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Tina Sideris
For over a decade from the late 1970s to October 1992, a war raged in Mozambique,
which resulted in what has been described as one of the "most terrible
genocides in the history of Africa". Over 4 million people were displaced
during this war. Conservative estimates put the number of people who fled to
South Africa at 250 000.
During this war the domestic sphere was a primary site of conflict, and women were an integral part of the battlefield. This article is based on research which examined the trauma created by the war, its psycho-social outcomes, and women's coping and survival mechanisms, from the perspective of a group of women refugees who fled to South Africa.
Women and war in Mozambique
After Mozambique won independence in 1975, the newly independent country, led by the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo), was plunged into internal war against a right-wing insurgent group called the Mozambique National Resistance Movement (Renamo). Rhodesian security forces created Renamo in the late 1970s to counter the support given by the Frelimo government to the Zimbabwe liberation movements. Renamo's high command and military forces were also actively supported by the special forces of the South African Defence Force after Zimbabwe became independent in 1980 (Minter, 1991).
Renamo's aim was to destabilise the state and destroy the economy by attacking the state infrastructure and the institutions of civil society. But it became notorious for the brutality it inflicted on the population. Gruesome and gratuitous acts of violence - mutilations, public executions, massacres, and sexual violence - instilled terror in the local population.
Women were victims of the general assault on the population, but they were also attacked in specific ways. Sexual violence became a weapon of terror. Rape was commonly conducted in the presence of relatives and compatriots, many of whom were forced to take part in the violation. Women were raped in the presence of their children and husbands. Husbands were forced to take part in the rape of their wives. Children were forced to assault their mothers. Countless women and girl children were abducted by Renamo and held in camps for up to 10 years where they were used as sex slaves and bore the children of their captors.
Gender, culture and the psycho-social outcomes of the war
The Mozambican women described a constellation of psycho-social consequences of the war. In addition to the clinically documented, post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, they also described subjective pain and distress which they explained in terms of their own cosmology. The trauma struck at the core of their being. They said vavisa e moya which means "my spirit is sore" and conveys an injury to the life force.
The refugee women identified loss of social belonging and identity, "spirit damage" and somatic problems, as the most serious outcomes of their traumatic experiences. They linked these feeling states to the breakdown of community structures, family and social bonds and cultural norms, which, especially in their cultures, are essential for individual well-being.
Rural Mozambican women come from societies in which the individual is defined in relation to the social. These social bonds provide individuals with meaning and a sense of internal cohesion. Individual wellbeing is integrally linked to social order, and equilibrium between the world of the living and dead relatives. In their cosmology, social order, self and body are dialectically interrelated. Damage to the spirit encompasses the bodily disorder produced by dehumanising violation and physical problems communicate social suffering. Dislocation and ruptured social worlds disturb personal identity and cause damage to the spirit.
Locally specific conceptions of the world informed the outcomes of the trauma. But if gender colours the experience of self and world and religion, then the specificity of the psycho-social outcomes described by the women, derives not only from their cosmology, but is shaped by women's encounters with their socio-cultural environment.
The balanced social order central to African religious philosophies is organised hierarchically. Age, gender and the spiritual realm are amongst the organising principles of the hierarchy. For example, gender defines the place and status of women in social relations and structures their religious obligations. Thus women will have a particular sense of "spirit damage", specific somatic complaints, and a distinct experience of dislocation and loss of social belonging.
Women's identity and the land
Many women identified the material insecurity they experienced due to loss of access to land and traditional economic roles, as one of the worst aspects of dislocation. On the other hand, they communicated a sense of self worth, which implies more than economic confidence, when they described their ties and work on the land in rural Mozambique.
For most rural Mozambicans the land is symbolic of lineage and sustains kinship. But historical forces gave rural women in southern Mozambique a specific relationship to the land. During the colonial occupation when the migrant labour system was entrenched, women subsistence farmers played a pivotal role in the reproduction of the household economy. Women were the backbone of agricultural production.
Subsistence production, and by extension the domestic sphere, was a site in which the women developed skills, established relative autonomy, and earned the respect of the community. Therefore dislocation and the loss of social belonging represented a threat to a positive sense of who they were - a loss of personal and social identity.
Victims and survivors
The war in Mozambique created a multi-dimensional trauma. People experienced a number of terrible events. But the trauma was made up of more than individual encounters with death, injury and loss. Discrete acts of violence were fundamentally linked to the overall process of social and cultural destruction. Thus the trauma was caused by the violation of the individual and the social.
Despite the magnitude of adversity they went through, the women did not give up. Interplay of vulnerability and resilience characterised their responses to trauma. They moved between the experience of being victims of severe disruption and deep distress, and active agents who tried to cope with the psycho-social damage and challenges in the aftermath of the trauma. Many women made remarkable efforts to protect their dependants and recreate family and social bonds. Under hostile socio-economic circumstances they tried to generate an income to secure food and build shelters. They asserted a claim to life and implemented coping tactics including undergoing traditional rituals, using social support, cognitive reframing, and reasserting family and community relationships.
The women identified three main sources of their inner strength and capacity for survival: God and the church, mothering, and social relationships. Their identification of the mothering role as a source of strength provides an example of how specific experiences of gender roles inform responses to trauma. They argued that their historical roles as primary caretakers gave them a set of skills to draw on, a sense of integrity and responsibility, and the strength to protect their dependants and rebuild their lives. Though the women noted their huge burden, they said it was the responsibility they took for others, that made them resilient. In the aftermath of the trauma, they drew on the skills they had accumulated in their roles as caretakers to deal with the new demands for survival.
Conclusion
Evidence from the research with Mozambican women refugees shows how gender intersects with culture to structure the experience of violence and the responses to trauma. This suggests an approach to examining the complex relationship between trauma and its consequences, which abstracts neither the trauma, nor its victims from socio-historical contexts.
Understanding the social contexts of survivors is a prerequisite for designing mental health interventions. This study of Mozambican women suggests that interventions which took into account social and cultural beliefs, and strengthened their sources of resilience promoted coping. This does not mean that conventional methods of counselling and therapy are superfluous. Healing is a multifaceted phenomenon, and survivors will draw on a range of resources in order to heal. The principle that social context must be taken into account in the attempt to understand responses to trauma is one that should be applied when working with people in all cultural contexts. If gender is an organising principle of all social situations, then it should be carefully considered when trying to comprehend the responses people have to terrible experiences.
Tina Sideris is a Doctor in Psychology from the Rand Afrikaans University. She
has researched extensively on the issue of women and war and presently does
psychotherapy and supervision of the community work of the organisation Rape
Crisis Centres in rural areas.