HARHARE, ZIMBABWE – The late Marshal Munhumumwe, a legendary Zimbabwean artist, once wrote “Vamwene vangu vanoshusha,” which means ”My mother-in-law is an annoying, vexatious and an interfering woman.”
The phrase aptly describes the life of Emelda Svosve, 36, who abandoned her marriage after experiencing severe abuse at the hands of her mother-in-law. From physical to verbal assault, Svosve, a mother of two, recalls her ordeal with chagrin.
Within the first two year of her marriage to James Chigudu, 34, a mine laborer and alcoholic, Svosve suffered a broken arm, contracted tuberculosis and was forced to sleep outside at least a dozen times by her mother-in-law. Soon after saying her marriage vows, Svosve’s mother-in-law, Chengetai Moyo, 62, a subsistence farmer from Honde Valley in the Manicaland Province of Zimbabwe, paid the newlyweds a surprise visit. The persecution, Svosve says, began immediately, starting with minor comments about food being wasted and other small details. Soon, however, the comments became personal attacks on Svosve.
“One day I was doing laundry, she [Moyo] suddenly commented on how old I looked. She then asked my age. I was really embarrassed to tell her that I was 36, two years older than my husband. All hell broke loose,” says Svosve.
“My mother-in-law started making comments such as that her son was not making any decisions in the home because he was younger than me, and that I was manipulative. She started to spend more time with our landlady [Cecilia Banda, 29], a hair dresser and a young single mother, discussing [our] private family issues,” says Svosve.
Six months into the marriage, she was called back to her parents’ home because her sister was seriously ill. Her sister died, so Svosve stayed longer to help her parents arrange the funeral. She was disheartened when no one from her husband’s family came to the funeral. It was a harbinger of worse things to come. When Svosve returned home, friends told her that her husband was having an affair with Banda, the landlady.
Svosve says Moyo was not sympathetic. Instead, Moyo accused Svosve of abandoning her husband and Svosve was physically assaulted by her husband, suffering a broken arm and bruises all over her body, for questioning his fidelity. After this incident, the relationship between Svosve and Chigudu deteriorated drastically. On various occasions, Chigudu locked her outside their home after the pair quarreled. She endured physical, emotional and psychological abuse from her husband and mother-in-law.
Four years later, when her husband fell ill, Moyo accused Svosve of being a witch who infected her son with HIV. As her husband’s sickness worsened, doctors did a blood test, which came back HIV positive. The relationship between Svosve and her husband and mother-in-law deteriorated drastically until August 2009 when Svosve decided enough was enough. She left her husband, allowing Moyo to “have her son to herself.”
Svosve says her ex-husband contracted HIV from having unprotected sex with multiple partners. She has since undergone HIV tests herself, and the results show that she is negative. She says she knows how lucky she is not to have contracted HIV.
“I was traumatized by my mother-in-law for the duration of my short marriage [so much that] I will not marry any man whose mother is still alive,” she adds.
A Culture of Combative Women
In Zimbabwe, new research reveals that many women are suffering emotional, physical, verbal and psychological abuse at the hands of other women, due to prominent cultural and religious practices that tend to pit women against each other.
The victimization of married women by their mothers-in-law can be traced back to the traditional African life, a practice that has managed to withstand the test of time, because of the continued marginalization of women from the productive sectors of the economy, says Pastor Febie Chuma, of Noah’s Ark Ministries in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.
“A high number of old women survive on the support they get from their daughters and sons, and as such, would feel aggrieved to be separated from their children at the expense of daughters-in-law or sons-in-law. If women were economically independent, that problem would not be there,” Chuma says.
Cultural practices in patriarchal African societies discourage women from actively participating in the workforce and mandate that women focus entirely on duties related to the home and children. This creates a strong bond between mother and children that is difficult to break. “Women are very possessive of their children and do not welcome ‘strangers’ into the family. Resentment of both mothers and daughters-in-law is inevitable here,” says Chuma. And the men, generally, do not pay special attention to resolve these matters because it is “women’s business,” he adds.
Woman-to-Woman: Increasing Accounts of Violence
The acrimonious relationship between a mother-in-law and her daughter-in-law has been well documented through poems, songs and folk tales in most African societies. Riddles have also been coined to capture the rivalry. There are legends about mothers-in-law who have killed their daughters-in-law to protect their sons’ wealth from ‘strangers,’ and others of ‘evil’ women who have poisoned their interfering mothers-in-law to escape from their ordeal.
Still, difficult mothers-in-law are hardly distinct to Africa. However, what exacerbates the issue in Zimbabwe, experts say, is the high number of women who are victims of family violence perpetrated by other women.
Irene Takundwa, 49, the chairperson of the Manicaland chapter of the Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe, says there is a pressing need for a paradigm shift in order to address violence perpetrated by women on women. Violence among women is a symptom of a bigger problem – the struggle for power and recognition. Takundwa says Zimbabwean society has disempowered women to such an extent they now feel that they must fight each other to gain recognition.
The issue of violence and degrading familial practices perpetrated by mothers-in-law in Zimbabwe has fueled the need to build a strong women’s movement. Efforts need to be centered on the emancipation of women so that they can also avoid squabbles on peripheral issues, Takundwa says.
“Women should learn to stand on their own feet and with pride, so that they map out their lives and break the cultural and traditional bondage,” Takundwa adds.
The recently commemorated 16 Days of Activism Against Violence Against Women passed with concerns by some that the main form of violence discussed was that of men perpetrating violence against women, or women abusing men. No attention was given to the rampant violence by women against women within families, and society is turning a blind eye.
According to Women in Law and Development in Africa, domestic violence accounted for more than 60 percent of murder cases tried in the Harare High Court in 1998, the most recent statistics available. The Herald reported that from January 2009 to September 2009, 10 women were beaten and one was torched by other women. The media in Zimbabwe is increasingly reporting incidents of physical violence of women perpetrated by other women. The Zimbabwe Women Lawyers Association documented these cases in their 2008 publication Culture, Tradition and Women’s Rights.
Frank Jabson, 35, the Program Manager at the Creative Center for Communication and Development, says that his organization is involved in campaigns to challenge cultural and religious practices that violate women’s rights and, as a result, the organization is recording an increase in the number of women who are victims of violence at the hands of other women.
“Of the 43 cases of domestic violence recorded in the last quarter of 2009, 27 involved women against women. There is certainly a shift in the traditional assumption that women only suffer abuse at the hands of men,” says Jabson.
Several active women’s rights groups, including WILDAF, the Musasa Project, the Zimbabwe Women Lawyers’ Association, the Women’s Action Group, say they are actively working to improve women’s knowledge of their legal rights and increasing economic empowerment opportunities as the primary solutions to combat domestic violence.
