and Mawaya, the ostensible beggar. With depth and sensitivity, Tagwira pulls these many threads into a densely woven novel that provides us with of some of the many faces of contemporary Zimbabwe