Valentine Tanaka Character Analysis

Valentine Tanaka, a man with a humpback who cares about spiritual strength and doing his job well, is the Chief Registrar of The Organization, the postcolonial domestic surveillance agency that The Man Himself founded to replace colonial spymaster Emil Coetzee’s near-identical domestic surveillance agency. Unbeknownst to The Man Himself, Valentine is deeply moved and inspired about the article Bhekithemba Nyathi wrote about Golide Gumele’s project to build wings for his wife Elizabeth Nyoni. Early in his career, he participates in the strip-search, interrogation, and threatened body-cavity search of 15-year-old Genie after she is falsely suspected of shoplifting at a high-end department store. Genie vocally refuses to let the accusations or the implicitly sexual humiliation that the government officers inflict on her break her spirit, which provokes Valentine’s respect and curiosity; he researches her and realizes she’s Golide and Elizabeth’s daughter. Later, he and Genie become friends. When Genie decides to die at age 39, Valentine helps her disappear from the hospital and stalls the attempts of her adoptive family to have her declared a missing person. Though The Man Himself orders Valentine to appropriate the Beauford Farm and Estate for the government, Valentine secretly undercuts this project, keeping the farm in its current owners’ hands. The Man Himself eventually realizes what Valentine has done, assumes he did it out of romantic love for Genie, and confronts him about it before Genie’s funeral; Valentine in turn confronts The Man Himself about ordering the massacre of Golide’s followers at the Beauford Farm and Estate, and then he abandons the Man to his lonely, sterile power. Valentine’s character illustrates how inspirational figures like Golide and Genie can have real, positive effects on unexpected people.