Domestic Violence in Mozambique

There it was again. That shriek was really loud this time, too loud to have been children playing around and wrestling as they always did. And what would kids be doing out so late anyway?

I looked at Anthony, who was staying over for the night, and we instinctively got off the couch at the same time to go outside and see if we could hear it again.

The scream was bloodcurdling.

While Anthony stood in my sandy yard, I went to pause the movie we were watching, and then walked out with him to the dirt road outside my neighbor’s fence. When we finally slipped out the back fence door we were met with a crowd of my neighbors watching something that was too dark to pick out.

I turned to one woman and asked, “What’s going on?,” as my eyes adjusted a little and I saw what looked like somebody on the ground holding another person. Did somebody pass out or something? I wondered.

When she didn’t reply, I asked again and she finally said, almost at a whisper, “He’s killing her… he’s killing her.”

As she said that, my eyes fully adjusted to the darkness and I could see very clearly a man and a woman on the ground struggling and exchanging fists. The group of ten to fifteen people who had gathered had been standing around and watching the entire time. And from that point on, the rest was slow motion.

The man got up and started kicking the woman in the side, shouting in Xitswa, and she in turn cursed at him in between blows. Without really thinking I moved to pull the man away, noticing how he reeked of alcohol, while Anthony helped up the woman.

The next ten minutes was a repetitive dance… the woman comes charging, we pull them away; the man comes charging, we pull them away; repeat two or three times. On the very last time that the woman charged, her ferocity was enough that she broke Anthony’s grasp and tackled the man to the ground.

“She’s biting him!” I heard Anthony shout as more people than before came to try and separate the two.

And indeed she was. We had a hard time trying to pull them apart since doing so could only make it worse for the man, as the woman bit down hard, but they finally got up and Anthony and I went back to restraining them.

Then all of a sudden, as quickly as it’d started, the ferocity stopped. The fires in their eyes went out and everyone just stood there. The woman’s bruised eyes were finally visible. Meanwhile, the raw flesh on the man, which obviously had to be the bite marks, was in plain sight on his ears, arms, and upper body. Anthony and I couldn’t bring ourselves to say anything at all.

Finally, they walked their separate ways as the man said something clearly in Portuguese, rather than in Xitswa as they’d been speaking the entire time. “I’m going to kill myself! I am! I’m going to do it!”

With that, the neighbors went away one by one and Anthony and I walked back to my yard where the lights finally revealed stains of the man’s blood all over my clothes. I really thought I was going to throw up…



It’s one thing to read about domestic violence and to hear about its common occurrence, but as I learned recently, it’s a completely different thing to witness firsthand. Reading about it, one can only imagine what it looks like, maybe pasting different scenes from movies together or thinking about that one, awkward fight you saw when you were in 6th grade. But the reality is very fast, very brutal, and very unnerving.

In talking to various Mozambican friends since, I have been surprised to see what I believe to be hatred towards domestic violence, but also an unnerving acceptance of its reality. “Of course, Vic, that sort of thing happens here all the time… that’s just how it is.’

Having lived in this country for merely thirteen months, I know I can’t hope to understand many things… maybe even most things about Mozambique’s cultures and ways of life. But I do believe that domestic violence has very much to do with traditional views of woman as property and recognize that these very views themselves continue to die hard.

Not too long ago, I attended a ‘ring ceremony,’ which for all intents and purposes is a traditional Mozambican wedding. It was beautiful, it was extremely fun, but it was also interesting to note how closely it resembled an exchange of goods. Whether or not the couple in question views it that way, or even the family for that matter, the custom is in fact for the man to present a series of expensive gifts ‘in exchange’ for the hand of the family’s daughter in marriage. Meanwhile, the entire ceremony itself is sealed with a ring on her finger so that everyone knows that she ‘belongs to’ only her husband.

Here in Maxixe at least, I have noticed even more blatant examples of gender inequality in simply observing daily life. Men bring home the money and food, while women stay at home to cook and take care of the kids. Everyday I see numbers of men at the bars in the middle of the day, more so on the weekend obviously, while I pass by scores of households with women crushing matapa leaves in dinner preparation and children playing around them.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I understand that many people hold religious beliefs concerning the man being the head of the household, with the woman being more the co-pilot of the family as she ultimately bends to the whim of her husband. I respect that view. I don’t agree with it at all, but I respect it just the same.

That said, even with religious ideas in the mix, surely we can all agree on one thing. No matter who you are: man, woman, American, or Mozambican; domestic violence is simply unacceptable. Not only is it harmful for the victim, but it represents an ultimate low for the victimizer, man or woman, who has to resort to violence to get what he or she wants, which is power in this case.

Having stated what for many is the obvious, this leaves us at the unavoidable question: what can we do about it?

As I’ve said, tradition dies hard, especially here in Mozambique. At the very least though, one can look to and point out the certain changes that have resulted through development and interaction with the West such as a slow decrease in the practice of polygamy in the strict definition as well as the presence of women in important community and business leadership positions. Nowadays, more women have an increasingly defined power that needs no violence to assert.

So what does reality in Mozambique say about prospects for change in the future? Well, these changes, though slight and not necessarily universal by any means, highlight the importance of education and development to fighting violence and ignorance. Try as we may to have programs directed at alleviating the causes and effects of domestic violence, the biggest factor to play a role in its ultimate undoing will be time. The rest, I feel, is up to the culture in question.