Breaking the silence essential to end norm of domestic abuse against women
Published: Thursday, December 01, 2011
Mary Makukula was serially abused by her husband for decades. In 2008, his blows were hard enough to knock out her two front teeth.
Mary's neighbours, who had closed their eyes and ears to the abuse for years, could no longer ignore what was going on in the Makukula household, and staged an intervention. With the support of friends, Mary finally struck up the courage to report her husband to the local police, and a few months later, she divorced him.
"He was a very jealous man. He always thought I was going with other men in the village, and would beat me to try to get me to confess," she says. "Sometimes months would go by and he wouldn't lay a finger on me, and other times, the beatings would be regular. I was afraid of him."
Violence against women is a physical manifestation of the subordination of women to men in Zambian society. A Gender Based Violence Survey Report carried out by the Zambian Central Statistical Office in 2006 found that more than half of all married women in Zambia have been beaten or abused by their husbands, and almost two thirds of both men and women believe that wife beating is justified in certain circumstances, for example if she has been unfaithful, or neglected her children.