Sali is a smart and ambitious woman who thought she could use marriage to a wealthy man as a means to change her life. However, her plan is thwarted after Doc, her lover dies of a heart attack and Sali has to pick up the pieces quite quickly and quietly. Due to the nature of her affair with Doc, she has a hard time grieving publicly for the man and this grief contributes to the woman she later becomes.
In a society that constantly validates women through marriage, Sali finds herself in a marital situation so different from the one she dreamed of. Kasunga is a man with his own demons, in Sali he finds the answer to a troubling predicament. But once the dust settles and life turns out to be different from what he initially thought, he changes or is it that he had been hiding who he truly was all along? This unfortunately leads to a path of mutual destruction.
It was not love that initially bound Sali to Kasunga but as she later questions herself about not leaving the marriage and as her daughter asks her the same question, you start to see how familial and societal patterns shape us. One can see that it is not just love that makes a marriage. Love, one would argue, might not even be part of what makes a marriage. The same question that Ntashé asks her mother is the same question that Sali probably wanted to ask her mother in her younger years.
After Sali becomes a mother herself, her priorities change, it is no longer about a life of comfort but a life of survival and dealing with the cards life dealt to her. Motherhood is not what she thought it would be but as someone who prides herself on being a woman who always makes it work, she is determined to make the best of her circumstances. In the end, she finds herself in a predicament that she cannot get out of, and she lets it all unravel, after all what else does she have to lose? She has been losing parts of herself since Doc died.
Through three generations, we see women learn to navigate a society that was not built to hold space for them. They are expected to bend themselves to the will of society, but society is not expected to bend its will to them. In their own ways, Peggy, Sali and Ntashé try to make life work for them. By being a good wife, a good mother and a good daughter, but it is still not enough. They are not spared of the violence and abuse that affects women in various societies across the world. And as we learn, their silence does not protect them either. Peggy thought that giving her husband the one thing that would validate his manhood would secure her marriage but sadly it does not. Sali, in her own way, tries to do this and it backfires badly.
For Ntashé, being a good daughter and the family peacekeeper was supposed to guarantee understanding and acceptance, but the price is much higher than that. After tragedy strikes, she realises the futility of it all. She is left with more questions than answers and in a society that demands silence and obedience, she has to learn to pick up the pieces at a much younger age. To shipikisha is to learn to live with the indignity that your husband bestows upon you, it is to learn to look the other way, to endure and carry on like you are not dying inside. Peggy taught Sali and Sali was teaching Ntashé.
Sali has a college degree, and it is not enough to protect her from the indignity that society bestows upon unwed mothers. She already has a complicated relationship with her father and knows that a pregnancy without a husband would completely destroy their relationship. This need for male approval and acceptance is something entrenched in women from a young age and with fathers being the first male figure in women’s lives, any gaps in this relationship are likely to reveal themselves in any relationship that happens with a man later in life.
Sali watches her daughter have a positive relationship with her father and this highly likely contributes to her decision to stay in an abusive marriage. She watched her mother endure and she is willing to do the same. As Sali learns from her own marriage and her married friends, society is more accepting of men’s wrongs than women’s wrongs. She was supposed to endure and take everything Kasunga threw her way, she was not supposed to end up in a court of law at the mercy of a judge. To shipikisha is to endure, but at what cost?
In The Shipikisha Club, Mubanga paints a picture of a Zambia that feels reflective of the collective African experience but also gives us a perspective that society is not always willing to embrace. She makes a case for a version of womanhood that shows the intricacies and complexities that come with wanting a good life. Womanhood is both an individual and a collective experience and in Salifyanji we get to appreciate what one path of it looks like. Intimate partner violence is a very sensitive topic that can be difficult to deal with and Mubanga helps us to understand one of the many forms that it can take. Justice for victims of intimate partner violence can feel like injustice to other affected parties and it is important that as a society we keep talking about it.
The Shipikisha Club is an informative and thought provoking read.
Linda Mchawi
Linda Mchawi is a writer and editor from Lilongwe, Malawi.
