When we talk about domestic violence, we never really look at it from a personal perspective. It is something that happens to someone else and not a member of your family.
Comment by Ropafadzo Mapimhidze
I have, however, decided to write about my mother who died in 2006, who was a survivor of domestic violence perpetrated by people who were supposed to protect her. It is a matter that troubles me to this day because I keep asking my relatives why she had to go through such pain in a foreign country where she had settled in exile.
My father was always away at war. He trained to fight the Smith Regime following a scuffle with a missionary called Labuschachen at Makumbe Mission in Buhera around the late 50s.
He fled to Zambia and joined Zipra forces who trained him to fight the Smith Regime that had declared him a prohibited immigrant after he had protested against this missionary who was selling books to black students through a window.
As I was growing up in Kitwe on the Copperbelt, I hardly saw my father because, as I learnt much later when I was about 19 years old, he had been travelling to many countries training to become a guerilla.
During my his absence, my mother ran a small successful grocery shop which raked in a lot of kwachas and ngwee’s (Zambian currency) which my uncles also wanted to get. When she resisted, she would get beaten so badly. She had nowhere to run for she was a foreigner who had no close relatives to run to.
So bad were the beatings that she once had to get her ear stitched up because one of my uncles used some instrument to beat her, much to my horror. She would sob quietly as we gathered around her in deep sadness. She was a prisoner in her own home.
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I remember one incident where she was beaten because one of my uncle’s children had reported her saying that he had been denied food. This uncle had kicked his wife out of his house and brought his children to our home.
The sad reality, however, is that although my father had sisters in Zambia, they too, were also the instigators of violence.
They would never speak against their brothers and as a result, my mother suffered emotional and physical pain to the extent that she started hating my paternal relatives.
When our father returned from war, the abuse worsened as these people told him all sorts stories. This resulted in further physical assaults.
My younger brother and I started planning our escape to join the war that liberated Zimbabwe because we just couldn’t understand why these people were hostile. For example, I used to have my hair plaited the Congolese way and that would infuriate one of my uncles who would slap my mother for letting me look like a “prostitute”.
This is one many reasons why my mother would get battered while her sisters-in-law watched with excitement. Women too are instigators of violence and this is why I have had to write about this to inform other people in similar circumstances.
What authority does a man have over his sister-in-law’s household? My father was alive and he did not mind us dressing anyhow, but the moment his brothers walked into our home, we would know that all hell would break loose over our fancy dressing.
Just before my father died from prostate cancer in 1994, I asked him about all these events and all he said was: “Ropa, I do not want to be reminded of that horrible past because it hurts me so much. My family said all sorts of lies about my wife and now I am dying and yet none of them are here to see me suffer.”
The proceeds from the shop my mother managed, bought my uncles’ cars and she got nothing. She had earned that money and banked it awaiting my father’s return from war, a stint that was short-lived because he suffered an injury when he was shot in the knee by Rhodesian Forces as he operated around the Zambezi River in the late 70s
As relatives, friends and her seven children viewed her body during her funeral, all I saw was a survivor of domestic violence. It is because of that experience that I am so passionate about domestic violence for I am a survivor too. Children suffer immensely when a parent is subjected to violence. It is my hope and desire that all homes become safer for everyone regardless of sex and age because it is so traumatic to see a parent in pain.
Home is not supposed to be a battlefield, but judging by the number of stories we write about domestic violence, the home is not the safe net we all think it is.
As we join Zimbabwe in the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, it is time to reflect and act upon members of our families who are violating members of their families.
