His wife, Maiguru, is an educated woman who understands the difficulty of his situation. She describes his condition as being existent on bad nerves, she even tells Tambu that "his nerves were bad because he was busy" (104), which is true, he was busy attempting to stop Nyasha from becoming westernized. He did not want her seeing boys, he would rather her practice the role of being a woman. He did not want to be the father of a girl who acted wild, he strove for her to become a sophisticated and behaved young lady.
On one occasion, Nyasha is seen out with a boy at night. Babamukuru is enraged and asks why she "can't behave like a young lady from a decent home" (Dangarembga 116). This is clear to say that Babamukuru strives to live up to perfection. Since he is already inferior to the colonizers because of his race, he feels pressure to live up to their standards of women dressing nicely, acting politely and keeping away from boys. Since he has no control as a father figure over what Nyasha does, he in turn gets angry. He goes so far as to say he would "kill Nyasha and then hang himself" (Dangarembga 117), which shows how intense the war between western and traditional values was affecting him, in other words, a sane person would never say that he would kill his daughter and himself if there were to be "two men in this house" (117). This just proves that his sense of security is being toyed with, no thanks to traditional values which put the idea into Babamukuru's mind that there can only be one strong minded individual in a home and that it must be him. .
Tambu even observes and realizes the victimisation throughout this fight for power between Nyasha and Babamukuru. Tambu states that the victimisation "didn't depend on poverty, on lack of education, or on tradition men took it everywhere with them" (118), though she failed to mention that this victimisation, this patriarchy, was a force of western colonization and a practice in Shona belief.
