Poverty and Wealth

The Zimbabwe depicted in This Mournable Body is a country riven by a deep and pervasive divide between the impoverished and wealthy classes. Though the novel is clear to indicate that Zimbabwe as a whole is a poor country without a stable economy and with few job prospects, Dangarembga nonetheless sketches some of the wealth inequalities in the country. Through a diverse cast of characters, many impoverished and others better-off, Dangarembga highlights the exploitative and often unethical origins of characters’ wealth in post-colonial Zimbabwe.

The wealthier characters include both white Rhodesians and black Zimbabweans such as MaManyanga and her three sons with their BMWs and Mercedes cars. This development is a departure from the world of the prequel Nervous Conditions, which is set in 1960s Rhodesia, just before the war for independence. At that time, wealth was truly concentrated in the hands of the...