"Life happens" (according to Nyasha), and the failure that comes with it disrupts the would-be effectiveness of the performative pretense. Dangarembga illustrates Tambu failing at her own performance - a performance sought to gain approval. Effectively, however, Dangarembga shows, nearly blaming, that the brutality and calamity of war complicates the capability of personal development, the maintenance of one's unhu.
Tambu thwarted from becoming this "jubilant woman" when she discovers that Dick has decided to appropriate her work for himself, claiming it as his own. This non-recognition of Tambu's success is not the first time, for it's happened before. It echoes her non-recognition for her 'O' level success when Tracey Stevenson receives the trophy that should have been rightfully Tambu's, instead. Tambu, at this point, recognizes that "[her] copy was not good enough... under someone else's name, it was." Realistically, it would and will always be this way.
Earlier in the semester, one justification of colonialism was that colonizers take or copy ideas, crafts, or whatever it may be of the colonized, improve and perfect those very ideas, and claim them as their own. If this is justifiable, then Dick, the colonizer, is "copying" Tambu, the colonized.
Dick claims Tambu's copy because he simply represents being a Dick (cleverly named), a colonizer, being white and being a man. When he claims and signs Tambu's work, "Afro-Shine," a product for women, he is clearly stealing the very sense of a product for "brilliant" women. Dangarembga isn't harsh on the character of Dick and almost writes him off as someone who isn't aware or conscious of his actions. For Dick, the copy represents those who are unable to change after Independence - Rhodesians who believe things just happen. For Tambu, being a woman and black, it's impossible to make such an outrageous confession because it would be self-destructive, and as a result a failure to maintain or achieve unhu. It's devastating to see Tambu become everything she proclaimed against, becoming self-loathing, rationalizing that she "never considered unhu at all, only [her] own calamities, since the contested days at the convent."
If Tambu is handicapped from even the smallest of triumphs, how will "New Zimbabwe" change things? Therefore, if decolonization has only begun by the ending of the novel, realigning to the new politics, or overall change, of "New Zimbabwe" may destabilize the mind and body even further, causing a person to be anything but himself. Oh Tambu... how I hope you win some in novel three.
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