WLSA MOÇAMBIQUE

RITES OF INITIATION
IN THE CURRENT CONTEXT:
ADJUSTMENTS, RUPTURES AND
CONFRONTATIONS

CONSTRUCTING GENDER IDENTITIES

Conceição Osório
Ernesto Macuacua

Maputo, June 2014

BOOK DATA:
Title: RITES OF INITIATION IN THE CURRENT CONTEXT: Adjustments,
Ruptures and Confrontations. Constructing Gender Identities.
Director of Research: Conceição Osório
Authors: Conceição Osório and Ernesto Macuacua
Research Assistants: Iolanda Sitoe, Léa Barreau-Tran, Josefina Tamele
Scientific Review: Luiz Henrique Passador
Editor: Maria José Arthur
Translation: Olga Martins
1st edition in Portuguese: 2013
Title in the original version: “Ritos de iniciação no contexto atual: ajustamentos,
rupturas e confrontos. Construindo identidades de género”
Contributions:
Manuel Macie participated in the collection of information, in the literature review
of the pilot study and in the collection of information for the main study in Zambézia
Province.
Yolanda Sitoe participated in the collection of information, in the fieldwork of the
pilot study, in the characterisation of the sample and in the preparation of Chapter II
(Legislation and Public Policies).
Léa Barreau-Tran participated in the collection of information for the pilot study and
for the main study in Zambézia Province.
Josefina Tamele participated in the characterisation of the sample and in the
preparation of Chapter II (Legislation and Public Policies).
Research assistant: Rildo Rafael
Cover: Diana Manhiça, Zoom
Cover Painting: Carlos Jamal
Layout: WLSA Mozambique
Registration No.: 8117/RLINLD/2014
Printing: CIEDIMA, Lda
ISBN: .978 – 989 – 96871 – 7 - 2
No. of copies: 500
Maputo, 2014
WLSA Mozambique is funded by:

2
DISCLAIMER

The translation of this book is made possible by the support of

the American People through the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID). The contents of this book
is the sole responsibility of WLSA and do not necessarily reflect
the views of USAID or the United States Government.

This book has been translated and printed with the

support of:

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4
Acknowledgements

Many women and men in the education, health and social action
sectors have offered time and used their knowledge to share their
experience and their work with us. We thank them for their
generosity and openness.
We extend our recognition to the various members of civil society
organisations, community leaders and masters and matrons.
But we dedicate this book particularly to the youth of both sexes who
opened their heart and who, sometimes with embarrassment, fear
and distress, described the experiences lived during their
participation in initiation rites.
And, finally, we cannot forget those young women and men who have
not been given a voice to express their feelings of rebellion and
indignation with respect to cultural practices denying them their
rights. To all of them our heartfelt thanks for the lesson of courage
they gave us.

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6
 Abbreviations and Acronyms

AIDS Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome

Association of Traditional Healers of
AMETRAMO
Mozambique
B.R. Government Gazette (Boletim da República)
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
CEDAW
Discrimination against Women
CNAC National Council for the Rights of the Child
National Council for the Advancement of
CNAM
Women
CRC Convention on the Rights of the Child
CRM Constitution of the Republic of Mozambique
CSO Civil Society Organisation
EP Primary Education
ESG General Secondary Education
EGSE Gender Strategy of the Education Sector
FGM Female Genital Mutilation
FRELIMO Mozambique Liberation Front
HDI Human Development Index
HDR Human Development Report
HIV Human Immunodeficiency Virus
International Covenant on Economic, Social and
ICESCR
Cultural Rights
INDE National Institute for Educational Development
INE National Statistics Institute
National Survey on Prevalence, Behavioural
INSIDA Risks and Information about HIV/AIDS in
Mozambique
MAGEEQ Mainstreaming Gender Equality in Europe
MDGs Millennium Development Goals
MEC Ministry of Education and Culture
MINED Ministry of Education
MISAU Ministry of Health
Ministry of Women and Coordination of Social
MMCAS
Action
PARP Action Plan for the Reduction of Poverty

7
 Action Plan for the Reduction of Absolute
PARPA
Poverty
Action Plan for the Reduction of Absolute
PARPA II
Poverty II
PEE Strategic Plan of the Education Sector
PEEC Strategic Plan of Education and Culture
PESS Economic and Social Plan of the Health Sector
PNAC National Plan of Action for Children
PNAM National Plan for the Advancement of Women
PNE National Education Policy
National Policy for Health and Sexual and
PNSSR
Reproductive Rights
RENAMO National Resistance of Mozambique
SADC Southern African Development Community
STI Sexually Transmitted Infection
UN United Nations
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund
UNIFEM United Nations Development Fund for Women
WHO World Health Organisation
WLSA Women and Law in Southern Africa

8
 Contents

Preface ......................................................................................... 13
Introduction ................................................................................ 23
Chapter I - Theoretical Dilemmas, Dimensions of Analysis
and Sample .................................................................................. 35
1. Culture and sexuality ............................................................. 35
2. Culture: a dimension of the social order ............................... 37
2.1.Culture, culturalism and tradition ........................................ 47
2.2. Culture, ethnicity and human rights ................................... 58
2.3. Culture and patriarchal domination.................................... 64
3. Ritualization: (in)disciplined bodies......................................71
3.1.Briefly reviewing the functions of the rites........................... 72
3.2. Identities and ritualization .................................................. 76
3.3. Body and sexuality ............................................................... 83
3.4. Sexuality: embodiment and subjectivation ......................... 87
3.5. Sexualisation of power/ sexualized power .......................... 90
3.6. Sexuality and human rights ................................................. 95
4. Dimensions of the analysis .................................................. 102
5. The sample............................................................................. 107
Chapter II - Legislation and Public Policies .............................. 113
1. International instruments ...................................................... 114
2. Mozambique: legislation and public policies ..................... 123
3. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) .................... 130
4. Agenda 2025 ......................................................................... 131

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5. Government’s Five-Year Programme (2010-2014) ............ 132
6. Gender Policy and Implementation Strategies (2006) ...... 135
7. National Plan of Action for Children (PNAC, 2006-
2010) .....................................................................................137
8. Action Plan for the Reduction of Absolute Poverty
(PARPA II, 2006-2009) ...................................................... 139
9. Economic and Social Plan of the Health Sector (PESS,
2010) ..................................................................................... 141
10. Education Sector Policy ....................................................... 142
11. Strategic Education and Culture Plan (PEEC, 2006-
2010/11) ............................................................................... 143
12. Education Sector Gender Strategy for the 2011-2015
period ................................................................................... 150
Chapter III - Initiation Rites: Cultural Cohesion and Power
Strategies ................................................................................... 153
1. Structure, organisation and functional system of the rites ...155
1.1. Concept, organisation and functions/objectives ................155
1.2. Agents, expectations and social integration ...................... 164
1.3. Ethnolinguistic identity and rites: the case of the
Makhuwa, Makonde, Chuwabo, Sena and Ndau groups ..172
2. The rites nowadays: changes, countervailing power and
reaffirmation........................................................................ 196
2.1. The rites yesterday and today: distinctive historical
differences............................................................................ 196
2.2. Apparent objectives and secrecy of the rites: continuity
and sophistication ............................................................... 203
3. State, religion and rites ........................................................ 208
3.1. Traditional social loyalties of the political power of the
Mozambican State: the cases of the discourses of “our
culture” and “national unity” ............................................. 208

10
3.2. Rites and the State: meeting and confrontation in the
cases of Education, Human Rights/ Justice and Health
authorities ............................................................................ 216
3.3. Social dynamics of the rites: the sociocultural capital,
political power and religious symbolism dimensions ........ 222
Chapter IV - Initiation Rites and the Construction of the
Male and the Female ................................................................. 233
1. Identities, family and the school ........................................... 237
1.1. School: organisation, curriculum and links ....................... 254
2. Rituals: space, duration and ceremonies ............................. 265
3. Gender identities and sexual identities: agreements and
resistance ............................................................................. 309
3.1. Demarcation factors of the ritual initiation ....................... 314
3.2. The dimensions of ritual teachings ................................... 325
3.2.1. The question of respect ................................................... 326
3.2.2. Sex life: discourses and practices ................................... 341
a) Othuna and matinjis: forced sex or the force of sex ............ 342
b) Learning about sex: conformities and resistance ................ 346
c) Sexual initiation, early marriages and school dropout ........ 365
Conclusions ............................................................................... 385
Bibliographic References .......................................................... 393
Annex 1 ....................................................................................... 411
Annex 2 ...................................................................................... 413

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12
Preface

Changing processes: initiation rites, culture and

identities

This book contributes to the discussion about initiation rites in the

current context, opening up new analytical paths and instruments
that offer an innovative view on the theme, in the sense that it
intends to treat the cultural institutions in constant mutation but also
full of contradictions and subject to change. Thus, youths were also
selected as target group who, going around in multiple spaces, offer
more possibilities, in complexity and diversity, to enhance this
change.
This WLSA Mozambique book appears in the wake of other studies
with an interdisciplinary character and with a gender perspective, a
cross-cutting analytical category of human relations, which have
been helpful to deepen studies and thoughts, dealing with practices
and rationalities that are founders of various types of inequality and
oppression, so very present in society, and which seem to be part of
the natural order and of social and political relations. The book
appears in a period in which the public discussion around the
defence of women’s human rights is increasingly effervescent.
Indeed, there is a dominant concern to present ideas that offer an
alternative to orthodox views and the prevailing political stance,
whose essence is based on immutability and the primacy of culture
and tradition.
We thus seek to defend models of analysis that respond to the
transitoriness and fluidity of cultural phenomena and to incite
several voices, namely the marginal ones, to claim access to resources
and benefits.

13
Dynamic models of culture

On the assumption that in the different cultures sexual identities are

formatted by the rites into inequalities, which is in agreement with
the dominant model that structures gender relations, the authors
undertake various discussions and present distinct theoretical
positions, seeking to emphasize the material and symbolic
mechanisms developed by ritual teachings. The book questions
aspects around the current interpretative limits about the body as a
place of production and reproduction of a cultural, social and
political order. Going beyond the disciplinary boundaries and in a
fruitful dialogue, the book reassesses the epistemological and
methodological premises of several authors who, in the study of
cultures, emphasize analyses of social structures, symbolic
classifications and achieved practices.
Thus, in the study of the rites there is a plural multi-dimensional
effort to revisit the concept of culture according to analytical
instruments emphasizing that the internal and external dynamics of
culture, operating on the rites, construct identities by overtures
and/or ruptures, acting as elements of consensus and
communication, but also consolidating relations of domination.
Indeed, the rites, in their capacity to organise and create social
cohesion, to regulate behaviours according to precepts imbued with
conformism to preserve and emphasize hierarchies, strengthen the
differences and inequalities. In the same way, the apparatus to
discipline the bodies are strengthened to legitimate a certain type of
sexuality related to socially established standards of manhood and
womanhood, originating from social and cultural representations
constructed on the basis of the biological differences between the
sexes and transmitted in the initiation rituals. These internalized
representations are fundamental references for the constitution of
the identity of individuals.
In the ritual teachings about the body, culture influences the
instructions and practices to be adopted and acquired. In the

14
preservation of the rites as a cultural institution, adherence to and
adoption of the norms as a requirement for integration is obvious,
but non-adherence to certain values and codes is also clear, making
behaviours, once specific ruptures occur, intelligible.
This aspect of the construction of identities, visible in the rites, i.e.,
the link between the individual and the collective, enables the youths
to see themselves as adults, members of a group and to take
possession of values and practices, but simultaneously to turn to a
position of distinction from the collective in a process of renunciation
to emphasize their self. But it is important to understand the
meaning that is given to the acquired values in order to understand
the mechanisms, the agency used by them to construct
representations and practices that identify them as female and male
persons.
Thus, in the presence of asymmetric power relations, we may be
facing situations of maintenance, but also of non-acceptance on the
part of the agents, even with the appearance of some resistance to the
preservation of sexual behaviours. The authors emphasize that sexual
identities are not static, unchanging. We need to consider that these
identities are continuously being readjusted inside the self and in the
social relations established with the other.
The study of cultural meanings is of great relevance when we focus
on identity processes, rendering the interaction between individual
and collective identities decisive and also how in this interaction
similarities and differences are being changed, adjusted and
ruptured. The importance of this study is to emphasize once again
what is mentioned by James Clifford, quoted by Kuper (2001:274),
when he states that a collective identity is an often discontinuous
process of hybrid invention.
The study elucidates the countervailing power strategies unleashed,
with a view to the renunciation of the transmitted knowledge,
bringing to light signs of contestation or readjustments that enhance
changes. On the part of some youths, we observe a rejection of the
socially expected behaviours, while the teachings do not appear
freely. Thus, there is visible coercion and the teachings of sexuality

15
are clearly a battle field. For example, the physical violence inflicted
during the rites is contested by the youths and in certain places the
girls reject the lengthening of the labia minora, or give signs that it
isn’t imperative that the transmitted values have to be internalized
and assumed in their practices.
The authors offer thus a field that is open to a critical analysis which
considers that the mechanisms of reproduction of female inferiority
are internalized by the women themselves in the learning processes,
transforming them only into mere objects (Bourdieu, 2002). We
adopt a position which opposes the idea that the mechanisms of the
production and reproduction of domination are so perfect, so free of
fissures, that it is difficult to modify them or to present alternatives.
We thus argue that the socially informed body acts as producer and
product in the process of appropriation. Individuals define
themselves, see themselves simultaneously as agents, as subjects and
as objects. The study leads to a thought that we are not dealing with a
unitary subject, neither with a notion of a simple and abstractly
homogeneous body, in the line of thought of theorists like Foucault
(1987). The bodies of different ages and genders have distinct
capacities and properties. There is an embodied consciousness in
individuals, with aims, desires and agency (Turner, quoted by Vale de
Almeida, 1996:15).
Criticizing a static view, the authors demonstrate that cultures are in
permanent production and continuity. The urgency thus arises, in
methodological terms, to be attentive to tensions and conflicts
unleashed by the agents in the change processes of the social order
and of culture as a dimension of this order.
We are in the presence of dynamic models of culture that correspond
to fluid models of gender identities, laying emphasis on social change
processes and the constructed and unstable character of cultural
phenomena.
The reversal of the dominant social order implies a choice, autonomy
as subjects, in which the claims and confrontations that permeate the

16
power relations in a model of domination hierarchizing rights, are
clearly visible. Or it may, on the contrary, enhance empowerment.
In fact, the capitalization of these spaces to give rise to the conversion
of sexuality in relation to the defined norms, materializing the
exercise of sexual rights, would only be possible through the
appropriation and manipulation of the elements shaping
subordination. Though these female practices may constitute a
vehicle for the reproduction of inferiority, they have the capacity and
the potential to become simultaneously the strategic point for the
modification of the systems, creating discontinuities. The very
freedom inherent in the exercise of power stimulates the
development of strategies, struggles, competition and contestation of
the structures of domination.
Indeed, according to Douglas (1971) societies express a formal
culture with well-defined ideas and areas of separation between
order and disorder. The ambiguities and anomalies occurring at the
borders of the systems bring a disorder which destroys the patterns,
but also provides the raw material of standardization. Thus, the
disorder itself has an ambiguous status, insofar as it represents not
only the threat of destruction, but also a creative potential:
symbolizing power and danger, it cannot simply be cleared away
without leading to the ruin of all powers of the social and symbolic
order. It is necessary to reduce the ambiguity, to control the
disordered experience.
Emphasis is thus given to the dynamics instituted in the systems and
to their instability in contexts where interculturality and the internal
diversities of the groups are present.

Multiculturalism and human rights

In the presence of a rigid stance and a view of culture as a set of

essentialized qualities and of a totalizing vision of multiculturalism,
the authors emphasize for this case of the initiation rites on the one
hand a concern to preserve cultural practices according to the social
and political contexts lived by the communities, allowing integration
and the recognition of each individual in the collective, but on the
17
other hand also the inherent mechanisms of oppression. They equally
emphasize the need to be attentive to the appearance of combat
strategies capable of giving answers to the inequalities subjacent to
these processes, enhancing the defence of women’s human rights.
Indeed, one of the risks of the essentialization of cultural identities is
to stimulate a cultural homogeneity that impedes the manifestation
of differences and diversity within groups.
This fact brings us to the question of the defence of cultural rights, in
which the need to ensure to a large extent self-determination is
proclaimed, but mainly the right to be different, pointing out the
importance of all individuals being allowed to manifest their ideals,
to recreate their identity patterns and aspirations. However, the
apology of the difference may clash with the notion that there should
be coexistence and respect for cultural diversity.
The book concludes that the paradox between human rights, cultural
rights and cultural diversity leads to culture being in constant
production, subject to changes brought about by social actors, as
subjects of rights, and that the State should discourage cultural
practices that violate these rights, rejecting cultural models that
result in a process of aggravating the subordinated position of
women, thus promoting inequality.
In fact, in the guise of preserving tradition we observe a revival of
cultural manifestations (the rites are some of the more paradigmatic
examples) that reveal the need to preserve an order shaped by the
dominant patriarchal ideology. As Lenclud (1987:118) clearly
emphasizes, the particular usefulness of a tradition is to enable and
offer all individuals who express and reproduce it in daily life, the
means to state their differences and to ensure their authority and
power.
The rites clearly genderize gender identities, not only because they
reproduce the social and cultural model of patriarchal domination,
but also because they strengthen and legitimate it, through the
ceremonies, the spaces and the mechanisms that secure the rites, i.e.,
secrecy, fear and punishments. But we have to recognise that the
mechanisms created to shape their social role need to be

18
deconstructed and reanalysed, on the basis of the new realities and
contexts in which they occur.

Changes in the rites

The rites viewed as symbolic actions and standardized through their

repetition in social interaction have been subjected to political and
social circumstances experienced by the community. Structured in
three sequential stages (separation, margin and aggregation) they
have meanwhile been gradually modified, remaining however the
primordial objective - the maintenance of gender inequalities around
the ascribed social roles, the exercise of sexuality and of rights. In the
part of the study dealing with the changes in the rites, the authors
offer a field open to a critical analysis of the studies that consider
power relations and inequalities between women and men in the field
of sexuality, without questioning the structural aspects of the
subordination of women. Thus, for example, in the teachings about
sex, the disciplining apparatuses of the bodies in general dictate rules
under a binary regime: licit and illicit, permitted and prohibited, that
are accentuated to legitimate a certain type of sexuality related to
socially established standards of manhood and womanhood. These
standards originate from social and cultural representations
constructed on the basis of the biological differences of the sexes and
transmitted through the rites.
These internalized representations are fundamental references for
the constitution of the female identity, but mainly for teaching
women that their value and their power reside in their body and in its
use. The production of meanings on the basis of the body of the other
is defined and regulated through discursive practices produced by the
disciplinary power designating them, but in which violence prevails.
In this way, the apparatus of this construction requires a type of
teaching that frequently depends on an ideal that a certain
knowledge is fixed to certain identities on the basis of a restrictive
power.
The book makes us reflect on the fact that sexuality, as the other
dimensions of identity, is a social construction and that it does not

19
only refer to genital sex. Dealing with this problem presupposes to
recognize it as an approach with a multidimensionality at various
levels. As Helle-Valle (2005) points out, sexuality should be
recognized as a human dimension, which the more it is known and
understood, the more the need to broaden its meaning is recognised.
Among its functions held in secret is the sexual repression of girls.
The sexual control of the reproductive potential is focused on women.
The role of father and husband is defined in terms of authority in
relation to his dependants and this relation is formulated through a
metaphor of the husband being the head. What gives a girl the status
of being a woman is conception, because the female identity is
intimately confined to her mother function.
The study is based on the assumption that identity processes function
as cultural coordinates in the process of the constitution of
subjectivity. In addition to positioning concrete individuals in their
relations with the various social groups existing in the cultural
contexts in which they are included, these individuals are however
marked by unquestionable functions and roles. But as already stated,
the book mainly calls attention to the changes, which are disturbing
the scenario of a supposed simplicity and immutability of the rites as
expression of an essential culture. In this process, the role of the
school in the construction of an awareness of citizenship is crucial.

References
Bourdieu, P. (2002). A Dominação masculina. Rio de Janeiro:
Bertrand Brasil.
Douglas, M. (1971). De la souillure. Essais sur les notions de
pollution et de tabou. Paris: François Maspero.
Foucault, M. (1987). História da Sexualidade. Vol. II. Lisboa:
Gradiva.
Helle-Valle, J. (2005). “Understanding sexuality in Africa: Diversity
and contextualised dividuality”. In: S. Arnfred (orgs) Re-

20
 thinking sexualities in Africa. Uppsala: Almqvist Wiksell
Tryckeri AB.
Kuper, A. (.2001). Cultura: La version de lós antropólogos.
Barcelona: Ediciones Paidós Ibérica.
Lenclud, G. (1987). “La tradition n' est plus ce qu' elle était". In :
Terrains, nº 9. pp 110-123.
Vale de Almeida, M. (1996). “Corpo presente”. In: M. Vale de
Almeida (org.) (1996). Corpo presente: treze reflexões
antropológicas sobre o corpo. Oeiras: Celta Editores.

Ana Maria Loforte

21
22
Introduction

“'No person is your friend who demands your

silence, or denies your right to grow”.
Alice Walker

“The essence of Human Rights is the right to have

rights”.
Hannah Arendt

The rites, whether of passage, of birth, of marriage or of death, have

been studied as an autonomous object by the fields of study that
make up the social sciences, particularly since the last decades of last
century, when mainly anthropology and sociology put the spotlight
on the importance of cultural contextualization and its relation to the
political, economic and social domains. I.e., the new approaches
interfere in the “loss of innocence” of the rites as the expression of a
vital, primitive and immobile culture, shifting the gaze to the power
structure that influences and guides their functions, organising the
representations and practices of the social actors. This means that
the rites, as claimed by Van Gennep (1977), regulate and constrain
the individual on the basis of a more general order, producer of
values and behaviours, through sequences and mechanisms that aim,
by conformation, at the preservation of the positions of individuals in
the social hierarchy.
This approach, which has its origin in dynamic sociology, recognises
the weight of structure (and of the dynamics that organize
themselves within it) on the actions of individuals, or rather, on the
embodiment of the “safety” mechanisms of the order, which
determine social identities. It is in this sense that the rites appear as
elements of social and cultural cohesion, allowing the integration and

23
recognition of each individual in the collective. The structuralists and
post-structuralists, such as Bourdieu (1989), are heirs to this
position. They see in the constituent dispositions of the habitus the
decisive elements of the identity construction and action of
individuals. Although Bourdieu has in his latest works moved from
an “aggressively” reproduction-based vision, as is the case of his work
about formal education, to a view centred on the resources that
individuals may manipulate to influence, adjust and change the
dispositions inherent in what is acquired and appropriated by them,
it is in the Weberian tradition that the weight of structure shifts to
the system of meanings that individuals ascribe to what is embodied
(evident in gestures and discourse), in their search for recognition by
others.
While individual identities acquire meaning in their relation to the
collective identity, it is important, and even more so in the case of our
study, to understand how individual identities are constructed
through overtures to and/or ruptures with the collective, and how the
ephemeral and transitory character of these identities is influencing
the cultural order, whether by the inclusion of new elements or by a
change of the meanings that are given to the old elements.
On the other hand, the approach in the writings of Foucault
regarding the disciplinary power that is exerted on the body, shaping
it through the embodiment of a dominant normativity, made an
important contribution to highlighting the importance of sexuality as
a battleground, where the elaboration of the naturalization of
subordination is constructed and where inequalities are affirmed, not
only between women and men, but also between those women and
men who are located at the margins of what is socially accepted.
Foucault’s suggestion, as well as that of Derrida and Butler, while
respecting the differences existing between these authors,
presupposes viewing discourses as cultural products, but also as
producers of the legitimation of the patriarchal order, of a matrix that
restores gender hierarchy based on male power. In this sense it is
fundamental to identify the mechanisms that enable the
establishment of gender inequality as a truth.

24
However, and though many studies (Martinez, 1989; Braço; 2008;
Bagnol, 2011) conducted in Mozambique, and not only there, have
produced remarkable analytical work about rites as a cultural
institution, with many references to the construction of manhood
and womanhood, the question of the essentialization of the difference
producing inequality between men and women is only touched upon
superficially. Though the reasons may be found in the authors’ need
to describe the realities found ethnographically, without entering into
fields playing with the power structure and with social gender
relations, it is also true that only at the end of last century the first
studies appeared that introduce a methodological approach which,
analysing the rites on the basis of a system of distinctions, allows an
understanding of the gender order, necessary condition of its efficacy
(Peirano, 2003).
This research about initiation rites results in the first place from a
study conducted before about juvenile identities (Osório and Silva,
2008), in which the discourses of girls and boys took us
systematically, whenever we were dealing with the construction of
womanhood and manhood, to the importance of the contents of the
teachings of the rites, maintaining in most cases the same attributes
that classified and hierarchized social roles, legitimating the
naturalization of inequality based on anatomical differences.1 This
situation was all the more interesting to analyse, as the target group
(girls and boys who attended the 1st level of Secondary Education)
were at a point in which it was not obvious that the values acquired
would continue to be considered decisive in the organisation of their
representations and practices. As an instance of socialization, the
rites make the silence audible that traverse the teachings of the “use”
of the body in the family, whether through the meanings that are
given to the sexual division of labour, or through the “mute”
prohibitions and taboos that format gender identities and, within

1 However, in the discourse of many girls important changes regarding the classical
model of domination were also noticed: the number of children they would like to
have was much smaller than what was expected (and what common sense
considered certain), while they indicated schooling and the practice of a profession
as their main future prospects.
25
these, sexual identities. In the same way, as the rites are of initiation,
they initiate the youth at a stage of their life cycle, i.e., into the world
of the adults, with a socially determined and accepted order and
hierarchy. Thus, the rites, which were not dealt with in the above-
mentioned study, are a subject to be explored further.
On the other hand, and in the second place, it was to be expected in
the Mozambican context that the initiation rituals would have been
object of readjustments and even possible ruptures of the teaching
mechanisms, since, in the course of the last 50 years, at political,
economic and social changes have occurred, to which the civil war
and the change of the political regime are not extraneous,
determining the disruption/recomposition of the institutions, such as
the family while in a more or less accelerated way the elements of
modernity were changing (in conflict or not) the previously existing
senses of belonging.
Thus, according to some studies, in many regions of the country the
rites were either no longer performed as in times past, or they were
very simplified, there being however attempts to renew them,
whether through the introduction of sexual/reproductive health-
related questions, or by scheduling them outside the school calendar
(Bonnet, 2002). There are indications that in some regions the rites,
as they had been designed traditionally, are being replaced by
ceremonies conducted in churches (Martinez, 1989). The duration of
the rites can vary a lot from one region to another, from one
ethnolinguistic group to another, while in the financially better off
families, longer and more strongly “traditionalized”, rites are
performed, in the belief that, in so doing, they become more
authentic.2 At the same time, professionalization of the “masters” and
“matrons” is observed, which conveys the idea of a certain
institutionalization which, while on the one hand legitimizing the

2 During the fieldwork it was also observed that the larger number of days used for
the rites and the extreme formality of the aggregation phase corresponds to an
affirmation of the social status of the families, many of whom already completely
urbanized. As we will refer to in the course of the study, this situation is apparently
related to the manipulation of culture to which the new political and economic
elites resort to affirm themselves.
26
contents and means of socialization that are part of the rites, on the
other hand gives visibility to the ambiguous and indistinct relation
with the knowledge acquired in other spaces, such as the school. In
other words, the neutrality and universality of school knowledge and
the de-hierarchization in terms of gender, which the school
transmits, are confronted with practices and knowledge based upon
an order and a hierarchy determined by sex and age (Osório and
Silva, 2008). This does not necessarily mean the abandonment of the
meanings given to the rites, but their “adaptation” to new contexts.
As example we mention two types of situations: the first one was
transmitted by informants working in State institutions, who
deconstruct the rites into two parts: one that provides “respect” for
the elderly, and that is strongly supported by the decision-making
bodies, and one that teaches about sex and that is either contested or
object of “intervention”, as happens with the discourse of HIV and
AIDS.3 The other situation concerns the demystification with respect
to the invention of false stories (if a girl and a boy have sexual
intercourse very early, the next of kin may die or, in the case of boys,
the male sexual organ becomes “spoiled”), what makes the matrons
and masters to resort simultaneously to the negative relation
between the start of sex life and the continuation of studies, thus
establishing moral parameters for the practice of sexuality, while they
continue at the same time teaching the girls and boys that
masculinity and femininity are located in the power structure
(situated in the sexualized body), which cuts across the relations
between partners.
One of the major challenges of our study is precisely to understand
how, vis-à-vis the influence of new contexts, such as the school,
groups of friends, entertainment venues, music and the discourses
about the body, sexuality and human rights, produced in the official

3 Work has been done by health agents with the purpose of using new blades for each
circumcised boy. On the other hand, there is a lot of information ascribing to
circumcision the effect of eliminating the danger of HIV and AIDS contamination,
which has somehow been dangerous, given the way in which the information is
perceived by the populations. This means that circumcision is understood as a kind
of vaccine against HIV and AIDS, which leads to the discourse of the uselessness of
the use of condoms.
27
domain and in the “informality” of stories or in talks with their pairs,
girls and boys develop appropriation and renunciation mechanisms
of the knowledge transmitted in the rites and embody it in their
identities. This means to understand to what extent the
countervailing power strategies developed by girls and boys may
break with the hierarchized gender model, giving rise to de-
hierarchization or, on the contrary, recreate new models of
domination, which may eventually not be in agreement with the
socially expected behaviours as learned in the rites.
On the other hand, though the phenomenon of initiation rites occurs
both in urban and in rural environments, it is a challenge, from a
scientific research point of view, to establish a relation between these
rites and other social phenomena such as early marriages, unwanted
pregnancies and school dropouts. However, in academic and law
circles the question of the existence or not of a relation between
initiation rites, dropouts and early marriages is still not being
addressed, while these are one of Mozambique’s most urgent current
problems. In fact, data about the situation of girls and children
(UNICEF, 2010) suggest the existence of some convergence between
what is called traditions and cultural practices and gross school
attendance rates. Indeed, even recognizing some improvement in the
asymmetries between the school attendance rates of boys and girls, it
is clear that one of the biggest barriers for girls having access to and
stay at school are “tradition and culture”, in which the expression
“tradition and culture” is meant to refer to aspects that hinder or
make full access to the right to education impossible. In this sense,
though a necessary relation between early marriages of girls and
initiation rites is not established from the outset, there is a certain
consensus that these practices appear to have a negative influence on
the primary education attendance rates. In fact, according to some
surveys (UNICEF, 2010) early marriages are for example considered
being one of the factors “that are prejudicing not only access to
school, but also retention and the completion of levels of schooling,
mainly on the part of girls” (UNICEF, 2010: 21).
For example, the statistics relative to the education sector – an
important indicator to assess gender inequalities – indicate that
28
between 2003 and 2008 the net primary school attendance rate in
the country increased from 60% to 81%, while the net general
secondary education attendance rate increased from 8% to 20%,
which still is significant, if we consider what this fact represents in
terms of losses between the two levels of education (MINED, 2010).
The structural problems of the national education system are,
without a doubt, a key factor of its inefficiency. However, the
available information indicates the existence of sociocultural barriers
which, in the specific case of girls, make that they face big difficulties
in their growth, which not only contributes to their low school
performance, but also contributes to discourage the continuation of
school attendance (UNDP, 2000). In fact, there are references to the
existence of tension between formal and traditional education,
comprising the latter a series of practices such as early marriages,
lobolo,4 initiation rites and so-called alternative teaching, especially
regarding Koranic studies (UNDP, 2000). For example, even in
places where initiation rites are not an institutionalized practice,
such as Matutuíne District, available data indicate that in that area
the enrolment rate for girls is low (43.5%), particularly for the more
advanced years.5 A report about women’s human rights indicates that
“the low enrolment rate on the part of girls is also due to the fact that
they are at an early age obliged to take charge of household chores,
such as cooking, cleaning the house, fetching water, looking after the
young ones. In some areas many families don’t not even plan to
register a girl for school but do plan to send a boy to school. As
mentioned before, ‘marriage’ at an early age usually forces girls to
leave school” (International Federation for Human Rights, 2007:13).
Along the same lines, a diagnostic study conducted by the Ministry of
Education (MINED, 2005) indicates that the national education
system experiences a substantial loss of girls in the “transition from
Basic to Secondary Education”. During the year of the survey (2004)
it was established that the participation of girls in ESG was estimated

4 Matrimonial compensation common in the south of the country.

5 Government of Matutuíne District (2008). Plano Estratégico de Desenvolvimento
do Distrito de Matutuine. Bela Vista.
29
at 36%, against 42% in Primary Education (EP). In general, with the
exception of Maputo, the prevalence of big gender differences and a
lack of fairness were observed. The enrolment rate of girls (for each
1000 women) varied in this period from half to two thirds in relation
to the total enrolment rate. About 40% of the students in ESG-1 and
in ESG-2 were girls. However, in some provinces this proportion was
even smaller, reaching 20% in Niassa, against 63% in Maputo City.
Moreover, the study also established that the dropout rate of girls
was twice as high as that of boys, at both levels (MINED, 2005).
Having as target group girls and boys between 12 and 18 years
(subjected to the rites) attending grade 7 and as reference group
female and male teachers of the same level of education (also
ritualized), the research aimed at identifying the role of the rites in
shaping social identities, particularly sexual identities, and how the
“ritual education” may shift an interest in the school to marriage or to
work. As we will expand below, our approach is based on an analysis
of the material and symbolic mechanisms developed by the ritual
teachings and by the means used for their agency, seeking at the
same time to recognise signs of contestation that may enhance
changes in the embodiment and subjectivation processes. By taking
female and male teachers as reference group we intend to establish
by evidence the existence, or not, of differentiated normative patterns
in the construction of manhood and womanhood. As these ritualized
female and male adults have work and status, it was our intention to
understand how the activities they perform determine the
construction of predispositions that allow, or not, a questioning of
the importance of the rites for their recognition as women and men
and change or recompose the power that structures social gender
relations.
We also selected as reference groups traditional (and religious)
leaders, matrons and masters who direct the initiation rites and
public officers who work directly in State bodies with the youth and
with sexual and reproductive health. Our intention was to crosscheck
the information about the function, contents and means used in the
rites, so as to understand how the negotiations/alliances/conflicts are
played out, and which strategies are applied by the two orders of
30
power. In the same way we sought to identify through the interviews
of matrons and masters which differences exist between their “time”
and the current one, which solutions they find to replace old
knowledge (questioned by modernity), which elements still remain
crucial for the efficacy of the rites and also which perceptions (and
frustrations) they have with respect to the available processes, means
and (material and symbolic) resources.
We also interviewed members of civil society organisations who work
at local level with the youth and with sexual and reproductive health.
The objective of the inclusion of this group was to identify the
existence of strategies for the defence of sexual and reproductive
rights and their link with formal and traditional power bodies.
The first phase of the study occurred in 2011, in Maputo City and
Province, and the second phase in 2012, in Maputo, Zambézia, Cabo
Delgado and Sofala provinces, with a total of 244 interviews having
been conducted. Considering that 14 interviews were conducted of
focus groups, comprising 4 to 6 people, the total number of
interviewees goes up to 300.
Although the objectives of the research have been achieved, there
were some constraints which to a certain extent interfered in the
analysis.
One of the main constraints, occurring in all spatial units, was the
difficult access to information, mainly on the part of the health
sector, which did not have data regarding assisted institutional
deliveries compiled by age. On the other hand, though information
about school enrolment, pass and dropout rates, was available in the
provincial directorates of education, it was sometimes divergent from
the information given in the districts and schools. The absence of
these data limited the availability of reliable knowledge about
deliveries of adolescents, dropouts due to pregnancy and early
“marriages”.
Another problem consisted of attempts on the part of political power
bodies to control the traditional leaders and the masters and
matrons, mainly in Cabo Delgado, resulting in the production of an

31
ambiguous discourse, varying between the politically correct and
frustration about interference which they felt being victim of. This
problem was subsequently solved with the use of informal sources,
which allowed interviewing matrons and masters more removed
from the power bodies. However, the interviews of religious leaders
were hampered by the suspicion that the research team had been
“ordered” by the political power and by the existence of conflicts
within some of the religions, particularly the Islamic one (in Cabo
Delgado), where we were not only facing social control over the
faithful, but, essentially, the pursuit of legitimacy conferred by the
political power.
Regarding the interviews with the youths, we had to deal with the
difficulty, already encountered in other studies, of the selection of
female and male interviewees, given that it has not been possible to
find mechanisms (though precise instructions had been given) that
would prevent school managements from interfering with the
selection of girl and boy students. This may have influenced the
discourses (though the key theme could anticipate this situation),
frequently interrupted by moments of silence, timidity and a few
tears. The way out of this kind of problems was to start with the
feelings of the girls and boys with respect to their life in the family, at
school and with friends, entering subsequently into the initiation
rites, seeking not to individualize the experience of the student.
Whenever felt useful, the female or male interviewer showed having
knowledge about the theme, namely the local name of plants used in
the rites. This allowed the girls and boys to become less inhibited and
made it possible to obtain valuable information. On the other hand,
and this situation was only observed in Cabo Delgado Province, all
girls and some of the boys did not speak Portuguese, so that the
support of translation was necessary. We think that many of the
difficulties encountered were not only related to poor knowledge of
the Portuguese language or with the proposed theme, but also to the
inadequate understanding of the questions, which once again brings
us back to how school teaching is being conducted, and to a very
authoritatively structured teacher-student relation.

32
The chapters in this book have been organised taking into account
the study object and particularly our intention to understand the
place of the rites in the construction of social identities, namely
sexual identities, and the power relations and strategies developed by
the powers in confrontation. We will therefore in the first part
discuss the conceptual tools, namely regarding the discussion about
the operationalization of the concept of culture, the relation between
power and culture and the theoretical conflict between tradition,
culture and modernity and, furthermore, the body ritualization
mechanisms and processes. In the second part we will analyse the
international and national instruments for the protection of human
rights of children and women and public policies, with special
relevance for gender policies in the education and health sectors. In
the third part we will analyse the rites as a means to maintain social
and cultural cohesion and we will also identify, in terms of political
action, how the various powers (State and “traditional” powers)
establish agreements and defuse conflicts. We will also discuss the
appropriation of meanings by the various agents (the signifier-
signified relation), taking into account the gender relations. In the
fourth part we will identify the mechanisms and processes used by
the rites to shape manhood and womanhood, recognizing the
markers that “organize” female and male sexuality and the
appropriations which girls and boys make of them in the
construction of representations and practices about sexuality,
analysing as well the conflicts between the different teachings (and
spaces) about masculinity and femininity and the discourses about
human rights.

33
34
Chapter I - Theoretical Dilemmas,
Dimensions of Analysis and Sample
The studies about initiation rites conducted in Mozambique have a
diversified approach, depending not only on the political contexts in
which they were conducted, but also on the preferred theoretical
frameworks.

1. Culture and sexuality

The theoretical and methodological concerns were gradually

identified during the performance of the pilot study. They also
resulted from the fieldwork in the spatial units, in which the concept
of culture, the many possible approaches to be adopted and the
question of the ritualization of the body, were key concerns. These
notions defined in the framework of the research have guided the
analysis of the discourses and were confronted with the narratives of
the female and male interviewees.
However, it is noted that research about initiation rituals, as an
instance of socialization, has preferred a descriptive cultural
approach, dissociating itself from social factors that would allow to
emphasize contexts and understand the internal and external
dynamics which, acting on the rites, add or remove functions from
them that restructure the hierarchies and employ differentiated ways
and forms of shaping them. Isolating realities in a cocoon merely
characterised by stability and doing without the crosscutting view
offered by the application of a conceptual framework that enables
analysis, the knowledge obtained is only informed by common sense
(even when it appears in the guise of erudition), producing partial
and parcelled knowledge, apparently objective, but marked by the
beliefs and convictions comprising the ideological system.

35
This methodological isolationism in the treatment of cultural
operators presents difficulties, when one intends, as is the case, to
identify the factors that constrain the action of individuals, whether
those performing functions in State bodies or those directing and
determining the ritual functions, or even the girls and boys who
subject themselves to and acquire the teachings transmitted in the
rites.
This theoretical question obliges us to revisit the concept of culture
and its operationalization, so as to clarify our choices in the
treatment of the initiation rites. We should however take note of the
difficulties of rendering the concept objective and thus of the
impossibility to make it uniform, and of its dependence on the
various fields of the social sciences. The approaches we have selected
have more to do with methodological questions raised by their
application and with the dialogue and discussion between the various
currents than with a concern of the various disciplines to historize
culture and with the attempts of co-option for only one specific field
of knowledge. From this point of view and as we consider them
already sufficiently questioned, we would like to make it clear that we
will not enlarge on the essentialist and positivist currents, though
they sometimes still constitute resources that are used to naturalize a
tradition that is considered the essence of the “original culture”.
Whenever deemed opportune, this discussion will be exemplified and
clarified by those cultural factors and phenomena which, intervening
in shaping the rites, help us to understand the theoretical options.
Concerning the ritualization of the body and as we will do with
respect to the concept of culture, our objective is to enter into a
dialogue with the different positions which discuss in the theoretical
and methodological field the relation between the functions of the
rites and their social utility as element of identity cohesion.
As we will have the opportunity to present, when dealing with this
theme we will seek to confront the approaches that take collective
identities as fixed and unchanging, opposing then with a perspective
that emphasizes the ephemeral and “in transit” character of
individual identities. The identification of the processes of

36
subjectivation and of the mechanisms of appropriation of the
elements which, in the various spaces give meaning to girls and boys
(and also to adult women and men), will allow an understanding of
the multiple meanings ascribed to the teachings transmitted during
the initiation rites and of how they are embodied in representations
and practices.
In the context of this study, our main concern was to understand how
the marks are established on the body which project it as the locus of
production and reproduction of the political, social and cultural
order, recognizing the mechanisms that transform it in a field of
revelation and support of powers, mainly the power establishing
social gender relations.
For this reason, special importance was given to sexuality, to the
resources made available for its practice and to the different
possibilities of expression constructed in the interstices prescribed
and permitted by the power structure, which may be subject to
readjustments and ruptures with expected sexual identities (through
the embodiment of new dispositions).

2. Culture: a dimension of the social order

The functionalist school, in all its diversity, can be considered to have

established itself as decisive for the operationalization of the concept
of culture by seeking a generalization characterized by the search for
general laws through cultural phenomena that perform a function,
thus contributing to the internal cohesion of a system of values and
beliefs evident in the behaviour of individuals. This static view of
culture, defended by Malinowski (1975), heir to the Newtonian
mechanics, excluding the notion of conflict and subjectivation,
conceives culture as a prescriptive whole which, producing and
enforcing norms, hegemonizes individual behaviours.
Borrowing from the natural sciences, Malinowski (1975) argues that
culture, existing as a response to people’s needs, is a harmonious
whole, dissociated from all dynamics that make it a phenomenon in
permanent renewal. Malinowski’s suggestion presupposes a

37
deterministic vision (and above all essentialist in its content and
functionality) in which culture is taken as an interaction between the
evolution of biological needs and the production of ways of thinking
and behaving with the function of integration, cooperation and
maintenance by distinction from other cultures.
Also in the framework of the (structural) functionalist theory,
Parsons (1967) analyses in his work culture as an autonomous
system, separating and antagonizing what he categorizes as
traditional culture and modern culture. Although different from
Malinowski, Parsons also reduces the plurality and differentiation to
their capacity of integration in the system as a whole (Leite, 1998),
i.e., each element contributes to the cohesion of the structure. This
presents problems in the analysis when, in contexts of change, new
cultural markers questioning the system are not assimilated by it.
However, Parsons (1967) analyses in his work culture as a subsystem
of significant symbols for its agents, mediated by institutions that
aim at cooperation and integration. In this sense, culture is seen as a
subsystem of the general system of social action, comprising common
values and patterns for the actors which thus guide their behaviours.
This means that the function of the dispositions of each individual
and her/his action is always the sharing of values, conditioning the
autonomy of the individuals to a common cultural pattern (Ribeiro,
2006). Influenced by Durkheim,6 Parsons invokes the principles of
solidarity that categorize social organisations, contrasting their
absence as an anomy. This also means that the cultural embodiment
produces mechanisms to control deviations, strengthening the
actions of belonging through symbolic elements recognized by the
actors in interaction. The stability and the imperative role which
Parsons ascribes to the cultural system, conditioning and
constraining social actions, dislocate the power structure and the

6 Durkheim breaks with the evolutionist and hierarchical idea of culture to defend
an idea of culture as a system constraining ways of thinking and living and which
was transcendent to individuals. Concerned about understanding the phenomena
conferring social cohesion, as in the study he conducted about suicide, Durkheim
emphasized elements of specific contexts to explain the practices of actors.
38
transitory character of the social order from an interpretation of the
cultural reality (France, 2009).
Emphasizing the normative function of institutions, Parsons (1967)
disregards the factors of change and actions of actors which
change/influence institutional practices. It is the case, for example in
Mozambique, of the accommodation of institutions, such as
education and health, which perform “adjustments” to reconcile
excluding cultural practices in the framework of public policies that
are meant to be global. The question becomes all the more
ambiguous as the institutional discourses adjust the norms in the
context of for example the initiation rites, to the representations and
practices of the actors placed in dominant positions in the power
structure. In this sense, Garfinkel (1992) analyses the negotiated
adjustment of the rules by the agents on the basis of power relations
that are developed in specific contexts. This means that, while for
Parsons the actions of individuals are determined by normative
patterns that control the reproduction of the order, for Garfinkel “the
actions of the agents are rooted in practice and in common sense in
differentiated cultural contexts” (1992:15). This position defends the
methodological need to take into account the struggles, conflicts and
negotiations by the agents who, acting in specific contexts, produce
adjustments/restructuring of the social order and of culture as a
dimension of this social order.
As Giddens states, “contexts form action scenarios and agents usually
resort to their qualities as a guide for what to do and what to say to
each other” (1996:309). This means that in order to understand
cultural realities, recognising which value systems and beliefs
condition individual practices is as important as the attributes that
organize the individuals’ representations with respect to themselves
and to others. In this perspective, it is important to identify how the
recognisable elements of group belonging are constituted, through
intersubjective processes and by means of a language revealing
meanings (Habermas, 1987). Through their discourses individuals
refer to social practices and representations that make products out
of them of the same experience, simultaneously reflecting the
appropriations embodied by the individuals.
39
From this point of view, the understanding of culture leads us to an
analysis of the discourse relative to the rites and to the meanings they
assume for individuals, to the choices relative to what is more or less
important to mention, taking into account the interlocutors and the
spaces in which the discourses are produced. In this sense, it was
interesting, and contrary to male discourse, to observe the lack of
importance conveyed by girls to learning about sexuality in a ritual
(and also school) context. It was however profoundly present in their
answers to questions regarding the body, in which their discourse
about sexual hygiene presented itself constructed on the basis of
attributes that characterise the practice of sexuality taking into
account male expectations.
So, what we also intend with this research is to understand how and
through which mechanisms, in contexts relative to concrete realities,
the conflicts/readjustments between the preservation of values and
practices and a social order are produced, creating change, not only
regarding alterations, often apparently formal, such as the time and
duration of the rites, but also with respect to the combination and/or
divergence between identity models, expressed in not only plural but
even antagonistic discourses, such as the discourse of equality and
the discourse of power hierarchies, social roles and functions based
on cultural immobility.7
Refusing the reductionist approach of culture (as is proposed by the
functionalists and the structuralists)8 to an epiphenomenon or to an
existing system in addition to the economic and social structures,
Bourdieu introduces the concept of habitus as the set of inherited
and acquired dispositions expressing the values and practices of a
given group, subject to strategies that allow to explain the

7 When we consider the duration and the time selected for the performance of the
rites as apparently formal mechanisms, we refer to the need to pay attention to the
importance these aspects can assume, mainly when these alterations correspond to
the introduction of values produced in other spaces, such as the school.
8 While for the functionalists each element contributes to the cohesion of the

structure, for the structuralists the focus of the analysis should be the structure and
the form, focusing on action, allowing the existence of regularities. Both
perspectives do without coordination and communication between the various
social, political and economic domains.
40
constitution, production and displacement of symbolic capital in a
process of circulation and exchange of goods. This perspective leads
us to two new elements: one concerning the cultural communication
and embodiment mechanisms and another one referring us to the
existence of a relative autonomy of the cultural domain (without
which there is no longer a link between the various domains) in
relation to the economic and social domains. It is this relative
autonomy which allows an analysis of the narratives and cultural
forms that contribute to the construction of collective identities and
to the recognition of the cultural traits becoming common legacy.
Regarding the initiation rites, we think that it is important to take
into account how and through which mechanisms they intervene in
the construction of group identities and how they relate
to/antagonize/readjust the objective, succeeding, or not, in
maintaining identity cohesion. It is equally relevant to identify how
formal power strategies act and are compatible with cultural
institutions, so as to preserve the social order, i.e., how the cohesion,
being constrained by the context, exposes itself to new elements that
may, or may not, be absorbed and integrated. The representations
and informed practices (and communicating with other domains of
the political field) allow an understanding of how the relations
between individuals are regulated and how power, structuring these
relations, classifies, categorizes, selects and predicts what dominates.
For example, in the case of the matrons and masters who direct the
rites, it is interesting to understand the factors, how control
of/contact with formal State authorities and/or increased access of
girls and boys to school have produced changes in the course of time
in their sources of legitimation, both resorting to the discourse of
ethnic identity affirmation and establishing alliances, though
informal ones, with religion, situating themselves and seeking to
mediate the governmental rights policies with the permanence of
markers, such as, for example, those of gender. A particularly
interesting situation is that regarding “respect”, in the discourse of
people considered being one of the elements shaping juvenile
identities, and appearing with multiple meanings in the discourses
marked by the tension between an abstract notion of respect for “all”

41
and for “the elderly” and a notion materialized in the gender
structure, i.e., for boys it has a meaning of providing for his family
and for girls it means to obey and serve her husband and his family.
This question is directly related to the preservation of the rites as a
cultural institution, to the powers it mobilizes, to the teachings that
one intends to preserve and to the mechanisms that regulate
expectations. The question of normativity is one of the most widely
studied and most controversial objects, fundamentally opposing the
Weberian perspective, in which the actor directs her/his actions on
the basis of what is expected by others, referring to a common frame
of reference, and the Durkheimian approach in which the social fact
compels others to the adoption of the norm, while its embodiment in
behaviours results in varying degrees of the norm’s efficacy (Leite,
1998). If Weber is the precursor of the interactionist approach
insofar as he insists on individual interactions in a system of
communication whose variability is altered on the basis of contexts,
Parsons (1967), within the Durkheimian perspective, reduces the
autonomy of the individual in contesting the norm, due to constraints
that are decisive for action. Merton (1970) seeks to solve this
problem, distinguishing the individual’s belonging group, which
functions as the principle of primary socialization, and the
individual’s reference groups, which allows them, through
assimilation/combination/rejection, to compose social roles offering
them recognition in different contexts.
In the discourse of the norm, consolidated in the ritual mechanisms,
we are observing two movements: one, of adherence, as a fatalistic
need for integration and recognition, and another, of contestation,
expressed by the rejection of participation in the rites or by the
representation of the norm as violent. In all spatial units we noted
the emphasis in the discourse of girls and boys on physical evidence
and on the necessary corporal punishments to destroy their
individual identity and to construct solidarity on the basis of shared
experiences. The inflicted pains are not only meant to produce
unquestionable behaviours, but also to attribute a sacrificial
character to the pains, thus transforming the punishments into an
imperative for coming of age and for group recognition. However,
42
and by virtue of the school context and of the discourse of rights, the
punishments and physical violence to which the children are
subjected during the rites begin to be contested by the various parties
involved, mainly the girls and boys themselves and State sectors such
as Education and Health. Now, this rejection of the punitive actions
during the rituals removes one of the essential markers for the
fulfilment of their function: to define hierarchies and to determine
the order, through a learning process not implemented by
explanation and free adherence, but by violent coercion.
In this study we have sought to identify which meaning the various
parties involved give to the ritual ceremonies and objects and
learning pedagogies, how this learning is constituted into a norm
referenced to hierarchization and differentiation, on the basis of sex
and age. Or, the practices may on the contrary be of a merely
performative nature, implying or possibly implying a rupture with
the norm. In this sense, what we also seek, on the basis of what was
said before, is to recognise how the conflicts between discourses (and
within the same discourse) may represent negotiation strategies
which, acting on the power structure, change or remove the
traditional sources of legitimacy. By this we want to say, for example,
that the matrons and masters resort to the public discourse of giving
value to the school, to the fight against HIV and AIDS and against
early pregnancy, i.e., they ambiguously way play with what are
considered elements of modernity, moving back and forth between
the preservation of “traditional” culture and the inclusion of more or
less formal “reforming” elements of the social roles. This situation
lays bare the negotiation/concession/resistance strategies between
the various powers and how they use the order of the discourse to
conquer new spaces of affirmation and legitimation.
In his study about culture, Geertz sees it as “an intertwined system of
interpretable symbols” (1989a:24). I.e., focusing on the
interpretation of the meanings which individuals ascribe to their
values, with, as stated by Gonçalves (2010) “the symbolic explanation
of social action being fundamental, in the absence of social action
without meaning” (2010:69), somehow underestimates the practices
and representations that on the one hand prompt us for an
43
understanding of the complexity of social relations with their power
networks, and on the other hand for the possibility of individuation.
Geertz (1989a) saw culture as constraining action, controlling
behaviour, and thus presupposed that all change in the political,
social and economic fields represented a confrontation between
tradition, which was seen as consistent with the social structure, and
modernity, as opposition to culture.
Geertz’s critics argue that he ends up attaching an all-encompassing
status to culture, explaining once and for all human action through
the system of symbols, isolating it from the elements which in the
various fields of the order may shake it, thus maintaining a static
view of culture.
In other words, if it is important, as Geertz (1989a) says, to study
culture from an analysis of the concrete mechanisms (symbolic
“artefacts” which people receive from tradition and transmit)
controlling behaviours, the study about rites showed the need to take
into account the individual’s “vanishing points” of these mechanisms
and the contexts allowing them to be seen not only as
producers/reproducers of culture, but also as producers of ruptures,
as is the above-mentioned example about respect that can be
manipulated and be used to invert the dominant order.9 Or also,
when girls reject or manipulate the lengthening of their labia minora,
in a strategy expressing the appropriation of knowledge, with a
purpose contrary to the one given to it. Thus, we consider the
theoretical proposal of Geertz restrictive, insofar as culture is also
taken as a whole (in spite of his criticism of Malinowski being in this
sense), constraining behaviours, rejecting individuation. Indeed,
though this author refers to individual ways of cultural inculcation
(and in this sense presupposes a relative autonomy to individuals
through intersubjective processes), his idea of individuality
presupposes a non-choice, thus excluding, as other authors do, the
social, political and economic contexts, rendering culture

9 Some of the female interviewees stated, possibly due to contamination with the
public discourse of rights that, contrary to the discourse transmitted in the rites,
respect means having rights, whether the right to work or the right to practice sex.
44
impenetrable to the economic, political and cultural structures. There
remains thus somehow an essentialist vision, in which social action
and its dynamics continue being subordinated to cultural
mechanisms which, despite the differences of individual
appropriation, are restrained by a notion rejecting the internal
mutability of cultural institutions.
Contradicting Geertz, Habermas (1987) defends the legitimacy of the
norm through intersubjective processes, without domination of the
normative patterns of a group. What Geertz in fact suggests, when
eliding the questions of mobility, “detraditionalization” and
dissemination, is to transform culture into an imposition that is
external to the individual and, thus, denying the possibility of action.
It is in this sense that the author states that “if it were not guided by
cultural structures – by organised systems of significant symbols –
the behaviour of individuals would be virtually ungovernable, it
would be pure chaos (…) culture, the accumulated whole isn’t merely
a decoration of human existence, but an essential condition of this
existence” (1989b: 50). Though it is necessary to pay attention to the
major contribution given by Geertz to the analysis of cultural
phenomena, namely in the operationalization he makes in the
deconstruction of beliefs and acts, favouring the meaning given to it
by individuals (it is less important to define what marriage is and
more important to know what corresponds to getting married), this
author does not attach any importance to cultural plasticity and to
the issues of dissemination and interculturality. On the other hand,
while the cultural system can impose assimilation and integration,
through its embodiment in the practices of normative patterns that
control deviations and strengthen acts of belonging, it is necessary,
we repeat, to take into account the mobility and dynamics leading to
the conflict between norms and to the production, though often
invisible, of alterations that are not settled by readjustments and
adaptations of the cultural model to social, political and economic
realities in transformation. It is the case, for example, of the
cohabitation of youths (even after having passed through initiation
rites) outside family control. I.e., the myths transmitted by the
matrons and masters that precocious sexual initiation may cause

45
death, thus clashing with school education, decrease the normative
power of the rites and can influence the development of strategies of
individuation. This question will be resumed later, when we will deal
with the functions of the rites and the mechanisms used by them to
shape identities.
In the same way, and considering how culture, while bringing about
political practices, is a battleground and an arena of confrontation in
which individuals, while simultaneously revealing “conformation”
with what is expected from them, develop strategies of contestation,
the constructionist approach of culture emphasizes the production of
senses and meanings and a discursive language, and how this
language interweaves with power relations. The representations
contained in the discourses give meaning to the person who
expresses them and through them intends to situate her/himself in
relation to the self and to others. This does not mean to perceive
culture as a mere process of embodiment as a reproduction of social
reality, but as a process where choices expressed in the discourses
intervene, which have to do with the context as the “field which
produces and modifies facts and events, as well as the field which
makes the appearance of facts and events possible” (Bernardes,
2004: 38). This suggestion used in the analysis of the initiation rites
allows us to understand how the initiated girls and boys learn what
they should do and how they can express this “doing” in order to be
individuals. I.e., the girls and boys embody cultural practices, which
allow them to situate themselves in a specific order of recognition,
simultaneously expressing confrontations and tensions existing in
the power relations. For example, when in the girls’ discourse about
othuna10 they say that this practice constitutes a form of construction
of the self and of identification with the others, they clearly refer to a
power that is exerted with the purpose of giving them new
competences, even if these competences subject them. But on the
other hand, when girls who are not subjected to initiation rites
lengthen their labia minora on their own initiative, the meaning they

10 Othuna means, in the Makhuwa and Makonde groups, lengthened labia minora,
usually called matuna. Among the Sena and Ndau groups this phenomenon is
called matinji.
46
ascribe to this practice must be understood on the basis of the public
discourse about sexual rights, i.e., the subjection mechanisms are
appropriated as a strategy of countervailing power, without however,
at least apparently, changing the model of domination.
What this example clearly shows is the impossibility to reduce the
meanings conferred by girls to cultural practices and to the
“satisfaction” of belonging to a group. We should instead seek to
understand how this recognition of “being a woman” is or isn’t
expressed in the exercise which uncovers the restriction of the right
to sexuality, i.e., the right to pleasure and to desire not resulting from
a hierarchization of rights.11 What this example also shows is that it is
necessary to identify the mechanisms that are used in the interstices
of the dominant model to seek to manipulate the constituent
elements of a subordinate condition, or also as a need for belonging
to the adopted group.12

2.1. Culture, culturalism and tradition

The current debate about culture calls into question culturalism

which, according to Sardan, takes the form of a “scientific ideology”,
(2010:20) used by those who base their analyses on immobility and
the impossibility of change. Referring specifically to the African
continent (the main “victim” of culturalist approaches), the author
questions the existence of an African culture which, anchored in the
past, projects into the present specificities which imply an all-
absorbing homogenization. In this sense, culture is perceived as
fixed, and the opposition to change expresses an attempt to distance
oneself from what is commonly called the rationality of the West. On
the other hand, in their eagerness to return dignity to African
cultures violated by the colonizers, the culturalists emphasize a

11 When female informants say that they sometimes experience pleasure in sexual
intercourse, they say this in a context in which they are not a subject of rights, but
as a result of an occasional reality (in which the man defines the rules of the sexual
game), which cannot be claimed as a right.
12 Some women, mainly in Sofala Province but native of the south of the country,

lengthened the labia minora in order to be accepted by their partner’s belonging

group.
47
standardizing and essentialist view, which is in line with the colonial
perspective of the production of stereotypes to characterise the
colonized and, consequently, resort to the same system of markedly
ideological explanations.
Sardan (2010) shows how culture, emphasizing an African
authenticity and purity, is a resource manipulated by the political
elites, as for example the justification of illicit enrichment and
patron-client networks, taking culture and its role in the construction
of an African identity as foundation. This culturalist vision, which
apparently emphasizes respect for African values, is based on
ideological suppositions that justify in one way or another the action
of political powers.
The conceptualization of culture and of a cultural analysis takes us
finally to three orders of problems: the first one has to do with
acculturation and with the principles of continuity and discontinuity
in the context of globalization; the second one has to do with cultural
relativism and multiculturalism and human rights; and the third one
is related to how culture, human rights and cultural rights interact,
conflict and struggle, both at theoretical level and at the level of
development policies.
The studies about culture, focusing on the search for aspects
considered “original” and founders of cohesion, have alienated
elements arising from contacts with other realities which, absorbed
by the people, gave rise to what some authors call the crossing of
cultures (Cuche, 2004). This situation refers specifically to African
peoples, where part of the cultural anthropology studies have ignored
changes occurred in how people think and live. The insistence on
searching for a distinct cultural identity leads to the restriction of the
analyses to the description of the cultural traits (which allows a
demonstration of originality), with the result that cultural systems
appear as fixed in immobility. Objecting to this position, Kuper
(2001) states that:
“cultural identity can never provide an adequate guide for life.
We all have multiple identities. Including that if I accept
having a primary cultural identity, I may not wish to resign to

48
 it. (…) If I had to see myself solely as a cultural being, I would
be left with little space to manoeuvre and to question the
world in which I find myself” (2001:283).
The eagerness to isolate what to researchers seems to be genuine and
characteristic of specific cultures has perverse effects on the scientific
validity of these studies. The systematic truncation of the realities
lived by these peoples in the contemporary world has not added
much to an understanding of the meanings given to their
representations and practices and to the context of their production.
The knowledge obtained is thus not only partial, but also misleading
from the point of view of how the internal and external dynamics of a
specific culture contribute to its preservation or, on the contrary, to
its adjustment or even rupture. Though ethnographic studies
somehow appear to provide valuable information about cultural
practices, we in fact note in some of them the absence of the social,
political and economic dimensions, which reduces their importance,
even if we only take into account their descriptive objective. It is very
insufficient, for example, to study the culture of the Makhuwa group,
identifying some cultural traits in it as being permanent and
essential, without taking into account the plurality of influences that
were exerted on it and admixed with it.13 Culture, as Merry (2003)
states, should be understood in its link with power relations and thus
enhancing change. In this sense, the author separates culture from
tradition, given that the former, contrary to the latter (which we will
discuss in more detail below), is continuously remade and
modernized.
The question of acculturation, which can be defined as the result of
the changes produced by long-lasting contact between various
cultures, implies a continuous embodiment of new elements, of
resistance and of transformation of these contents, taking into

13 Objecting to these “fixed” positions, it is important to emphasize, in addition to

others, the research conducted by E. Medeiros (1995) regarding the Makhuwa
culture, by A. Braço (2008) regarding the Sena culture, and by F. Fernando (2005)
regarding the Ndau culture, as exemplary in the construction of interpretation
systems that have as background the specific production and reproduction
contexts of the initiation rites as a cultural institution.
49
account the greater or smaller permeability to cultural
interpenetration.14 From a methodological point of view, a cultural
analysis should pass through an understanding of the elements (why
were these and not others acquired), of the mechanisms through
which acculturation is produced and, as Herskovits (1952) states, as
cited by Cuche (2004),15 through the recognition of how new values
change the cultural meaning or, on the contrary, how old meanings
are given to new elements. Authors such as Sahlins (1997) argue
along the same lines, mainly in the analysis of the symbolic systems
and of the meanings that are given to new objects, when it comes to
the flowering of the culture through the introduction of new goods.
In the case of our study, we managed to establish, for example, how
the religious action of the catholic missions, though seeking to
preserve the structure of the rites, has, through the introduction of
the Christian morality, influenced the meanings that are given to the
teachings of sexuality. The research concluded that old elements
which would culminate the initiation rites, namely sexual intercourse
of the children, were replaced by teachings about how to “use” the
body. In the same way, a religious character was lent to the
aggregation ceremonies (with the performance of processions,
accompanied by ceremonies performed in places of worship), and a
modern character (with the girls using clothes and wigs), thus
adjusting, integrating and harmonizing old and new meanings. On
the other hand, meanings are given to old practices, which remain
current from the appropriation of modern knowledge, thus providing
new sources of legitimation. For example, that the lengthening of the
labia minora helps to hold urine. I.e., while the othuna serve to give
pleasure to the man, they also and furthermore serve, according to
the images borrowed (reinterpreted) from a certain “medical”

14 It is important not to confuse acculturation with assimilation, which implies the

annulment of the cultural identity of a people through the imposition of another.
The assimilation process, which contains profound inequalities expressed in the
Portuguese colonial policy, was based on the submission of the dominated group
and the superiority of the dominant culture, producing among the dominated
group mechanisms of rejection of their own culture and also mechanisms of
resistance.
15 J. Herskovits (1952). Les Bases de l’anthropologie culturelle. Paris: Payot.

50
discourse, to maintain hygiene. A similar situation can be found in
the justification of circumcision which, in the central and northern
zones of the country, gives meaning to what it is to be a man
(requiring specific ceremonies that are not limited to the act itself)
and which today appears introduced in the cultural and medical
discourse, as serving as protection against HIV contaminations and
AIDS.
This means that culture and how it is expressed in representations
and practices should take into account the contexts in which social
relations are developed, the possibilities and strategies of negotiation
to preserve or change a specific social order. Acculturation, or as
Bastide (1960) calls it, the interpenetration of cultures, must also be
understood as a form of resistance to preserve the cohesion of the
communities, particularly in the case of Mozambique, which in few
decades has experienced profound alterations in the political and
economic system (and moreover a civil war), producing, at all levels,
very serious disturbances.
When Mozambique becomes independent and a system is
established which considers the traditional structures harmful to the
construction of equality, referring them to clandestineness or, when
the democratic system was established and more recently culture
became a recourse used by the political power to reinstitute power
hierarchies and to legitimate forms of domination, the cultural
institutions, such as the initiation rites, were losing and/or adapting
old meanings or gaining new meanings. When we observe today how
the bridges between the traditional authorities and those of the State
are maintained, finding mechanisms of mutual legitimation, seeking
to control the role and function of the masters and matrons, losing
ritual secrecy and the power it had in the past16 and making public
knowledge reserved to only a few, we observe necessarily the
embodiment of new elements and ways of performance which, with
or without calling into question the aims of the initiation rites,

16 For the interviewees the past means the years 40, 50, 60 and the beginning of the
70s.
51
enhance their readjustment.17 A clear example is the fact that in some
places, particularly in Sofala Province, the girls and boys are
individually initiated at home or in rooms next to their houses,
during an extremely short period. That is, in the absence of a group,
with everything involving the performance of coming of age
ceremonies, the sharing of values and the creation of bonds of
solidarity, dramatizations about the childhood world and the
inclusion into adulthood, the rites become more a phenomenon of
social recognition than of cultural cohesion.18 The same can be said
when we observe that today the rites are paid in amounts that vary
according to the possibilities of the families and that in the case of
families with greater wealth the aggregation ceremonies are a show
of wealth and of social differentiation. On the other hand, as we
pointed out above, it is worthwhile to take into account the
importance of the mechanisms of appropriation of the individuals,
moving and staying in different spaces, in conformity with existing
expectations: young students who reproduce in their areas of origin
ways of behaviour and worship (as those of their ancestors) and who,
simultaneously, adopt other mechanisms of recognition in the
presence of their pairs, when they are at school, in spaces of
entertainment or at work.
The intersubjectivities reflected in the discourses, by tensions and by
how the agents organize their representations and the meanings they
ascribe to their practices, show how culture should be understood
through processes of composition, recomposition, structuring and
disruption. This means that “culture is a more or less (but never
completely) homogeneous dynamic whole” (Cuche, 2004:74),

17 When the observance of rites can be “bought” and the rites become visible
(sometimes depending on small ceremonies to which the observers have to subject
themselves), the influence of the social, economic and political contexts in the
readjustments to which they were subjected becomes evident. Readjustments that
can be expressed in a granted re-adaptation of new elements to old cultural forms
or resistance, for the preservation of old cultural forms.
18 While both cultural cohesion and social recognition point out a belonging and

sharing of meanings, the difference to which we refer has to do with the fact that in
the social recognition we find elements which escape from a more restrictive field
of culture and are part of modernity.
52
however allowing, by the more or less coherent way in which its
elements appear, the development of individual strategies aimed at
the manipulation of culture by individuals. In other words, as argued
by Ortner (2006), it is necessary to observe the link between the
practices of social actors in concrete contexts and the coercive
structures (that can be understood as the Bourdieuian habitus)
exerted on these practices and which can be influenced by them.
When the lengthening of the vaginal lips is carried out by adult
women, aiming at seduction and control over the male body, it is
evident, resorting once again to Ortner, how residual hegemonies
and emergent hegemonies and the possibility of resistance on the
part of individuals are brought about. Culture is thus a battleground,
which should not only be perceived as a homogeneous collective, but
also as a place to which individuals can resort to contest or/and to
negotiate, projecting new meanings to cultural phenomena.
For the reasons indicated in this research we sought to avoid the
prejudice of pursuing cultural “purity”, which would take us to an
essentialist naturalization, as well as the prejudice of forcing the
existence of change. Our concern is to understand how and which
tensions, conflicts, ambiguities present in the discourses of our
interviewees are product of the internal and external dynamics of the
cultural field, providing mechanisms of cohesion allowing us to
understand the internal logic of the functioning of the cultures
studied.
The second order of problems has to do with the interrelated
questions of cultural relativism and multiculturalism. If cultural
relativism has its origin in the idea of culture as a whole (and also as
an autonomous phenomenon) that cannot be compared and
hierarchized in relation to other cultures, thus receiving recognition
as a principle which appears to refuse the evolutionist approach in
the tradition of American anthropology, the fact is that relativism,
when defending a pure, original and unique position of culture,
implies a reductionist and diminished perspective of it. For that
matter, Kuper (2001), building on his experience of life in the context
of apartheid, criticises the approach which reasserts differences,
considering them unchanging and distinctive, for the simple
53
assertion that a difference will always inexorably be a difference. By
overrating differences we are excluding the capacity for inclusion and
adjustment, for example, of rural populations who, when moving to
urban areas, acquire the routines and lifestyles of their new contexts,
inevitably influencing their relation to the culture of origin. As Kuper
states:
“unless we can separate the various agglutinated processes,
under the heading of culture. And unless, after doing so, we
observe the existence of other processes in addition to the
cultural field, unless we do all this, we will make little
headway in the understanding of what we continue calling
culture” (2001: 282, 283).
The ethical principle which ascribes equal value to all cultures has
been corrupted and used to justify and tolerate the continuation of
inequality, resorting to the difference and to respect for the
difference to alienate communities, mainly in Africa, from claims for
human rights. As Geza Roheim states (as quoted by Cuche,
2004:145): “you are completely different from me but I forgive you”.
In this line, Marcus and Fischer (1986), entering the debate about a
notion of culture as ideology, criticise the multiculturalist impasse
which, on the basis of difference and tolerance, falls into cultural
relativism that serves as argument for the violation of human rights,
and defend culture as a historical construction subject to successive
manipulations and new meanings.
This idea that culture and human rights belong to opposite fields,
rendering the link between these two premises impossible (given that
culture is “universal, total and unique”, subjecting the rights to this
“pure and original” world), is one of the ideological foundations (also
acquired by a certain vision of ethnography) of cultural relativism.
The notion of modernity and particularly the question of human
rights are excluded both in the discourse of common sense and in the
more elaborate discourse produced by social scientists. As Sardan
(2010) states, the past and traditions, perceived in a mythical frame
the decisive aspect of which is its absence of clarification, grant the
culturalists (with their ahistorical approach of cultural realities)

54
authority in the interpretation of the present. Part of the
ethnographic scientific discourse, staying away from an analysis of
contexts and power structures and favouring a synchronic approach
(also not taking into account change and conflicts existing in this
past), legitimizes the subordination of new cultural realities to a
decisive immobility. In the same study, Sardan adds to this criticism
of a partial approach of culture, the elimination (by some scholars) of
the different “pasts” (pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial) and the
entire body of influences which shapes, constrains and reorganizes
tradition. Borrowing from some erudition in an attempt to find
African purity and authenticity, what we observe in these approaches
is the assumption, in scientific clothes, of a dispersed and partial
common sense and of a stereotyped construction.
The position taken by Sardan (2010) fits in with the study about
initiation rites in Mozambique and with the need to understand the
confrontations and the recomposition/readjustment strategies,
allowing a rupture with the analytical impasses in the explanation of
how practices naturalized by the culturalists are today confronted
with new motivations and expectations. Considering, for example,
female initiation rites as spaces of freedom, leaving out the
subjugation and subordination they transmit, expressed in school
abandonment and early marriages, means to conceive the
Mozambican cultural reality outside the possibility of change,
excluding the parties involved, particularly the youth of both sexes,
from active, fluid and ephemeral identity construction.
Taking culture as an “essence”, granting it moral superiority (above
and beyond individuals) and not as a construction which
hierarchizes, granting some people more rights than others, we
exclude some of the fundamental questions centred on the
recognition and identification of which are and to whom belong the
rights laid down by the rites and how these rights correspond to or
are in conflict with the public discourse of rights, the Law and public
policies based on the presupposition of the equality of all human
beings.

55
Respect and cultural tolerance perceived as a fixed phenomenon,
dissociated from power relations, conflict and contestation,
legitimizes, after all, that girls who run away from the initiation rites
or reject early marriages may be called traitors of culture.19 The right
to culture has thus served to justify oppression and practices which
impede access to and the exercise of rights (Cowan, 2002). It is the
case, for example, of practices that promote the violent teaching of
girls of obedience and “service” to men, which are basic elements of
the initiation rites. Until today these practices remain hidden (or
neutralized) both in some ethnographic studies, within the same
perspective of cultural relativism (taken as methodological principle),
and as ideology. This invisibility of the power structure in cultural
institutions has also been preserved at the level of political power,
which needs, at a time of democratic deficit as is experienced today in
Mozambique, to manipulate culture in a strategy which is meant to
be one of inclusion, but which clearly turns out to be a form of
imposition of a cultural and political model which is also total and
totalitarian. This means, and it is not only the case of our country,
neither specifically of Africa, that we see today an
instrumentalization of culture by the power(s) to promote, according
to the political contexts, the difference, unity, the domination of one
group over another, and even to naturalize corruption with an
essentialist discourse of it being rooted in the networks of kinship.
Multiculturalism, such as the concept of cultural relativism, raises
problems from an approach and definition of public policies point of
view. Initially multiculturalism can be considered the sharing of
spaces by groups with differentiated cultures, taking into account the
need to preserve the cultural diversity of each group, developing
positive affirmation policies that enable these groups to have access
to resources such as education and to participate in political
decision-making bodies.
However, the question becomes more complex when it is frequently
observed that the multicultural approach starts, as happen with

19 It is no coincidence that these situations of a break with a cultural model excluding

girls from rights are not disseminated or studied.
56
cultural relativism, from the existence of cultural patterns
characterised by immobility and by the preservation of the purity of
the culture of origin. In this perspective, not taking into account the
embodiment of other elements that can renew culture(s) “impedes”
in fact, mainly regarding the youth, a diversified appropriation of
elements comprising their identity, enabling them to situate
themselves and go around in different spaces, using a variety of
identification strategies. On the other hand, multiculturalism has
served to maintain and preserve power hierarchies organised in the
culture of “origin”: with the argument of cultural and religious
respect, a set of strategies is at this moment at stake in Mozambique
that aim at regaining ways of domination expressed for example in
the requirement to use an “Islamic headscarf” in public spaces such
as schools. What this in fact shows is an attempt to impose on a
secular State lifestyles conditioned by a religious power (manipulator
and holder of a legitimacy based on “knowing” and “interpreting”
what is sacred) which restricts access to human rights granted to all
male and female citizens of the country.
From this point of view, Regueira (2004) mentions the existence of a
conflict between tolerance for differences, which allows
individuation, and a multiculturalism isolating submission, which
the author considers a “cultural normality”. Multiculturalism starts
from an essentialist view which, highlighting the importance of
cultural differences, disregards tensions existing within the
collective. Thus, the “right to be different suppresses the right to
equality as citizens” (2004:3). If the multicultural presupposes the
preservation of the private as a field of diversity and the public as a
field of regulating differences, this means for example in the case of
the initiation rites, to “protect” cultural practices that produce fixed
identities legitimated by a sacralisation of the past (the frontiers of
which are unknown), while regulating mechanisms of social relations
in public spaces are delineated. From this premise the private is
legitimized as not producing the political, i.e., by seeking to
disconnect the two domains of life, the inequalities, whether of sex or
in other fields, are maintained as naturally invisible, in an attempt to
create a territorialized, fixed and homogeneous cultural identity. For

57
example, if we take into account the dominant discourse, access to
and the exercise of rights, particularly those of women, constructed
in the private domain, will remain subjected to a multiculturalist
approach which, supposedly respecting the difference, hinders the
internal dynamics mobilizing for change from being projected into
the public space. In this line, Merry (2002) states that having
recourse to the naturalization of the role of women in the context of
local cultures, vindicated by some States as unquestionable because
we are dealing with cultural identities to be preserved, constitutes a
real barrier to the appearance/visibility of ways of
contestation/resistance which, in these local cultures, develop in
favour of women’s human rights. In the same way, to impede that
cultural identities are elided (i.e., their disappearance and
domination by others), it is necessary to take into account the
specificities and the strategies of the struggle developed within
minority groups, so as to include them in the activism for universal
rights, as well as in the theoretical analysis of these cultural realities.
This question refers us once again to the definition of culture (as a
category of analysis) and non-cultures (such as beliefs and practices)
and their relation to power (Barreto, 2005). Thus, culture expressed
in practices and in discourses “naturalizes” power, showing the
mechanisms used to shape social action. Constructed on the basis of
oppositions and adjustments, it confers legitimacy to the
representations and practices of individuals. I.e., as stated before,
culture isn’t “natural”, it does not produce unchanging belongings of
individuals but on the contrary and as Barreto states “culture is a
simultaneous process of differences and identification, moveable,
contingent and always relative to whom and to what it is
differentiating itself, of what and for what it is identifying itself”
(2005:10).

2.2. Culture, ethnicity and human rights

Still with respect to this relation between multiculturalism and

cultural relativism, given the object of this study it is relevant to treat,

58
though briefly, the question of ethnicity and how this concept is used
in the study.
On the basis of research done in Nigeria, Cohen (1974) discusses the
question of the characterisation of ethnicity in contexts of modernity,
showing how old practices tend to persist, when the affirmation of
power and economic gains are at stake, emphasizing that “in new
contexts, customs assume new values and new meanings” (1974:96).
What is interesting about this author is a reasoning constructed
around intergroup interaction lines that can strengthen or, on the
contrary, inhibit primary forms of ethnic identification, which have
to be understood, for example, through the conditions (correlated to
the distribution of power) that are available to some groups to access,
more than others, economic and political resources. In this sense
mechanisms are developed that may or may not bring about new
ways of recognition and imposition which seek to distinguish,
aggregate and segregate, for example by resorting to a terminology
such as “our customs are different” (Cohen, 1974:98). Also for Barth
(1969), ethnicity should be understood on the basis of the
construction of differences and the recognition of a group in relation
to others. Breaking with the essentialist vision, this author defends
the non-fixing of ethnic identity and its permanent mobility on the
basis of historical contexts.
For Amselle (1985), an ethnic group represents a linguistic unit in a
context of mobility, of oppositions , but also of negotiations. In this
sense, one cannot speak of an ethnic identity but rather of
ethnolinguistic groups, showing how their constitution is brought
about through construction processes, resorting to one or more
elements which the groups claim as being fundamental for their
characterisation, for their distinction and classification. From this
point of view, having recourse to ethnicity may constitute a way to
legitimate superiority, to resist to a process of domination and
belonging, containing simultaneously an element of exclusion.
Although for many authors quoted by Amselle the criteria for the
definition of ethnicity “is to have a language, a space, customs,
values, a name, the actors’ same descent and consciousness of

59
belonging to the same group” (1985:18), ethnicity can nowadays be
considered part of a wider field with a shared religion, political
organisation forms and economic mobility, which precludes speaking
of an ethnic unit. Examples are the distinctions between inland
Makhuwas and coastal Makhuwas, or those also found in the Sena
group, who distinguish themselves not only in relation to other
ethnic groups, but within the same group, having distinctive signs to
impose themselves or to negotiate positions. When in Búzi Town,
people systematically said “here we are in the heartland of the
Ndaus”, they intended to assert themselves as the legitimate
representatives of the Ndau culture, i.e., those who hold the
knowledge inherited from the ancestors, and those who necessarily
have the power to determine the “authentically” Ndau forms of social
and political organisation and cultural practices.
Despite the fact that, as Amselle states, an ethnic unit does not exist,
the construction of stereotypes about others is one of the forms to
assert distinctions conveyed by common sense, for example the
classification of being “confused” and being “dangerous and
ignorant” attributed by the populations of the south to, respectively,
the Sena and Ndau peoples in the centre of the country and the
Makonde people in the north.
The assertion of identity and how it is expressed also depend on the
contexts in which the individual wants to be recognized. For example,
a Makhuwa may be interested to assert himself as such or only as a
Mozambican, when the distribution of positions of power and/or his
recognition of belonging is at stake. Therefore, as Cuche states when
referring to the difference between ethnocultural groups, it is less the
existing real difference than “the wish to differentiate oneself through
the use of certain cultural traits as markers of one’s specific identity”
(2004:113).
Although the ethnolinguistic characterisation is not an object of this
research, whenever required by the analysis in the identification of
the functions and mechanisms developed in the initiation rites in the
various spaces, we seek to differentiate the representations and
practices which we deem to be similar or, on the contrary, distinct.

60
Another order of problems has to do with cultural rights, i.e., how the
discussion about collective cultural rights versus individual rights as
expressed in the development policies is organised.
Although cultural rights are included in the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights (1948) and later in the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR, 1966) (the latter only
entering into force ten years after its adoption, ratification and
accession), it is observed that, contrary to civil and political rights for
which mechanisms were defined for monitoring compliance by the
States, only with the creation in 1985 of the Committee on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights, the function of which was to evaluate and
monitor the implementation of the dispositions, conditions were
created to monitor the application of the defined mechanisms in the
scope of the United Nations.
However, and due to the continual difficulties to clarify cultural
rights, only in 2002 the Human Rights Commission adopted a
resolution promoting the exercise of cultural rights.20 The main
arguments used to explain the difficulties to include cultural rights
(as a dimension of human rights, informing us about the diversity of
peoples’ thought, life and communication) are in the field of the
confrontation between the existence of cultural values and practices
violating human rights and the defence of these rights as universal
principles, applied to all human beings, irrespective of groups of
belonging. The fact that culture (the difficulty of using the concept)
and respect for culture can serve to relativize and violate human
rights, and the implications that State interference may bring for the
alteration or destabilization of the social structure, contribute to the
situation that even today cultural rights are perceived and applied in
very differentiated ways (UNDP, 2004). Allowing to be object of
political manipulation by the elites who provoke, to their own
advantage, regional/ethnic asymmetries, whether through the
distribution of resources such as schools and health units, or through

20 United Nations. Human Rights Commission (2002). “Promotion of the enjoyment

of the cultural rights of everyone and respect for distinct cultural identities”.
61
the distribution of investments, cultural rights and cultural freedom
may be converted into the domination of one group by another.
The question is, as somehow already mentioned above, the link with
cultural rights and human rights or, more precisely, which are the
conflicts and meeting points in the methodological treatment of
cultural rights. We emphasize two ways of conjugation: the first one
is based on an analysis of how human rights (expressed in the Law
and in public policies) are present or absent in cultural practices and
values. The second one takes culture as object, which means to
understand how ways of thinking and living are organised,
establishing relations between the various domains of life and how in
each one of them individuals take up a position and establish
relations with others (Merry, 2003).
One of the problems raised by the analysis of cultural rights versus
human rights is the question of cultural freedom, referred to both
with respect to the right of each individual to be allowed to speak
his/her own language and to practice his/her own religion, and with
respect to the right of the group to impose cultural values and
practices, possibly limiting individual freedom. This situation raises
another problem: if the cultural freedom concerns the collective,
should it be respected even if the power is based on gender iniquity?
Or if the freedom concerns the individual, does he/she have the
possibility, within the cultural model limiting his/her rights, to
contest and resist? Remember, for example, what is happening with
the decision of the Mozambican State (publicly stated by the Minister
of Justice, on 24 August 2012) to allow Muslim girls to use scarfs in
public schools: is this an affirmation of religious identity or, on the
contrary, an imposition on female children to use a garment which
makes them unrecognizable in front of their pairs? Or is the use of
the veil also, and mainly, a form of training and control over the
female body, in complete disagreement with the constitutional
principles of equality?
This fact highlights the relation between cultural diversity and
cultural identities: while cultural diversity implies the coexistence of
cultures with particular lifestyles, cultural identity (if we consider it

62
in the collective and the individual sense) refers to an identity which
may be multiple and plural, and the relation between the two is not
always peaceful, even more so if we take into account the exercise of
human rights.
As Touraine (1997) states, the question of cultural rights has mainly
to do with social inequality and with the possibility to articulate the
right to citizenship and to social inclusion with the cultural heritage
which may be appropriated and changed in the course of life. The
question raised by Touraine is the constantly debated “right to be
simultaneously equal and different”. This means the recognition of
people as social actors, who can intervene, modify and recreate
cultural identity rights, allowing them to assert themselves as
subjects of new cultural recompositions. In this sense, Gadea and
Warren (2005) state that:
“today the advancement of the cultural paradigm gives
prominence to the claim for cultural rights, always
expressed in defence of particular qualities, but granting
them a universal sense (…) these are identity rights but
based on individual freedom and not on communities21 -
even if these rights are instrumental values in the course of a
conflict – the case of the struggles for the right to interrupt
pregnancy, for sexual rights, for full citizenship for women”
(Gadea and Warren, 2005: 43).
We think that, resuming what was said above, ambiguity and the
apparent paradox between human rights, cultural rights and cultural
diversity means that the coexistence of these three elements is based
on three premises: the foundation of the first one is the notion that
culture is dynamic, that cultural representations and practices are
subject to change and that social actors are agents of these changes.
The second premise is that States should interfere in cultural
practices that are harmful to human rights, through legislation and
public policies and, mainly, through actions promoting the

21 The celebration of the concept of community as legitimating culture, frequently

hides the power structure, the inequalities and the domination organizing it and
which may be at the root of its constitution.
63
appropriation and exercise of rights, enhancing the identification of
individuals/groups living in a subordinate condition, such as women,
with a demand for equality and equity. The third premise is the
existence of tolerance and respect for cultural diversity, being the
States responsible, through policies reducing economic, political and
social exclusion, to guarantee effective equality in access to and the
distribution of resources.

2.3. Culture and patriarchal domination

If culture, to be perceived, has to focus on the power structure which,

hierarchizing functions and roles, hierarchizes rights, we think that it
is fundamental to recognise how the social relations that are
established within a cultural institution, such as the rites, are guided
by a patriarchal culture. Hence our interest in linking these two
elements that constitute the binominal of domination, which may
show the invasion of the patriarchal model into the “composition” of
the cultural phenomena.
The first definitions of patriarchy made by radical feminism consider
it a system of gender-political relations produced and reproduced in
the private and public spheres of life, characterised by control over
women’s reproductive and productive power, guaranteed by the State
through mechanisms regulating the institutions.22 Through the
patriarchal system, distinct ways of oppression are naturalized (on
the basis of biological differences between women and men),
constituents of the norms and values and evident in sexist
stereotypes and the mechanisms which, also at symbolic level, turn
women into a constituent part of the same system of domination
(which however should be historically contextualized), and which
have been reproduced in the course of history, irrespective of
political and social systems.
Even if we consider that the biological differences between the sexes
(disregarding the changes introduced by technology, subverting this

22 Marta Fontela. In: http://grupo feministlaruptura.blogspot.com. Accessed in

October 2012.
64
fixation on biology as a previous principle) produce profoundly
differentiated gender standards, we observe that the concept of
patriarchy used by radical feminism, as any form of male domination
over women (Millett, 1971), acquires a more refined and flexible
sense with Walby, who defines it as “a system of social structures and
practices in which men dominate, oppress and explore women”
(1989:214), allowing to escape from the universalism and
decontextualization engraved in the analyses favoured by other
feminist currents. This means that the forms of domination and its
expression vary according to the social contexts. Culture is thus one
of the key components for the analysis of patriarchy as structure and
practice of domination, i.e., through culture the gender hierarchies
are legitimized and controlled. Patriarchal culture is a material and
symbolic system which implies control and violence and which are
directly related to the gender order. An example of this is the
invasion of control mechanisms in social relations between women,
which causes them to think, feel and act on the basis of a
hierarchically subordinated position. Even in situations in which they
have power (as is the case of women occupying political decision-
making positions), these women mediate the system of domination.
In the patriarchal culture there is a social mandate which legitimazes
discriminatory and excluding practices. It is no coincidence that
many of the boys interviewed in the scope of the research had
naturalized violence exerted on women.
Sex as well as gender is characterised and classified according to a
heterosexual matrix which is simultaneously necessary and
constituent of the normativity of patriarchy, i.e., the essentialist view
of the sexual (biological) differences does not take into account that
this very difference is a construction based on heterosexuality. In
other words, when we talk about biological sex, we are interpreting it
on the basis of the dominant paradigm, which Foucault (1979) calls
biopower, which is the naturalization of subordination on the basis of
the bio-sexual binomial. This also means that the notion of a body
informed by this normativity produces what Butler calls abject bodies
(1990), i.e., “bodies that do not count but that emerge necessarily

65
from the process producing heterosexual bodies –homosexual bodies
which offend” (Walby, 1989:339).
The tensions between sex and gender highlight the instability of the
concept of gender23 which in its operationalization moves from a
construction of sex, dichotomizing it with respect to gender, to an
interpretation of gender “as a symbolic system that should be studied
in specific cultural contexts” (Stolcke, 2004:90). This means taking
into account the dimensions allowing an understanding of how the
mechanisms of oppression of women are organised, hierarchized and
reproduced/changed. In the theoretical debate and in the
operationalization of the concept of gender, particular importance
has been given to the processes of subjectivation, pointing to the
systems of meaning which, as Scott (1990) states, demonstrate the
representations of gender present in the normative body guiding and
regulating social relations and in the way in which each individual
gives meaning to her/his practices (Scott, 1990). Thus, rather than
reflecting reality, the discourse gives it meaning, i.e., we must seek to
understand how the normative is organized, allowing that the
discourse is not only a product of reality, giving it rather a complexity
of meanings, arising from the processes of subjectivation of this same
reality.
Butler (1990), opposing the essentialist theories, proposes
performativity, highlighting not only the influence of the sex-gender
system in the construction of identities but also in the normative
subversion and, in this sense, as Stolcke states, “gender is converted
into something which is done instead of being something which one
is” (2004:100). However, Butler’s suggestion (1990) leaves the
question open of how the cultural, social and political contexts
ascribe meaning to the differences between the sexes and how
inequalities are constructed/imposed/structured on this difference,
which not only structure the social order, but also how gender is

23 G. Bonder (2003) refers to the position of scholars who talk about the need for an
implosion of the category of gender, replacing it “by a variety of positions of gender
deriving from a process of subjectivation traversed by asymmetric relations relative
to ethnicity (…), among others” (2003:4,5).
66
constituted as body. On the other hand, and as the research seems to
demonstrate, the performance can legitimate stereotypes, when, for
example, matrons, in the case of female initiation rites, dramatize the
role of men and the behaviour that may be expected of girls,
strengthening the “justness” of control over women’s bodies. In this
situation and through the discourses of youths as well as adults of
both sexes, we were able to establish that this dramatic performance
of the naturalization of sexual violence is invoked as “just” in the
experiences lived by youths and adults of both sexes, i.e., the
performative field is intimately linked to social practices.
It is in this sense that patriarchy pursues the legitimation of the
domination of women, irrespective of the variations found and of the
mechanisms set in motion in each culture. Saffioti (2004) even
defends that greater visibility of women on the labour market or in
decision-making spaces (and in more and better public policies in
favour of equality) may coexist with mechanisms that do not change
the gender order, from the point of view of an analysis of social
power relations. The author considers that “there is no biological
sexuality, outside the social context in which it is practised” (Saffioti,
2004:6). This means that the two concepts comprising the sex-
gender binomial should both be understood as social constructions
(and not as opposing nature to culture), no longer seeing one’s sex
exclusively as the domain of nature and considering it as culturally
constructed as well.
It is in this context that the sex-gender system not only refers to the
social relations existing between the sexes, but also allows us to
recognise how the patriarchal ideology is structured, expressed and
instituted (as naturalized constituent of power inequalities) as a
system of beliefs acting on how people think, live and act (Facio,
undated). This system of beliefs, which has the male as parameter,
constraining roles and functions to the sexual “difference”,
necessarily restricts the possibilities of shifting the individuals’ forms
of identification and we therefore talk about a system and a whole
which differentiates and unequalizes human beings (Lagarde, 1997).

67
But talking about gender, about the sex-gender system, means
talking about a power structure expressed through a hierarchized
gender order and about the fixation of subordinate roles and
functions, revealing themselves through a discourse expressing the
representations (of what it means to be a man and a woman)
pronounced by a power structure which urges to “resignation”.
Power acts thus through agreed “obedience”, through control over
the action of others, taking into account, in the contexts in which they
are reproduced, the strategies and answers given by the dominated
ones. This means that in order to dominate, mechanisms are started
that cause individuals to submit themselves to their status of
subordinates. The analysis of power acquires new depth when one
emphasizes the notion of power in relation, i.e., when the emphasis is
shifted from dispositions to obey and the legitimacy of whom
exercises it, to “power in relation” (Lukes, 1974). In this sense,
Foucault (1976), using the concept of biopower, shows that control
over the action of an individual and of a collective has not only to do
with the mechanisms that are used to control others, but also with
disciplinary power which develops coercion techniques, present in
the ways of thinking and living. I.e., disciplinary power set to
confront, strengthening/transforming/adapting itself on the basis of
the multiplicity of relations characterised by mobility, produces
domination (develops more or less coercive control techniques) but
also resistance.
This means that the individual is not passive, she/he participates and
is an instrument of the domination, while she/he can let loose
elements of countervailing power and resistance, forcing the
dominator to negotiate and adapt himself, however without the
power structure being changed. This structure holds the alterations
and the countervailing power strategies, with a view to their
strengthening and refinement, expressed in the discourses stating the
beliefs and mechanisms used to legitimate them (Luna, 2002).
Returning to Foucault, the discourses reflect, but also produce, the
reality, when expressing how the body and the power relations are
conceived: the discourses are producers of meaning, not only

68
enabling taking cognizance of the beliefs, but also of how these
beliefs are object of representations that inform about the
mechanisms used by individuals to communicate. The analysis of the
discourses produced by the various actors as a dynamic exchange of
signs and meanings subject to changes operated by the contexts in
which the discourses are produced, allows an understanding of how
discourses about initiation rites appear in apparent contradiction and
in conflict between a sense of belonging and identification relative to,
for example, the legitimation of the teachings about the practice of
sexuality (as an explicit way of shaping rights and inequalities
through a cultural tradition which presents itself as ahistorical), and
a discourse of an assertion of rights.24
Rehabilitating the role of the actor, Touraine (1996) argues for a
dynamic idea of structure in which the actors perform a key function
with respect to the preservation of the order as well as in the
production of elements that subvert the order. And it is in this order
of ideas that the power structure is object of multiple dynamics of an
exogenous or endogenous nature, revealing themselves through
interdictions and punishments producing normatives that guide the
elaboration of stereotypes and practices. At the same time, “changes”
and “readjustments” may be originated in the power structure by
force of the transformation of the political contexts (as is the case of
the establishment of democracy), which generate new and important
alterations, by the possibilities of the mobilization of elements
allowing, in the political structure, a questioned (or unquestioned)
renewal of the forms in which the power is exerted. This
phenomenon occurred in the situation of democratic Mozambique by
the appearance of a civil society which has enabled the visibility of
gender inequality and has imposed legal mechanisms (bringing
secret forms of domination exercised in the private domain to the
public domain), including them in the political discourse and
integrating them as human rights into the State power system. We

24 As we will have the opportunity to analyse in the course of the various chapters,
the discourses pronounced by the youths about their experience of the rites show
their interference with the identity construction, giving simultaneously new
meanings to what was transmitted to them.
69
must however observe that, as Foucault argues, the State is not the
sole producer of power, so that we must observe the (multiple and
plural) power relations that are mobilized in various and
contradictory contexts.
Finally, before dealing with our view of culture, we believe it is
important to demonstrate what we consider being the main
constituent problems of the concept, expressed in the research about
rites. From our point of view one cannot look at cultures without
looking at the contexts in which they are produced, i.e., cultural
phenomena constrain and are constrained by exogenous aspects
which, acting on the practices and representations of individuals, are
changing their meaning and sense. In our view, if culture, by any
chance of a sacred order, could be understood detached from the
contexts, it would cease to exist, i.e., its presence and strength come
exactly from its capacity to appropriate, to transform and to
domesticate the plurality of external influences, embodied in the
representations and practices of the social actors. On the other hand,
and related to what we said above, the internal logic of culture is
continuously updated, not only by the disturbances that are external
to its field, but also by the mechanisms used to preserve itself. I.e.,
culture contains in itself a power structure which classifies, organizes
and hierarchizes and which is therefore subject to attempts to invert
this order of power, whether by a peaceful “understanding”, or by
contestation. While culture is inherited and communicated, to be
audible and acting, it cannot be perceived as a list of images and
practices, whose interest for the field of science is very partial and
reductionist.
The approach to culture used in this study has three key elements:
the first one concerns the fact that we take culture as an institution
comprising representations and practices expressing a system of
beliefs constraining behaviours: culture refers to a normative
providing cohesion and recognition for belonging. The second
element has to do with the power structure which determines that in
each culture positions are hierarchized, systems of inclusion (and
also exclusion) are organised and power relations are established.
The last aspect has to do with the external and internal dynamics
70
which transform culture into an institution situated in social,
political and economic contexts, pursuing the preservation of the
order, through adjustments and recompositions of the elements
giving it cohesion. At the same time, changes are being produced in
the culture, or rather in its interstices, expressing the flows and
transits of individuals, allowing the establishment of disorder, giving
rise to new meanings and senses, mobilizing interests and strategies
that may or may not call into question the cultural system.
For the analysis of the initiation rites it is in this sense that we seek to
identify the presence of the components which give cohesion to this
cultural institution, the mechanisms that standardise the
representations and practices and the readjustments to which they
are being subjected. This means that, while we seek to interpret,
through the discourses of the actors, the meanings that are given to
the representations, particularly the images that are constructed
about gender equality, we intend to understand how, for example
through the contamination of the discourse of human rights,
individuals transit from one space to another, negotiate positions and
develop strategies aimed at the preservation of power, or on the
contrary, break with this power. For these reasons and despite the
vastness of the subject, we intend to analyse if the existing changes
with respect to the time and space in which the rites are conducted,
to the markers for the initiation and up to the composition of the
rites (in many cases the rites are conducted individually or the
groups are very small) interfere with the ritual functions, and how
these functions are transformed as a sign of differentiation and group
claims.

3. Ritualization: (in)disciplined bodies

The question of cultural markers, identified in the representations

and practices of individuals, brings us to different (but related)
orders of problems concerning the functions of the initiation rituals
as shapers of behaviour, the mechanisms and processes interfering in
the construction of juvenile identities and the sexualisation of the
body as decisive for the visualization of gender inequalities.

71
As we did for the analysis of the concept of culture, the treatment of
this theme will be exemplified and deepened with issues related to
our research experience.

3.1.Briefly reviewing the functions of the rites

The objective of the rites is to produce well-defined and desirable

individuals within a sociocultural order, operating as processes which
regulate and constrain the practices of these individuals. In this
sense, the rites are in agreement with a more general order,
determined by processes of socialization which pass through
different life stages. While the functions of the rites are elaborated on
in the following chapter, here we will treat, in a very basic and
introductory way, some of the presuppositions that will guide our
analysis.
Meira (2009), in a study about rites of passage, claims that a function
of the rites is the standardization of behaviours and values with the
purpose of strengthening group belonging. The rites regulate, classify
and guide, save from chaos and disorder, thus having a
harmonization role, while performing a therapeutic function. By
breaking with the past, sometimes through suffering and ill-
treatment, the initiate is cured of childhood and prepares her/himself
to live and think on the basis of a new status qualifying her/him as an
adult. For this reason and for their survival, societies adapt and
adjust the old rituals in a search for cohesion, which gives them
meaning. For Meira, the rites contain cooperation between the
initiates, the recognition of a collective authority and the
“determination of responsibilities” (2009: 192).
Peirano analyses the performative question and the meanings that
the rites may assume “in the sense that saying is also doing
something; in the sense that the participants experiment with a
performance that uses various means of communication; in the sense
of values that are inferred and created by the actors during the
performance” (2003:11). The same author states, as quoted by
Rodolpho, that “the ritual is a cultural system of symbolic
communication, comprising regulated and standardized sequences of

72
words and acts, in general expressed through multiple means”
(Rodolpho 2009:141). Elaborating on this idea of ritual, Peirano
proposes an analysis which takes their importance into account as
well as the meaning ascribed to them by the individuals, through the
enunciation of rules and discourses which “transmitting values and
knowledge” can be communicated, showing to others the agreement
with the cultural order (2003:10).
Rodolpho (2009) adds that the initiation rites not only mean a “rite
of transition from one status to another (death and symbolic rebirth)
(…) but initiation is a rite of genesis which will differentiate the
participants or the circle of neophytes from those outside, exactly the
non-initiated ones” (2009:144).
For Van Gennep (1977), in the framework of the dynamic sociology, a
ritual is an autonomous object, structured in ceremonies which are in
agreement with a specific point in time (birth, coming of age,
marriage, death). The ceremonies are thus operations that are
conducted taking into account implicit aims. The rituals regulate and
order, constraining individuals to the more general social and
economic order. For this author, an understanding of the rites
requires knowledge of the mechanisms and of what gives them
meaning. Whatever the rites are, they mean a passage which
contains a sequence: separation, margin and aggregation. Each one
of these points in time has a different meaning, according to the stage
of life to which they refer. Van Gennep regards the sacred and the
profane, though separated, as linked in the initiation rites: the sacred
world is present in the ceremonies (through which the teachings are
conducted) since, by placing individuals symbolically in one or
another field, they become sacred in relation to others. For example,
initiated boys are sacred with respect to women and to all those who
are not in the same condition. To penetrate into the world of the
initiates is a sacrilege, is a violation of the sacred, marked by the
place where to go to and by the ceremonies they perform. Through
the integration, the youths enter into the profane world, but profane
which isn’t independent from the sacred.

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Still with respect to the objectives of the initiation teachings,
Medeiros (1995) holds the opinion that, more than being a “school”,
the aim of the rites has to do with the “imposition of a group ideology
and its organisation as a body of the social doctrine to which the
members of the society were subordinated” (1995:19). This means
that the rites, more than consolidating knowledge, shape behaviours
and values which determine the integration of individuals into the
group, in which circumcision as a biological and social phenomenon
is part of the transition from one status to another, as if it were a
birth. The initiation should be considered from an individual point of
view as the socialization of the adolescent to adulthood, and from a
collective point of view in which, through (profane and sacred)
practices, the society guarantees its continued existence and
cohesion. Thus, Medeiros states that “the initiation appears as an all-
encompassing social event insofar as the political, the cultural and
the playful realms take part in it” (1995:24). Therefore, the initiation
expresses, in addition to the passage from one age (and a status) to
another, a social stratification, evident in the political hierarchization
and in the preservation of the difference between statuses, whether
within the same age class or generational and ancestral. I.e., the
initiation rituals were/are pivotal for the preservation and cohesion
of the community and for the preservation of the social structure.
Referring to the rituals as moments of identity affirmation in which
the rational appears linked with the sacred, Gonçalves states in his
analysis the relation of the rituals with the cultural codes which “give
meaning to experiences, institutionalizing life experiences” (2010:
338). In this sense, the author elaborates on the question of the
fundamental need for rites as an element of cohesion of the social
order, giving meaning and balance to social relations. For Gonçalves,
the initiation rites, split up into the separation from the families,
circumcision and reintegration, form a symbolic rupture (a kind of
rebirth) with previous experiences. Being organised through an
action on the body (which may suffer uncountable ordeals), the rites
determine a pattern of behaviour enabling the integration of the
youths into the community, occupying the places and playing the

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social roles that are reserved to them according to the social
hierarchy.
It is clear that in the analysis of the rites, despite other functions, one
should in the first place take into account their social utility, in the
sense that they transgress and restore the order, and in the second
place that “the rites are signalling systems from codes defined from a
cultural point of view” (Rivière, 1996:70). Through the rites, through
the messages they transmit and through the meaning given to them,
through the emotional consequences and through the negotiation
and manipulation processes experienced and also through the
continuously (real or/and symbolic) elements of adherence set in
motion, the initiated boys and girls are integrated into the social
order according to sexual differentiation, i.e., the mechanisms
developed in them are markers of roles and functions expressing the
socially expected values and behaviours.
A gender analysis emphasizes in general the need to study how the
ways and means “used” in the rites bring about the construction of
gender identities. The rites of passage may be used as models
legitimating inequality between women and men. In fact, through the
initiation to adulthood the prescriptions are determined that guide
and structure the ways of self-recognition and the recognition of
others with respect to the inclusion in the collective. This means that
learning to “be a man” and to “be a woman” is done on the basis of
values and practices that are founders of a structure of domination
based on a social order which defines, according to sex and age,
access to and the exercise of rights.
Thus, a gender analysis seems to be a preliminary question to be
taken into account in the research, since it allows an understanding
of the nature of the relations that are established between gender
(conveying the model of domination), the subjective component
providing individual appropriations of sexuality, and the cultural and
social contexts to be analysed. It is thus necessary to identify if the
rites transmit knowledge to the girls which allows them to break, at
least apparently, with the submission, enabling them to use, outside
family and social control, what they have learned about sex. The

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answer to this question may help us to explain some of the reasons
for the constant references, even in rural areas, to the “misbehaviour”
of girls and boys, even those who were ritualized. This situation can
also lead us to a re-examination of early marriage, not only in the
sense we ascribe to it today as a negotiation between the family of the
child and the man, but also as a strategy of the adolescent to evade
family control, nevertheless revealing the construction of a
subordinate identity.

3.2. Identities and ritualization

When we refer to the initiation rites it is necessary to revisit the

question of identities. Although this problem has been elaborated on
by Osório and Silva (2008) with respect to the construction of
juvenile identities in the Mozambican context, we think it is
important to return to some of what are considered to be
presuppositions of the analysis of identity.
Regarding social identities, mainly when referring to the youth, we
seek to take into account a definition which leads us in the first place
to the contextualization of the concept of youth and in the second
place to the forms and means used by the youths to characterise and
give meaning to themselves, to distinguish themselves and also to
come closer to others.
Pais (1990), reflecting on the social construction of the youth, states
that it is done “around two semantic axes: as an apparent unity
(when referring to a stage of life) and as diversity (when different
qualities are at stake distinguishing the youngsters from each other)”
(1990:149). The idea of childhood, youth and adulthood is culturally
constrained, i.e., when we for example analyse the rites, particularly
in rural areas, childhood as a stage of life varies according to the
markers which are only indirectly related to well-defined age groups,
and on the other hand the transition from childhood to adulthood,
this excludes the intermediate stage of social reality, corresponding

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in other contexts to the characterisation of a distinctive culture.25
This would mean that the generational conflict existing in other
societies is “nuanced”, as happens in many regions of Mozambique,
due to the fact that when youths are initiated earlier, they internalize
values more easily without apparent contestation. This does not
mean that there are no ruptures expressed in the discontinuity
between values and lessons received in childhood and new
representations and practices created by the conviviality in other
spaces, and also by the existence of references, whether provided by
entertainment, by music or by fashion. As Pais (1990) states:
“culture can be understood as a set of shared meanings, a set
of specific symbols symbolizing belonging to a specific group;
a language with its specific uses, distinct rituals and events,
through which life acquires sense” (1990:164).
Thus, the passage through different cultural contexts enables the
girls and boys to internalize the culturally constructed multiple
referential systems and meanings, which may counter the original
contexts of these individuals, producing varied identities.
The initiated girls and boys constitute a social network structured by
various sources of information and teaching of values constraining
the actions of each one of them to a model identifying them as
belonging to a distinctive collective.26

25 This premature passage from childhood to the adult world may justify the social
naturalization of pregnancy and marriage of female adolescents. In fact, the
ceremonies performed with children in the ritual process vouch for early marriages
and gender violence.
26 DaMatta (2000), with another perspective, characterises the state of liminality

lived by girls and boys in the context of the initiation rites, as a process in which,
while affirming the individuality (by how she/he endures the suffering or the
isolation), at the same time views her/himself as belonging to the group and also as
a form of social integration, visible in the aggregation ceremonies. For this author
and contrary to what Turner (1974) states, liminality does not represent a
suspension of the order but a need for order. This means that the “suspended”
practices and values of the social normativity (expressed, for example, in the
desacralization of sex and sexuality) and of the family and social hierarchies, blend
with the regained order. Being outside the world, the punishments and tattoos thus
constitute cultural mechanisms which guarantee continuity.
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It is this learning which allows the extension over time of these
networks, though of a temporary character, due to the pair
identification mechanisms (which may remain). This means that the
cultural heritage maintains a dialogue, has conflicts with and adapts
itself to the appropriated mechanisms in the spaces in which the girls
and boys go around and which they use to portray and give meaning
to themselves. In a study conducted on parties of boys in the
northwest of Portugal, Pais mentions, exemplifying with the
interference of girls in male dances (which previously carried a heavy
load of sexual differentiation), how today, under the influence of
modernity, these parties are a moment of celebration of male
identity, of transgression and sharing, resorting to the past, which
does however not “mean that in the present, tradition is a mere rerun
of the past” (Pais, 2009:4). Contrary to more performative modern
parties, which dream up a past reality, without this intervening in the
identity composition of the youth, in Mozambique we observe,
mainly in rural areas, the imposition of a set of values constraining
juvenile identities through social and cultural control mechanisms.
However, as we will analyse in the following chapters, there are signs
of the loss of meaning of some ceremonies, rendering them merely
performative, without constituting identity markers.
Enne (2010), in a comparative analysis of the construction of the
history of the Baixada Fluminense in Brazil, through the discourses
and professional practices of memorialists and academics
(emphasizing the distinction for the promotion of identity by a
group’s opposition in relation to the identity of another group),
resorts to Foucault and Bourdieu to explain the struggles in the field
of the legitimation of knowledge as enunciated truth, principle of
authority and imposition schemes. The author demonstrates
exemplarily that even these collective identities, guided by
convergence to the group of each one of the agents comprising it, and
by divergence with respect to the other group, are not fixed,
depending on changes of the context. As Enne says: “if in this way
this concept (identity) is associated with a notion of belonging and
exclusion, these references may be changed in the course of the
flows” (2010:78). This has methodological implications which go

78
beyond the case studied by the author: to study identities is to
understand the processes constructing them, in which it is pivotal to
take into account the interaction between individual identities and
the collective identity and, how the similarities and differences are
being modified, are being adjusted or are being ruptured through
interaction (taking into account the contexts in which the identities
are being shaped). The idea that identities are not fixed and lasting,
as is the case with culture, is extremely useful for this study, in the
sense that it enables us to break with a descriptive and one-
dimensional approach.
In line with what is stated by Lopes and Bastos (2010), the process of
identification is also a process of non-identification by exclusion, and
also by conflict with respect to one’s individual identity and to its
relation with the collective identity. This brings us to the production
of distinctions between the initiated youths and to how these may be
related to the symbolic capital and to how it determines (and is
determined by) positions in the social hierarchy. In the construction
of identities, and this is clearly demonstrated in the rites, there is, as
was said above, a dialogue between the individual and the collective
in which the youths learn to recognise themselves as adults, thus as
belonging to one or more groups, at the same time asserting
themselves as individuals detached from the collective, in a
movement which acquires sense in the recognition of the self and the
other.
In previous studies we established how the sexual division of labour
in the family and the silent and mimetic learning in the identity
construction should be seen in combination with the influence of the
school (formally degenderized) and of the groups of friends among
which the youths go around (Osório and Silva, 2008). I.e., when we
take the rites as study object, considering them as a decisive cultural
instance in the shaping of identities, we intend to analyse how the
values and practices experienced during the ritual period are
acquired or, on the contrary, are abandoned by the youth in the
recognition of the self and the others (and of the others as such). This
research seeks to identify the mechanisms that give cohesion to the
collective of initiates by similarity or opposition to other groups
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(which may be by age class, sex, ethnolinguistic groups, etc.), to their
memories and to their past.
Lopes and Bastos (2010), depolarizing the binary frames (which do
without plurality), look in the interstices of social life for the
elements which escape from the logic of the “walled” classification of
individuals. The authors emphasize the flows and transits and the
ephemeral, consider identities as a process in which individuals,
through successive appropriations, make tradition and modernity
meet each other, going about and “theatricalizing” in conformity with
the spaces where they go around. The authors state that not only the
identities are changing and in transit, but that the individual identity
is also full of changes, transits and flows. Therefore, individuals not
only go around in differentiated territories, but they also have an
identity which embodies relocations and flows, “visible due to
contesting policies and epistemologies of homogenising views of our
sociabilities” (2010:12).
It is in this sense that some authors indicate the need to recognise
how girls and boys, in the process of passage, learn to recognise
themselves as adults, in a system of negotiation between the
individual self and the collective, between what I am in relation to
others (Enne, 2010). This means, as the author argues, that this
negotiation occurs in a process characterised by mobility and fluidity
where convergent but also divergent elements are at play. In the
same way, identities should be understood in relation to the social
context and the interaction with others, and also in relation to the
processes of subjectivation, of the manipulation of integrating
resources of individual identities. As mentioned above, identities are
constructed by similarity, but also by conflict, producing negotiations
and new shapes.
This assumption brings us to some scattered information obtained in
talks with youngsters of Maputo City, who “use” the traditions only in
what they consider to be useful for the development of strategies of
seduction. Thus, catching from the traditional information the means
of “imprisonment” of the other, these young people (mainly girls)
preserve however the status which makes them “modern” beings,

80
displaying an apparent or real autonomy in relation to the patriarchal
model. This, though it does not necessarily mean a re-hierarchization
of the social power relations, demonstrates their adjustment and re-
adjustment.
Continuing in the track of identity as a process, Louro argues that
individuals are in transit and “when they move, they transform
themselves” (2010:204). Referring explicitly to the construction of
manhood and womanhood, the author argues that simply being
named a boy or a girl presupposes an organised course with rules and
interdictions, permanently reiterated by different bodies developing
control mechanisms imposed on pre-defined behaviours. This means
that sex is taken as a natural fact for which individuals expect
practices that are in agreement with the naturalization and fixation of
the biological sex.27 In the same sense, Benlloch and Campos (2000)
state that manhood and womanhood, understood as antagonistic,
sustain the hierarchization and domination and determine an
intersubjective relation based on exclusion. This happens because the
codes and rules which guide the relation are determined by male
power and by a female power limited to “affections and to the
satisfaction of the needs of others” (2000:125). On the other hand,
the authors also problematize the changes which today call into
question the model of masculinity and femininity, due to alterations
existing in the social structure and particularly in the composition
and roles of the members comprising the family (monoparental
families, homosexuals, families headed by the mother).
It is this perspective which allows us to observe if there are ruptures
with the socially expected allocation of womanhood and manhood or
if, on the contrary, there is accommodation of the elements which,
distinguishing sex through cultural dispositions, unequalize it,
transforming it into gender. On the other hand, it will be important
to analyse how the initiation rituals conform sexuality to
heteronormativity. An analysis of the discourses, as Lopes and

27 We agree with Eleonor Faur when she states that “what is perceived as unchanging
isn’t the sex, but the materiality of the sexual difference which however admits
significant variations in how it is symbolized and interpreted” (2003:43).
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Fabrício mention, allows us to understand the social practices that
lead to “the construction and attribution of meaning to experience
and to the social actors, by means of the interactional stances they
occupy in the use of language” (2010:288).
The queer theory, referred to below, contributes to break with the
identity homogeneity and the heteronormative essentialist discourse,
by emphasizing the fragmentation which organizes identities,
pointing out that the transience of the frontiers defining sex and
gender in a one-dimensional logic, legitimated, through the
discourses and practices, the essentialization of sex and gender. This
approach allows us to “understand gender and sexuality (…) as
multiple, dynamic and contradictory” (Lopes and Fabrício, 2010:
287).
For our study it is necessary to pay attention to the attributes and to
how girls and boys communicate and give meaning to the acquired
values and behaviours, because here we can find on the one hand the
agency used by them to construct representations and practices
shaping them (and identify them as female or male) and on the other
hand how these narratives not only reproduce the social order but
also act on it.
Ortner (1974) points out that the processes of subjectivation,
expressed in the discourse, may show an apparent coherence,
considering that subjectivation excludes ambiguity, mainly if we take
into account, as Scott states as quoted by Ortner “the ways in which
societies represent gender, using it to articulate rules of social
relations, or to construct the meaning of experience” (Ortner 1974:
80). Within this line of thought Bernardes and Guareschi state that
when the discourse is not about gender, it can become the subject of
gender insofar as it produces systems of meaning, declared as being
true. The authors also identify how the process of globalization
“implies changes of meanings, i.e., a multiplicity emerges (…) then
entering and becoming present in the private domain”, i.e., through
permeability, differences of meaning(s) are produced which are going
to determine new appropriations and singular modes of
appropriation, which allow the embodiment of new identity markers

82
(Bernardes and Guareschi, 2004: 214). Globalization, as Bernardes
and Guareschi recognise, results in a deterritorialization in which
cultural differences contrast, which, as Bhabha28 (quoted by these
authors) states “provide the terrain for the preparation of
subjectivation strategies which start new signs of identity as well as of
innovative spaces of collaboration and contestation in the act of
defining one’s own idea of society”.

3.3. Body and sexuality

The initiation rites are a central object for the production of

observations allowing to observe how the experience of female and
male sexuality is differentiated by the action exerted on the
domestication of the bodies, that the rites are an important moment,
and how these experiences are felt and/or rejected during the process
of identity construction.29
The studies about the private domain and about the body and
sexuality start to gain autonomy as scientific knowledge. From the
second half of the 60s they assume one of the most successful
moments, with the methodology, advanced by Foucault, of analysing
the meaning processes and the mechanisms present in the body
(resulting in the construction of docile bodies). In the same way, the
rupture brought about by the Annales School, in France, with the
paradigm of classical historiography, broadening the sources of
production of historical knowledge to other domains, allows the
appearance of new objects of research, for example the work done by
Duby and Ariès (1992) who, initiating the study of tensions, conflicts
and alliances conducted within families, brings themes to the public
space (and to the academic public space) that have not been
recognized in the past as scientifically relevant.

28 H. Bhaba (1998). O local da cultura. Belo Horizonte: Editora UFMG.

29 Their importance resides fundamentally in the identity marks reflected in the
course of life of the initiated women, from the strengthening of the tattoos, (the use
of musiro: a plant which after having been grinded is placed on the face and on the
bodies of the initiated women), to the habits of personal hygiene and how to seat
and greet.
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The body reveals a hierarchized social order, reproduced in the
learned and embodied gestures and representations, rendering,
through the naturalization of the differences, the inequality of power
effective (Detrez, 2002).
The diversity of the habitus used by Mauss (quoted by Détrez,
2002)30 in the Aristotelian sense of hiexis (acquired) concerns all
culturally linked daily activities (from dressing, eating, hygiene
routines). In this sense, the body is thus “the mediation between the
individual and the surrounding world. It is through the body that the
individual situates her/himself materially in relation to the outside
world” (Détrez, 2002:75). This means that the body exists in the
context, reproducing it and simultaneously acting on it. A tension
manifests itself on the body produced by the internalization and self-
monitoring, between the social pressure to conform, until the claim
and contestation of the norm, in a game of relations in which, in the
interstices of the interdictions, the body is individualizing itself.
While communicating, the “body acts at two levels. On the one hand
it is memory, embodiment, incarnation of the code, on the other
hand it is a signal” (Détrez, 2002: 128).
The body is thus, as Goellner states, defined “by the cultural and
social meanings attributed to it” (2007:29). These meanings,
depending on the contexts, are expressed and produced in the
discourse shaping the normal, the licit and the desirable. This also
means, resorting to Foucault, that the monitoring and control
exerted on the bodies, transforming them into docile bodies, are
mechanisms laying bare the construction of power hierarchies. For
example, in the case of our study, the exposure of the othuna and
matinji, before and during the initiation rites, does not only refer to
an ideal of beauty or of conformation of the body of the girls, not
aware of the system of domination, but also to ways of shaping
identities with the clear presence of a gender mandate. There is, once
again, in the first place a need to transpose the illusion of a culture
dissociated from the social structure of power, which produces and
explains the violence and, in the second place, a need to pay attention

30 M. Mauss (1950). Sociologie e anthropologie. Paris: PUF.

84
to the circulation, the mobility of the bodies through different spaces
and places, transforming culture into a battleground of resistance
and elaboration of new dispositions.
Several authors from the feminist theory of the difference (Irigaray,
1974), but incorporating other systems of explanation to analyse
social gender relations (denaturalizing the importance of the
biological), show how biology and anatomical differences are used as
a distinguishing recourse to legitimate gender inequality (Agacinski,
1999). As sexuality is of the order of representations and practices,
clarifying the qualities (and also the “inscription” processes)
conferred to the body, sexual identities thus reflect the inscription of
gender features:
“the importance of ritualization, of the social uses of the body,
which turn the body of a woman or of a man into a female or a
manly body (…) shows the limit of the dualistic reasoning of
an objectified body (…) the body is a pivotal element of the
identity of an individual, it does not result from the
registration of having but rather of being” (Détrez, 2002: 154-
155).
The embodiment makes room for automatisms which seem to stem
from nature and therefore, according to the same author:
“behind the ritualization, a cultural manifestation embodied
to the point of becoming a second nature, domination
announces itself. The social uses of the body, if naturalizing
the identity, are not neutral and become places of the
confrontation of powers” (Détrez, 2002:166).
Apart from that, in a study about the exposure of women’s naked
breasts on the beach, Kaufmann (2004) resorts to the force of
contexts to analyse how individuals appropriate and embody the
rules of the game providing “normality” and adapt them to the role
she/he has at that moment, which will more or less be in conformity
with the context, depending on the possibilities developed by the
individual to cause a rupture, and/or of the elements which in this
context are already compatible with the change. And it is this

85
correspondence between the embodiment of new elements, of new
codes and their transformation into routines, which allows the
transformation of the habitus, expressed in the mobility and
instability of the identity.
It is on the sexualized body that the representations and practices are
constructed (through sociocultural learning), which conform the
sexual identities to the behaviours that are considered socially
correct. In our approach we take into account the relational
constructivism which allows a less atomized look at the problem,
establishing relations with other systems which, acting on the body,
are definers of behaviours. When observing the question of sexuality
it is in this sense that it is important to recognise, as Heilborn (1999)
states, the gender mark conferring meaning to it and connecting
individuals to a specific order of values, in addition to which it is also
relevant to identify the permeability to other factors, such as the
network of convivialities affecting the individual. Thus, for this
author, how sex is viewed and how it is practised depends, as is the
case for other activities, on socialization (and thus on the contexts
setting the norms for interdictions and what is culturally acceptable),
through which the socially dominant representations are internalized
and manifest themselves, in an expression which is dear to Heilborn,
the sexual scripts of individuals. By implication:
“gender and the asymmetry in the relations between men and
women continue being powerful organizers of how the sexual
activity and the capacity of negotiation between the partners
are unfolding concerning what goes on in sexual intercourse,
nuancing in the analytical plane the profound transformation
which sexuality would have witnessed” (Heilborn, 2006:48).
In the case of our study, we observe the importance of the rites in the
construction of dichotomies in the field of sexuality, pointing to an
asymmetry of rights between men and women (expressing in a
somewhat clear way what is and what isn’t allowed and licit), justified
by “our culture”. It also becomes somehow evident that a reasonable
number of young people, through the influence of the “horizontality”
lived at school, adjusts, adapts and rejects the ritual teachings

86
(Osório and Silva, 2008). We will resume this question below, but
what we feel in the narrative about sexuality is the appearance of new
dynamics which do not conform to the discourse of “original” culture
and which question, though often in an ambiguous way, the power
strategies (whether “modern” political power or “traditional” power).

3.4. Sexuality: embodiment and subjectivation

In this research the concept of sexuality involves both the discourse

of sex and sex life, and the processes and mechanisms which
programme the practice of sex, or its possibility, in a context in which
there are determinants placing male and female sexuality at different
levels. As Heilborn (1999) states, sexuality is profoundly marked by
an organisation of power “in which the lead of the course of this
event is ascribed to the male” (1999:43). What we observe in the rites
is that sexuality largely determines the classification of being a “good
man” and a “good woman”. However, the distinctive character is not
the same for the two sexes, since the social evaluation of male sexual
behaviour falls within “sexual freedom” (contrary to what happens
with women) and within the legitimacy to prove his virility as the
constitutive nucleus of masculinity. Instead of a reductionist
approach to sexuality, very visible in the studies about HIV and
AIDS, in which the problem is only analysed from a prescriptive
point of view, in which “sex is seen as a place of risk” (Cornwall and
Jolly, 2008:34), the feminist theories, introducing a perspective of
human rights, allow to understand how the link between sexuality
and power is the pivotal domain of gender relations, or as the authors
state, “the sexualisation of power relations” (2008:35).
In the research we were able, through the discourse of some of the
female interviewees, to establish that learning about sex allows them
to exercise a certain power and control over the body of the other
(but not over his sexuality), limited however by the precariousness of
this domination, which can be changed, rehierarchized and
“normalized” on the basis of the transformation of the occasions on
which this control is exerted. We think that what is at stake is not a
change in the exercise of power, strengthened by the lessons about

87
the sexualized body, but rather the development of strategies which,
under specific circumstances (easily subjected to the restoration of
the order), may lead to the exercise of countervailing power in a
context in which the patriarchal order will be maintained. From a
point of view of scientific rigour it is for these reasons not helpful for
an understanding of the initiatory processes to reduce the rites to the
space where women subvert the androcratic model, without taking
into account that this space of subversion is also a place where
women learn that their “value” and their “power” is only
concentrated in their body and in the use they should make of it. And
it seems to us that this is the key question: being a woman means to
learn to accept the sexualisation of power in gender relations, i.e., to
contain and limit the practice of female sexuality to strategies of
manipulation on the one hand, and to their submission on the other
hand, i.e., what is taught as their strength is in fact a brutal
manifestation of the policing of her body.
The individual experiences of sexuality are indelibly marked by the
contexts in which they occur. Individuals embody the socially located
teachings which determine the knowledge and meanings ascribed to
sex life, namely what is or is not licit to feel and express.31 Resorting
to the notion of script (in the sense of scenario and staging)
developed by Gagnon and Simon (1973), Bozon (2004) analyses the
scripts of a cultural order regulating the relations between partners,
establishing the interdictions and the norm which are acquired and
negotiated at interpersonal level.
Thus, as stated above, the mobility and movements of individuals
interfere with the reconfiguration of the representations and
practices of sexuality, which can be considered, as Bozon (2004)
states, cultural practices. This means that the power structure
manifests itself also in how sexuality is conceived and lived,

31 During our fieldwork and whenever the subject was sexuality, the interviewed
women and men mentioned the behaviours that might be socially expected. It was
not uncommon that the statement of young girls and women conveyed their
“inability” to manifest pleasure or desire, which are always conditioned by what is
expected by the partner.
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expressed in the development of new dispositions which are being
embodied, adjusted or abandoned in the individuals’ course of life.
Sexuality and its prescriptions and interdictions, as well as its
possibilities of expression, are in fact simultaneously a text of culture,
or rather, a mechanism through which culture arranges the
representations and actions of individuals. If we take sexuality as
pivotal for an understanding of the gender order (while socially
constrained by the cultural model), it can however form a threat to
the order, as is the case of girls who, though ritualized, break with the
social norms, using, or not, the teachings of the ritual process.
Thus, as we will thoroughly illustrate, the symbolic representations of
the sexualized body of women are based on biological characteristics
to hierarchize and justify their subordinate condition. As Héritier
recognises, “everybody thinks that his/her cultural way to conceive
the world is imposed by the observation and need to organize the
nature of things” (2002: 246). The argument used with respect to
this apparently stable model is the consent of women which Héritier,
paraphrasing Choderlos de Lacos, challenges: “to cede is not to
consent” (Héritier, 2002:201). Héritier calls this binary classification
precisely the “differential valency of the sexes”, which justifies the
discrimination of women, associated with the construction of a
symbolic universe around the superiority of the male anatomic
body.32
For these reasons, the study about initiation rites must not put aside
the question of sexuality as an “historical attribute of individuals, of
society and of cultures: of their relations, their structures, their
institutions and their spheres of life” (Lagarde, 1997). Indeed, as
Foucault (1987) states, sexuality is a preferred field in which
knowledge and norms are developed that are guided by the systems
of power. And here we talk about the body as a colonized territory,
subject to control (and self-control), where prohibitions and taboos
are shaped and manifest themselves in the discourse, turning it into a

32 In many rural areas of Mozambique, women are still considered a mere container
of the foetus. This is one of the reasons that justify the absence of the use of
condoms: for “not killing the child” contained in the sperm.
89
place where power is exercised. It is this perspective that, breaking
with the naturalization of the systems of domination, namely
concerning the control over reproduction, will allow interacting with
the most diverse fields of the social, cultural and political realities,
introducing an analysis of power in all spaces in which the norms are
produced and reproduced aimed at establishing mechanisms of
control social. It is in this framework, continuing to use the
Foucauldian and Bourdieusian reasoning as basis, that the body is
simultaneously a text and an agent of culture, since, transmitting and
uncovering models of cultural and social hierarchization, it expresses
itself as a place of control and vigilance, aimed at impeding the
disruption of the social order. These mechanisms of control and
hierarchization allow the legitimation of the power which is produced
through the “consent”/cession of the dominated with respect to an
authority which imposes itself as necessary for the social recognition
of women and men.

3.5. Sexualisation of power/ sexualized power

On the basis of the presupposition already enunciated in his work,

Foucault refers to the knowledge/power relation expressed in the
dominant discourse legitimating the hierarchies and inequalities
between women and men, Lauretis (2000), inspired by Foucault’s
“technologies of sex” (the mechanisms characterising disciplinary
power), develops what she calls “technologies of gender” which are
mechanisms guiding the way in which one experiences sexuality, in
reference to a social and political order shaping social gender
relations as power relations. This means that the technologies of
gender, reproducing inequality, bring about the production of the
legitimate normative discourse about distinct values and practices. In
the case of our study the technologies of gender (as processes of
establishing female domination) take us to the control over the
female body, for example through the violence exerted on girls with
the lengthening of the labia minora. This practice, while providing
knowledge about othuna/matinji, as a way of sexually serving the
male, also constitutes a resource to “keep” him. This may mean that
the multidimensional mechanisms of control of the female body
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provide the techniques used to manipulate the male body without
this calling into question the normative patterns of sexuality.33 In
other words, the countervailing power “techniques” are not part of a
change of power relations, but are rather, and in a particularly violent
way, part of the maintenance of a gender order in which the
countervailing power is in itself a non-power, in which the woman is
not a subject of pleasure and desire. In these cases, women exert on
themselves a huge self-vigilance, seeking through the application of
their knowledge to conform the male answer to what they think are
male expectations.
However, Foucault’s perspective of power is object of a lot of
criticism which, according to a series of authors, errs because of the
little attention paid to other ways of shaping power, outweighing
sexuality as the key question and thus not covering the complexity of
the gender order. Rocha (2005), quoting Kerfoot and Knights,34
states that:
“though recognizing that women are often subjugated as a
result of the exercise of power, Foucault’s works neither
confront the problem of material inequality nor the
production of hierarchical divisions between the sexes,
between masculinity and femininity, between management
and work”.
Giddens, also quoted by Rocha (2005:283),35 criticises Foucault in
the same way, because “what he calls power – that power acting
mysteriously at its own will - was in some fundamental aspects
gender power. It were the women who were debilitated, withdrawn
from the centre of areas of modernity and to whom the capacity to

33 A young woman in Cabo Delgado told us, with enormous despair, that she
“invented” sexual techniques every night to keep the interest of her partner alive,
focusing herself on the pleasure she could give.
34 D. Kerfoot and D. Knights. (1994). "Into the Realm of the Fearful: Power, Identity

and the Gender Problematic". In: H. L. Radtke and H. J. Stam, Power/Gender -

Social Relations in Theory and Practice. London, Sage Publications, pp. 67-88.
35 Giddens, A. (2001). A transformação da intimidade: sexualidade, amor e erotismo

nas sociedades modernas. São Paulo: UNESP. This study is equally referred to in
this book, in the 2003 edition.
91
enjoy sex was refused - exactly when they started an infra-structural
revolution”.
We think, however, that the approach of power developed by
Foucault, not defining what “it is” but how it is exerted through
mechanisms that act on the other, condition her/his practices, makes
it possible to analyse the internal logic which mobilizes strategies of
power and countervailing power within social relations and in
contexts which adjust and adapt themselves. We do not believe, as
the authors referred to above by Rocha state, that the analysis of
gender power, according to Foucault’s theoretical proposal, limits the
understanding of the contexts of the production of inequality. On the
other hand, when operationalizing the question of power, we think
that it is not incompatible to pay attention to the structure as concept
bringing us both to its power of transformation, and to its power of
domination (Giddens, 2000). Similarly, we think that Touraine’s
approach (1996), repositioning the power of social actors as
producers of reality, is fundamental, if we want to understand the
processes of subjectivation and the possibilities of social change.
From a methodological point of view, though these currents appear
to point to differentiated orientations that cannot easily be
reconciled, with respect to our study we seek to intersect the
conceptual frameworks (insofar they can be intersected), so that we
can question our study object in a more integrated way.
The analysis of sexuality (as an outstanding field of power relations,
revealing, reproducing and producing domination), preferred by
Foucault, has been appropriated by a large diversity of feminist
theories, as one of the objects of research (and also from a point of
view of methodological approach) to take the formal inequalities
produced in the public space to the private domain.36
Loyola (1999), referring to sexuality, states that the social and
cultural inequalities were being constructed over the biological
differences and it is in this sense that we intend to reflect on how the
mechanisms of control over the body are organised, observing both

36 Gender relations are constituents, though not the only ones, of power relations.
92
the maintenance of the traditional mechanisms of the composition of
sexuality and the production of elements which threaten this order. It
is the case of contemporary societies in which the normativity of
sexuality is subject to the appearance of new rules or to the softening
of others, leading both to a contestation of the traditional models
opposing the male to the female, and to resistance on the part of a
patriarchal culture which bases its raison d’être on the existence of
sexual binarisms. As Bozon (2004) analyses, the greater autonomy
achieved by women, through the increase of their level of education
and employment, does not find expression in autonomy with respect
to control over their sexuality. What we observe is that, and this is a
reality in Mozambique, mainly in the rural areas, due to the limited
access to resources, namely regarding family planning and mainly
regarding a say on the part of girls and women, the gender roles are
maintained with respect to reproduction, the initiative of sexual
intercourse and the display of desire and pleasure, though more or
less traversed by tensions. As Bozon states:
“men continue to be considered the main agents of the sexual
act and female sexual desire continues to be largely
disregarded, as if the place of women should remain limited
to affectionateness” (2004:73).
The purpose of the research about rites is the production of evidence,
or not, of how the differentiated (but not autonomous) forms of the
construction of masculinity and femininity are influenced by
mechanisms based on a relation of domination. Making this question
more profound and calling into question the dichotomies in the
analysis of the construction of masculinity, Vale de Almeida states
that to understand the relations of domination implies to understand
“how structure shapes individuals and how individuals, through their
actions, bring about structures” (2000:147).
What is interesting today, and in the specific case of Mozambique
and due to the public visibility of HIV and AIDS, is the projection and
interference of a discourse, constructed in the context of the health
sciences, to a domain for centuries considered and lived as private. It
is important to observe if this contamination of the modern, with all

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its paraphernalia of advice about the use of condoms, puts the
cultural model at risk, which may be expressed, for example, in the
increase of negotiating power concerning the use of condoms or in
greater sexual freedom for women. On the other hand, it will be
necessary to keep in mind, and this can be demonstrated by a
comparative analysis between the older and the more recent
generations, the variation between cultural models which, though
meant to be fixed, are subject to change. We are also interested to get
to know if these models allow us to refer to the appearance of
alterations in the social gender relations, or if, on the contrary, we
continue to witness a patriarchalised structure, even when the
subordinate condition produces elements which, being capable to
shape strategies of counter-domination, preserve nevertheless the
gender inequality.
In the same way, Vale de Almeida sees “gender as a system of
symbols and meanings influenced by and influencing practice and
cultural experiences” (2000: 139).
In our research it is interesting to understand how girls and boys
construct themselves as gender with respect to differentiated cultural
spaces (in terms of urban/rural and ethnicity), i.e., how the teachings
about sexuality are genderized and which are the most important
elements of this genderization. Stating it more clearly, when the
construction of masculinity and femininity is observed, it is
ascertained, as Vale de Almeida states, that women and men are
subjected to a model of domination, but while in this power structure
women are situated in the subordination which dominates them,
men, being victims of this domination, are first and foremost
dominated by their domination. In this sense it is established that,
through the cultural heritage, the male sexual identity embodies
dispositions, revealed by what has been learned, to render pregnant,
to protect and to provide for.
Referring to the construction of masculinity, some authors formulate
the inexistence of a single model of masculinity and characterise
hegemonic masculinity as standardized by the heterosexuality
expressed in discourses, practices, the occupation of spaces, the use

94
of resources (whether material or symbolic), in how they assess
themselves and assess others and also in how they exert self-control
and control over others (Vale de Almeida, 2000; Rubio, 2001). This
means that the culturally constrained virility is changing constantly.
In the same way, in a single society there are multiple meanings
attributed to masculinity (depending on the social group, the religion
and the profession), without however apparently ceasing to move
towards the same model of domination. In the same way, a study
conducted by Gutmann (2009) analyses the stereotypes of
masculinity, considering the queer theory as fundamental for
questioning the existence of diverse sexualities, calling into question
and pulling to pieces the naturalization of heterosexuality, opening
the field for the appearance of new objects of study which get away
from the reductionism of a single model of heterosexuality and
homosexuality, introducing the so-called marginal questions, such as
the case of men who do not feel the predictable sexual needs imposed
by the cultural normativity.
In the case of the initiation rites, in which boys learn, by distinction
and contrast to girls, to be men (incorporating and naturalizing the
representations, practices and symbols of masculinity), tensions and
ambiguities are produced when, for example, they enter into contact
with realities in which the providers are their mothers or when the
girls take the sexual initiative. This brings us to the need, faced with
the impossibility of a coherent hegemonic model preserving male
domination as it is conceived and learned, to identify which resources
exist or are used to maintain the structure of domination, since any
approach to the female disqualifies them. Rubio (2001) observes
that, even when the gender relations seem more symmetrical, in the
case of sharing domestic tasks or of women holding public positions,
the principles of domination are not called into question because
these cases are considered concessions.

3.6. Sexuality and human rights

Although we deal with this subject in the course of the research, we

are having difficulties with the identification, made by some authors,

95
of the female rites as spaces of freedom where women, while they are
singing and dancing to songs with a playful or abusive content for
males, learn to treat and to respect their husband (Anrfred, 2010). As
we will have the opportunity to elaborate on, we feel compelled to
point out, at once, that it is precisely in the marginal stage (in the
sense of “marginal” to the group) that these phenomena of
transgression take place (and may take place), where chaos is
established, the social order is suspended, to be restored and
strengthened again with the final ceremonies of aggregation, where
the girls present themselves exposing their femininity to the group,
which means “to be ready” in the language used by many of the
female and male interviewees.37 “To be ready” must be understood as
having acquired the knowledge and “gained” the qualities making of
the initiated girls beings prepared for the other.38
How much and how the girls learn in the rites about their sexuality
does not allow us to analyse this learning in a simple, exotic and
linear way, but in a perspective, as Rivière (1996) states, that the
function of the rites is the establishment of the cohesion of the order,
“expressing social relations made visible by staking the very
social condition of those performing it, in a game of
recognition and mutual oppositions exceeding the limits of
the ritual time and space” (1996:70).
In this sense, we agree with Bozon (2004) when he shows how in
different societies, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, the initiation
to female sexuality occurs from a very early age, aiming at the
fulfilment of their reproductive role, i.e., the policing of their sex life.
In the same way, the monogamy of women, even in a situation of a
polygamous union, and the lack of sexual initiative should be
understood as common ways to exert control over the female body.

37 Authors such as Victor Turner (1974) make multiple references to ceremonies in

which the songs of both sexes express the depreciation of the opposed sex, making
clear allusions to the sex organs, without destructuring the order.
38 The ‘’other’’ means all those who, mandated by a gender order, make it effective.

This means the male, but also the whole of relatives holding power in the control of
married girls, as is the case of godmothers, mothers-in-law, sisters and brothers of
the partner.
96
This does not mean that male sexuality is not subject to monitoring
expressed in the need to manifest his virility in opposition to the
“passivity” or apparent “passivity” of the woman.39
As Bozon (2004) states with respect to the myths of sexual freedom
(relative to sub-Saharan Africa) instituted in the West from the 18th
century until the present day,
“the sexuality of the other is frequently used in the
construction of national and cultural stereotypes revealing in
their way the relations existing between peoples, and at the
same time the dreams and fantasies of an age” (2004:106).
Still regarding the construction of sexuality, a few studies conducted
in the region mention the markers defining the start of the initiation
rites, their functions and ceremonial contents (Munthali and Zulu,
2007). With respect to girls, the practices are recognised that are
exerted on their bodies, supporting their construction as women,
through work, but mainly through the perceptions about their body,
learning from very early on to manipulate sex (mainly through the
lengthening of the labia minora), to use instruments during the rites
(which may go as far as penetration), to know herbs and “medicines”.
In many regions of Mozambique it is possible to establish that
through these paraphernalia the girls learn to respond to a social
order hierarchizing them with respect to the other, whether through
motherhood or through knowing how to give sexual pleasure.
Starting from the presupposition that through these practices the
girls learn to recognise their sexuality, it is sometimes not taken into
account that this construction of womanhood (irrespective of the
pleasure they may have with genital manipulation) results from a
cultural model constraining the practice of sexuality to a normative

39 The defenders of polygamy as a cultural manifestation pay little attention to its

meaning as a form of control over the production and reproduction capacity of the
women. It is this same logic which explains the bizarre affirmation that it are the
older women who want and look for partners who will limit their work load (also
understood from the point of view of their sex life). The belief that age restricts
desire and sexual competence falls within the patriarchal ideology that women and
men are naturally not only situated at different, but also at unequal levels in the
framework of sexual and social relations.
97
defining and limiting their rights. With respect to the restrictions of
rights imposed by culture it seems to us that when it is for example
stated that men don’t accept or despise women who have not been
subjected to genital manipulation, the existence of a dominant
structure directed to a female subordinate condition is clear. Even if
women may enjoy sexual “actions”, it seems to be clear that these
“actions” constitute constraints aiming at formatting the social roles
and functions of women. If we don’t take into account that culture
cannot serve to justify the continuation of a sexuality restricted by
androcentrism, we slip, as some Western literature does, into cultural
relativism. This induces us to think that human rights of the “others”,
in this case of the Mozambican girls, should be restricted on the basis
of the social and cultural context shaping them as a non-person,
contrary to the standards defining the universality of rights as a
conquest for all human beings, irrespective of the geographical space
and local specificities.
It appears evident that the process of construction of the female
sexual identity aims at the naturalization of male domination,
irrespective of the exotism which the practices of domestication of
the female body may suggest to views less familiar with gender
violence in Mozambique. Although not so much as a process of
identity construction, and more as a set of vaginal practices
suffered/adopted by girls and women, some studies describe in detail
a series of activities exercised on/against the body of women in the
course of their life (Bagnol and Mariano, 2011). What seems strange,
however, is the link of these practices with the couple’s pleasure,
without taking into account that all of them are based on a paradigm
of the non-choice on the part of women as its presupposition. I.e.,
access to sexual and reproductive rights is determined by a model
constructing them as non-persons, conditioning them, from birth, in
the Foucauldian perspective, to their transformation into docile
bodies, apparently conformed to and even “enthusiastic” about the
place and role reserved to them. In the analysis of these practices we
think it is necessary to pay attention to the conceptualization of the
cultural model which determines that even the activities of sexual
hygiene which are perceived with neutrality with respect to the

98
construction of female sexuality, are part of an order of power
constructing bodies and organizing differentiated and unequal
gender identities.40
On the other hand and following the tracks of Foucault, attributes are
validated on the body and on the sexualized body and means are
agreed upon that are used to discipline it, on the basis of identities
expressing themselves through a sexual difference which informs and
orders the gender hierarchy. In this research we will seek to analyse
how the rites, through the information they produce, the dances and
counsels they use, can act on the sexuality(ies), creating a normative
system demonstrating a gender order. In the same way, we also
intend to identify the processes, strategies and mechanisms of
resistance used by the initiated girls and boys to choose and/or
refuse the “discipline” constraining sexuality to the cultural model.
In this process, in which the youths construct attributes, codes and
ways of communication, we seek to analyse how individual identities
(in which each individual recognises her/himself through
representations and practices) go together and/or conflict with the
collective identities conferred by the group. It is important to
recognise the mechanisms which the rites originate to inculcate
values and behaviours and how the initiated girls and boys execute
appropriations and renunciations subjectivating them, rupturing or
negotiating the dispositions transmitted by the cultural heritage and
confirmed in the initiation rites.
The common experience lived in the rites implies specific forms in
which the girls and boys recognise themselves and give expression to
a collective memory. In this study we will seek to recognise which are
the elements allowing to reach this feeling of belonging and how it,
even being contentious, provides requisites that serve for

40 This model is all the more effective insofar as it develops mechanisms of

reproduction and legitimation of the inequality, as is the case (in the urban
environment) of many women with very high levels of schooling, who said that
their daughters will participate in the rites. Some of these female informants
recognise the violent nature of the rituals but use the argument of “our culture”
and of family and social pressure brought to bear on them.
99
identification with the group. This question, elaborated on by
Maffesoli (1988), addresses the individual investment in the
collective(s), through individual (and dynamic) forms of accession
characterised by transience, by going around and by the plurality of
“communities” of belonging. Maffesoli’s theoretical proposal,
highlighting mobility and the permanent relation between the
differentiation and the construction of new identity configurations, is
particularly important for the interpretation of the meanings which
the girls and boys given to the ritual teachings (particularly in the
construction of womanhood and manhood), while it allows to
understand the mechanisms of identification or non-identification,
with respect to the cultural and social order.
In view of the questions raised by the theoretical debate, in this work
we will seek to respond to three big orders of problems: the first one
concerns the construction of a culture as resulting from human
experience, which (with an existence that is not independent of other
domains of life) acts on the representations and practices of the
agents. But while culture produces the meanings which individuals
give to the images about themselves and about others, and guides the
communication processes through gestures and discourses, culture is
also subject to change, linking exogenous factors, such as the
existence of public policies and legal normatives, with endogenous
factors that have to do with the contexts in which individuals are
situated, with the spaces where they go around, with the acquired
dispositions and also with mechanisms that characterise the
processes and mechanisms of subjectivation. This means that the
analysis about the function of the initiation rites deals on the one
hand with the elements of cohesion that guide the common
appropriation of the teachings and on the other hand with the
adjustments/changes/ruptures of the patterns that set the norms of
the representations and practices.
The second order of problems concerns the strategies of negotiation
and alliance between the various agents who, taking up a position in
the power structure, aim at acting in favour of cooperation and/or of
conflict, of the preservation of the rites or, on the contrary, of their
change. This question poses the need to analyse how the social and
100
symbolic capital of the agents are played and shifted, agents who in
the State seek to “domesticate” the rites and the strategies of the
leaders, matrons and masters who try to readjust old and new
sources of authority and legitimation. For us it is important to
understand how, in the performance of the rites, power relations are
shaped. For example, how the official discourse of human rights
seeks on the one hand to harmonize and on the other hand to
intervene in the representations and practices of the matrons and
masters, and how they use the mechanisms of the State (such as the
discourse of HIV and AIDS and the change of the ritual calendar) to
bring about a mediation between the State and “tradition”. As
guardians of culture, the leaders (and the matrons and masters who
appear as important elements for the preservation of traditional
power), resorting to the defence of the Mozambican culture (and
reserving this cultural right), develop strategies of accommodation
with a modernity conferred by State bodies, such as schools. At the
same time, these leaders attempt to keep some separation (or also
overtures, depending on the contexts), strengthened by the moral
superiority given to them by the “naturalization” of the
representativeness of the populations.41
The third order of problems concerns the contents and pedagogy of
the teachings of the initiation rites and the processes of their
embodiment into the identities of individuals. This means to take
into account the system of meanings that individuals, particularly
girls and boys, ascribe to the body and to sexuality. The body as text
and agent of culture reproduces the dominant cultural order and
produces, through adjustments and preadaptations, new meanings.
The disciplinary power regulating the relations of interaction and the
processes of interpretation is visible in the way in which individuals
think and exercise their sexuality. In this respect we seek to identify
the mechanisms controlling sexuality on the basis of the asymmetric
construction of masculinity and femininity and in this sense to

41 The reasoning that community courts are bodies acting according to cultural
consensuses, withdrawing implicitly some “value” from the formal administration
of justice system, can be understood in a logic of negation of the power structure
that organizes social relations in the communities.
101
understand how the gender hierarchies are constructed and
legitimated. In this research we intend to study in depth how the
circulation through different spaces and contamination with the
discourse of rights can change the perceptions of individuals with
respect to the interdictions and attributes conferred to sexuality. It is
in this sense that the identities presuppose an interaction subject to
the recognition of the codes, rules and conventions which must not
be perceived as separated from an order of power exerted through
the tensions existing in this interaction. Social relations reveal the
norms which, as Goffman (1974) states, can be symbolically
structured obligations and expectations. Sexual identities,
constructed from representations and practices, determine the
position which each one of the individuals ascribes to her/himself
and to others with respect to sex and its practice. The way in which
individuals conform, or not, with what is expected, allows to
understand how the prescriptions regarding sex are based on a model
of domination subject to countervailing power strategies that may
change or strengthen the power structure. It is in this sense that we
can also speak of a conflict between the personal experience of
pleasure and desire and the social representations of female sexuality
and, in the case of the Mozambican legislation, the current draft
Penal Code, which maintains an entire conceptual structure based on
a patriarchal culture revealed, for example, in the classification of
crimes against honour, cases of sexual abuse of women.

4. Dimensions of the analysis

In the framework of feminist theories the definition of the

dimensions of the analysis is indebted to a conceptual apparatus
based on interdisciplinarity, seeking to retain and combine
approaches from various currents in the field of the social sciences.
The main ones are the following: the constructionist position
allowing us to look at social relations from a multiplicity of gender
systems, continuously disputed and subject to change, originated
from the relation between a social structure acting on the actors’
system of meanings and the fluidity and search for new meanings by

102
individuals, in a movement which is simultaneously contesting the
order and adapting (adjusting) and recreating their identity.
As stated above, in this approach the power relations that are
constituent of gender relations should be seen as plural and not fixed,
determining and being determined by the changes produced in
social, political and cultural contexts, though many of them still
reproducing the dominant male-centred social standard. This way to
observe reality allows new and more comprehensive interpretations
of the initiation rites, namely in the understanding of the alterations
in the functions and agency of the rites, where the normativity is
influenced by factors related to their inclusion in contexts marked by
modernity. If we conceive modernity as the existence of institutions
such as schools and hospitals, and the interaction between powers
seeking the same or different sources of legitimation, we observe the
production of strategies that aim both at the adjustment of old power
relations to new contexts, and the appearance and development of
mechanisms of rupture, questioning the traditional models of
subordination. In fact, sexual identities are not static, unchanging
entities, aprioristic data defining what is most fundamental in an
individual. They are continuously being rearranged inside the self
and in the social relations established with the other.
For example, in the realities studied the mechanisms that attribute a
function of cohesion and belonging to a group to the rites are
reformulated or replaced by others, or are given new meanings. The
constructionist approach is fundamental to analyse how in the
sexualized bodies the embodiment of the norm is processed, and the
subjectivation of meanings and attributes, which organizes the social
utility of the bodies, is brought about. On the other hand, it is
necessary to add to this construction of the bodies, which
simultaneously adheres to the representations constructed about it
(representations expressed in the continuously constructed social
relations), the deconstructionist perspective which allows to
understand “the destabilization in the course of the reiteration of the
social norms (…) because it is in this process of reiteration of the
norms that instabilities flow in spaces for deconstruction” (Pereira,
2004:188).
103
One of the most important conceptual tools for the development of
the categories of analysis, as we have already exhaustively referred to,
was Foucault’s contribution about the concept of power and its
application to the study of sexuality(ies).42 The body is the point of
reference of the analysis. The body reveals and transmits with great
symbolic efficacy the values and norms that guide the models of
social, cultural and political hierarchization. Power is thus
understood as action on the behaviours of others: the body, gestures
and feelings (in action and in reaction) are organised on the basis of
constraints that imprison women and men in a totalitarian and
unequal vision of social relations, aiming, through sexual and
reproductive control, at hierarchising roles and functions.
It was this apparatus that allowed us to identify the mechanisms that,
acting on the bodies, transform them into docile bodies, expressed in
the discourse that contains in itself the legitimacy of the power that is
exerted on the body and on sexuality. This is a power which
oppresses, which creates interdictions, but fundamentally it is a
power which sets the norms, which, naturalizing inequality, renders
it effective and acceptable, while it excludes what is situated at the
margin, what subverts the norm. Through the disciplinary apparatus,
the bodies enhance themselves to legitimate a certain type of
sexuality related to socially established standards of manhood and
womanhood, which are originating from social and cultural
representations constructed on the basis of the biological differences
between the sexes and transmitted through the rites. These
internalized representations are fundamental references for the
constitution of the identity of men and women.
On the other hand, the operationalization of the concept of habitus
(Bourdieu, 1989) allows us to break with the binary classification of
male and female, on the basis of the naturalization of the structure of
domination. For the definition of the dimensions of analysis it was

42 The question of sexual complexity and diversity is extremely important to

understand that sexuality and sexual behaviour are, in all cultures, subject to
gender roles, the construction of social identities and, consequently, are
experienced in a different way by men and women.

104
important to recognise the dispositions embodied by individuals and
that act symbolically in male domination. This perspective allows us
to recognise the weight of structures on the construction of
normativity, through mechanisms of communication, whether
through discourses or through gestures. Discourses and gestures that
reveal the symbolic violence exerted on women, as is the case of
ritualized girls who lower their eyes and cease to participate in the
classroom.
It is the link between these theoretical frameworks that allows us to
analyse the initiation rites as instances that, with the function of
giving cohesion to the group, shape masculinity and femininity, in
mirrors game, in which inequality instituted in difference is
naturalized as true and essential. With the proposed dimensions we
also intend to understand how different social, cultural and political
contexts act in a differentiated way on the representations and
practices of individuals and how these individuals ascribe new
meanings to the embodied values, whether by readjustment or by
rejection.

Graphical Expression of the Model of Analysis

Dimensions Indicators
Function/objectives of Information (what).
the rites Training (about what).
Changes in the function and representation of the
role of the rites.
Elements of cohesion to construct the ritual unit.
Agency of the rites Legitimate agents to direct the rites:
• What confers legitimacy: kinship, age, etc.
• The material and symbolic resources used
for legitimation.
Mechanisms/ceremonies The time spent: rituals of short, medium and long
of the rites duration.
Activities and ceremonies:
• The distribution of time for each one of the
activities.

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 Material and symbolic mechanisms (and their
meanings) used to conform behaviours: on the
body and sexuality.

Material and symbolic mechanisms used to

conform the recognition of the self and of the
other: the question of violence.
Values and behaviours Teachings about the sexualisation of the body:
transmitted to the • The start of sex life.
youths and adults
subjected to the rites and • The question of sexual initiative and the
differences with the place of desire and of pleasure.
teachings in the family, • Sexually transmitted diseases and the use of
at school and in groups condoms.
of friends. • Cultural practices relative to control over the
body.
• The relation between sexes and within sexes.

Teachings of male and female qualities (what is

being a good man and what is being a good
woman):
• “Authority”.
• Resignation.
• Conflict management.
• The education of children according to sex.
• Relations with partners.
• The home as the woman’s place and the
“street” as the man’s place.
• The construction of the family hierarchy
according to sex and age.
Expectations of the Staying at school/ profession, motherhood and
ritualized youths and marriage:
gender structure. Past • The number of daughters/sons and its
and present. meaning.
• What is a good partner.
• Access to resources (salary, savings, etc.) and
control over the resources.
• Say over family planning, sexuality,
education of the children and work.

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5. The sample

The criterion for the definition of the sample was the distribution of
the main ethnolinguistic groups in the Northern and Central regions.
In the pilot study, in addition to having studied the initiation rites
conducted by Makhuwa and Makonde groups in Maputo City, a brief
survey was done in Matutuíne District in Maputo Province, with the
objective to identify the relation between early marriages and
initiation rites, taking into account the absence of their performance
in this area of the country.
For the sample we selected Sofala Province (Búzi and Cheringoma
Districts and Beira City), Cabo Delgado Province (Mecúfi and
Macomia Districts and Pemba Town) and Zambézia Province
(Mocuba, Alto Molocué and Gurué Districts). The objective of our
work in the provincial capitals was in the first place to identify the
policies and sensitiveness of the State sectors and civil society
organisations with respect to the implications of the initiation rites
for dropping out and the measures adopted to reverse the situation.
In the second place, we intended to analyse the changes occurred in
the rites conducted in an urban context, mainly with respect to the
space, duration and ceremonies, relating their efficacy in identity
construction with the rural areas in which the fieldwork was done.
The following ethnolinguistic groups were object of this study: Ndau,
Sena (Sofala Province), Makonde and Makhuwa (Cabo Delgado
Province) and Chuwabo and Makhuwa Lomué (Zambézia Province).
The main objective of the selection of female and male students
attending grade 7 (EP2) as target group was to analyse the role of the
initiation rites in the construction of social identities, with emphasis
on sexual identities. It was also our intention to recognise if school
attendance and the circulation through other spaces and groups
resulted in some change in the processes of embodiment and
subjectivation of the teachings, mainly regarding hierarchies and the
gender order. This means to identify on the one hand how the gender
mandate form part of the ritual practices and on the other hand how
the discriminatory marks were/are object of countervailing power

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strategies that may mean, or not, changes in the system of
inequalities between the two sexes.

Table 1: Number of interviews conducted for the research on

initiation rites

Zambézia
Delgado

Maputo
Sofala

Total
Cabo
Provinces

Women and girl 31 35 15 9 90

students: Individual
interviews
Women and girl 7 12 11 1 31
students: Focus groups43
Men and boy students: 26 31 19 9 85
Individual interviews
Men and boy students: 7 14 10 - 31
Focus groups
Mixed focus groups 3 3 1 - 7
Total 74 95 56 19 244
121 Women
123 Men
Semi-structured interviews were applied to the target group and the
reference groups with the objective to analyse more profoundly the
representations and practices of the female and male informants. The
scripts were not distinguished by sex, but by the type of information
that each one of the groups of female and male informants could
provide us.
Our key concern, mainly in the interviews with the reference groups
(male and female teachers, matrons, masters and traditional
leaders), was to be able to study in depth the markers that determine
the performance of the rites, the greater or lesser degree of formality
in the fulfilment of the sequentiality of the ceremonies and means

43 The focus groups involved on average 4 to 6 people.

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used, and the differentiation of elements provided by the rites for the
construction of female and male identities.
With the interviews of staff of State sectors (education and health)
and of civil society organisations that work with the youth and/or
with sexual and reproductive health, our main objective was to
identify their representations of the functions of the rites, the existing
changes, the levels of intervention achieved and the link between
public policies and discourses about rights and cultural practices.
Thus, in general we sought to follow the scripts, according to the
initial proposal, but due to factors such as the content of the
discourse which sometimes responded to the questions that would be
raised subsequently, or even due to the shyness of the interviewees
(particularly girl and boy students) it was necessary to introduce
more “inoffensive” questions, such as their expectations for the
future, somehow changing the course of the interview. The research
team, though recognising that this method could have consequences
for the treatment of the discourses, often allowed the interview to
flow to unforeseen subjects, such as the absence of desks in the
classrooms, the interest/disinterest in some subjects, before
introducing the questions contained in the scripts. However, only
exceptionally, and for reasons related to the absolute silence of girl
and boy students, useful answers for the analysis of the theme were
not obtained.
The interviews were coded, taking into account the spatial unit, sex
and function of the interviewee (Annex 1).
Taking into consideration the nature of the study, preference was
given to the qualitative treatment of the interviews, though existing
tendencies and patterns were also taken into account, which enabled
us to obtain approximate percentages of the answers of the groups to
some key questions.
Brief information about Mozambique
According to the 2007 Census, Mozambique has a population of
20,579,265 inhabitants, with an urban population of 6,282,632,
equivalent to 30% of the total. As there is a total of 9,897,116 men

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and 10,682,149 women, the masculinity proportion is 48,7. Thirty
percent of the population lives in towns and the remainder in rural
areas. The main towns are Maputo (1,178,116 inhabitants), Matola
(671,556) and Beira (431,583).
Mozambique is administratively organised in 11 provinces (Niassa,
Cabo Delgado and Nampula in the North, Zambézia, Tete, Manica
and Sofala in the Centre, and Inhambane, Gaza, Maputo and Maputo
City in the South), with 128 districts, subdivided in administrative
posts and localities. There are 33 municipalities comprising the main
urban centres, including the 10 towns with the status of provincial
capital and Maputo, the capital of the country, which has the status of
a province.44
Education
The overall illiteracy rate is 50.4%, while for women it is 64.2% and
for men 34.6%.45 The fact that the literacy rate for men is twice as
high as the rate for women denounces how over the years women
have systematically stayed further away from access to written
information, while they are equally underprivileged concerning the
understanding of oral and written discourses only transmitted in the
Portuguese language. This situation, in addition to aggravating the
claim for rights, creates barriers to having access to formal
employment. A study conducted in 2009 (Osório and Silva, 2009)
shows that, though by law the local advisory councils should
comprise 30% of women, the level of participation is very low and
local financing aimed at the execution of projects to fight poverty is,
in most cases observed, given to men. This makes women highly
dependent on family agriculture, with limited abilities to increase the
efficacy of land use and benefit and the commercialization of the
produce.
With regard to formal education, in 201046 there were 13,927 primary
and secondary education schools in the country, 10,444 of which of

44 INE (2007). III General Census of Population and Housing.

45 INE (2010). Statistical Yearbook of Mozambique.
46 INE (2010). Statistical Yearbook of Mozambique.

110
the 1st level (EP1), 2,990 of the 2nd level (EP2), 374 1st level secondary
education schools (ES1) and 119 2nd level secondary schools (ES2). In
the EP1 and EP2 schools there were 5,263,399 students enrolled and
821,676 in ES1 and ES2. The EP1 level comprises the largest number
of enrolled students (4,385,557) and while in primary education
gender asymmetries are not very accentuated, in secondary
education the number of girl students is very small - 66,038 girl
students against 91,242 boy students. We call attention to the
seriousness of the big differences between the attendance rates in
primary education and in secondary education, for boys as well as for
girls, but particularly for the latter. Also concerning secondary
education, of the existing total of 2,890 teachers, only 496 teach in
secondary education.
Health
There are 1,430 health units in the whole country, 1,220 of which
health centres, 157 health posts, 5 general hospitals, 21 rural
hospitals, 16 district hospitals, 7 provincial hospitals and 4
specialised central hospitals.47
Religion
According to the 2007 Census, the religion most widely professed by
the population in Mozambique is the Catholic Christian religion
(28.4% of the total population of the country). In the second place
are those who profess the Islamic religion (17.9%), and the Zionist
religion comes in the third place (15.5%). It is observed that 18.7% of
the population does not profess any religion.48
The characterisation by spatial area helps to understand some of the
main problems existing in the areas of health and education and their
possible correlation with early marriages and school abandonment
(Annex 2).

47 Information provided by the Directorate of Planning and Cooperation of MISAU

(2012).
48 INE (2007). III General Census of Population and Housing.

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112
Chapter II - Legislation and Public
Policies
In this chapter we will present the main international, regional and
national instruments for the promotion and protection of the rights
of women and children. Considering that our target group comprises
minors (children between 12 and 18 years), it was felt necessary to
describe not only the legal framework regulating human rights for
women and children, but particularly the public policies and
mechanisms developed in Mozambique that harmonize International
Law with the legislation and political strategies produced in the
country. This information, allowing us to link the Law with the
policies and actions of the Mozambican State in favour of human
rights for women and children will support, through the treatment of
the data collected in the field, the identification of the successes
achieved and the existing gaps in the protection of human rights.
To analyse these documents we resort to the method of the
Mainstreaming Gender Equality in Europe (MAGEEQ) project.49
This methodology makes an analysis of the political processes,
development, improvement and their evaluation, in favour of the
embodiment by the actors involved in their formulation of a gender
equality perspective, in all policies, at all levels and in all phases.
The analysis developed by this methodology allows us to analyse
legislation and the strategic plans for gender equality. Paraphrasing
Osório and Silva (2008), this tool allows us to make a critique of the
public policies for education through a diagnosis of the problem and
its prognosis and solution, with a view to move towards gender
equality.
At this point it is relevant to identify some of the international,
regional and national instruments that promote human rights and

49 http://www.ucm.es/info/mageeq/proyecto.htm, accessed on 29 January 2013.

113
contain mechanisms that stimulate the commitment of the States
with gender equality. We will also make reference to the public
policies and institutional procedures adopted by Mozambique for the
protection of human rights of women and children.

1. International instruments

Although the legislation at international as well as at national level

does not refer clearly to initiation rites as cultural institutions which,
intervening in the social gender relations, shape the subordinate
social roles and functions of women, we consider it important to
identify the mechanisms and procedures for the protection of
children and women that seek to promote gender equality.
The main international milestone that propelled gender policy was
the Beijing Platform for Action of the 1995 World Conference on
Women, in which the principle of the integration (mainstreaming) of
gender equality was introduced.
Since then, several countries have adopted a gender perspective in
the development of their legislation and public policies, so as to
decrease asymmetries in this scope. Thus, in this chapter we seek to
identify the contexts that contributed to the integration of gender
into the legal mechanisms, plans and strategies, and evaluate the
progress and challenges of these public policies, having in view the
broadening of human rights, mainly of women and children.
While the 1924 Geneva Declaration, targeting children’s rights, and
the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (stating equal rights
of peoples, nations, states, women and men), are important
instruments for the definition of general principles based on equal
rights, the adoption in 1979 of the Convention on the Elimination of
All Forms of Discrimination Against Women by the United Nations
defines the structural nature of gender inequality.
Concerning children, the international legislation explicitly
mentioning children’s rights as separate from the rights of adults was
the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child, adopted on 26
September 1924, drawing attention to the following aspects:

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 (i) “Means for the material and spiritual development of the
child;
(ii) Support in situations of hunger, disease, backwardness,
orphanhood or delinquency;
(iii) Priority to receive relief in times of distress;
(iv) Protection against exploitation;
(v) The existence of education for life in society”.50
This Declaration did not have the necessary impact for full
international recognition of children’s rights, due to the fact that it
does not presuppose compulsory enforcement by the States and it
was taken as a declaration of the obligations of men and women of all
nations.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, approved in 1948 by the
General Assembly of the United Nations, defines a series of precepts
aimed at realizing the protection of the rights of human beings. With
regard to children’s rights, article 25 of the Declaration states that
children hold the right to special care and assistance. In clause 2 of
this article it says that motherhood and childhood are entitled to
special care and assistance and that all children, whether born in or
out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.
From this mechanism the need was clear to develop legal
instruments that would guarantee the protection of children’s rights
in a more effective way. With the existence of this document the
States are encouraged to create a system that would be in agreement
with the priority defined by the United Nations.
In spite of the existence of legal mechanisms that protect children, it
is however observed that their full realization has been limited. The
continuous worsening of the situation of children at world level
resulted in the adoption by the international community of a legal
instrument obliging each State to commit itself to guaranteeing them
greater protection. In this context the Declaration of the Rights of the
Child was approved in 1959, as an instrument prompting the

50 League of Nations (1924). Declaration of the Rights of the Child. Geneva.

115
adoption of concrete measures. The Declaration was ratified by 193
countries, with the exception of the United States and Somalia.
Thus, the Declaration does not appear as a replacement, but as an
instrument complementing the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, forcing the States that ratified it to enter into specific
commitments and obligations. The Declaration appeals to parents,
civil society organisations, local authorities and governments, to
recognise the stated rights and liberties and to engage in their
realization and observance.
Emphasizing the fact that children should be brought up in an
environment of sympathy, tolerance, friendship between peoples,
universal peace and fraternity, the Declaration of the Rights of the
Child (1959), summarized in 10 principles, states that the child shall
enjoy special protection and shall be given opportunities and
facilities to enable him to develop in a healthy and normal manner
and in conditions of freedom and dignity; from his birth the child
shall be entitled to a name and a nationality; the child shall enjoy the
benefits of social security, including adequate nutrition, housing,
recreation and medical services; the child who is physically, mentally
or socially handicapped shall be given the special treatment,
education and care required by his particular condition. This
instrument also emphasizes that the child shall grow up in a loving
and safe environment and, whenever possible, in the care and under
the responsibility of his parents; he is entitled to receive education; in
the case of a public disaster he shall be among the first to receive
protection and relief; he shall be protected against all forms of
neglect, cruelty and exploitation and against all acts that may foster
any form of discrimination.
Considering the situation of children in the world, the United
Nations proclaimed the year 1979 as the International Year of the
Child, with the aim of giving more attention to problems affecting
children all over the world, such as, for example, malnutrition and
lack of access to education.
Although there are mechanisms in defence of children’s rights in
other international human rights instruments, the Convention on the

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Rights of the Child (CRC), adopted by the General Assembly of the
United nations on 20 November 1989, had great impact in terms of
adherence to its terms and mechanisms, through their integration in
legislation, declarations, charters and statements at international,
regional and national level in all parts of the world (UNICEF, 2009).
This was an instrument enunciated a series of rights, namely, the
civil and political, social and cultural rights of all children.
Mozambique, signatory country since 1990, ratified the CRC in April
1994, committing itself to guarantee the rights of all Mozambican
children.
The CRC aims specifically at ensuring special attention to children,
establishing a broad range of rights and creating conditions to
safeguard their right to survival, protection and development. One of
the fundamental principles of the Convention is attention to "the best
interests of the child", as stated in clause 1 of article 3. This means
that all decisions concerning children, adopted by public or private
social security institutions, by courts, administrative authorities or
legislative bodies, should take into consideration the best interests of
the child.
The CRC contains provisions defining respect for privacy,
condemning the various levels of interference preventing the child
from having a violence-free life. In article 2, the CRC determines that
the States Parties shall commit themselves to “respect and ensure the
rights set forth in the present Convention to each child within their
jurisdiction without discrimination of any kind, irrespective of any
consideration of race, colour, sex, language, religion, political opinion
(…).” If we take into consideration that the function of the initiation
rites is to reproduce the roles and functions that are socially
considered legitimate and that this legitimacy is based on
interference with the children’s construction of their identity, giving
them values and attributes that organised themselves and organize a
hierarchy based on sex and age, it is evident how some cultural
practices constitute impediments to a violence-free life.
It should be noted that the WHO takes into consideration all the
above-mentioned legal instruments for the protection of the rights of

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women and children. According to the WHO classification (WHO
2008), there are many kinds of female genital mutilation (FGM). The
WHO has identified four types, namely:
(i) Type 1 FGM or Clitoridectomy – partial or total removal of
the clitoris or of the skin surrounding it (the function of the
clitoris is to give sexual pleasure to the woman);
(ii) Type 2 FGM or Excision – consists of the removal not only of
the clitoris but also of the labia minora and sometime also of
the labia majora;
(iii) Type 3 FGM or Infibulation – narrowing of the vaginal
opening through the creation of a covering seal by cutting and
repositioning the inner and/or outer labia, with or without
amputation of the clitoris, i.e., it consists of closing the
vaginal opening. This may or not include the removal of the
clitoris;
(iv) Type 4 FGM – this category comprises all other procedures
that are harmful to the female genitalia for non-medical
purposes, e.g., pricking, piercing, incising, scraping or
cauterizing (burning) the genital area.
The question of lengthening the vaginal lips falls within the last
category.
According to the WHO (2008), in all societies female genital
mutilation is a manifestation of gender inequality rooted in social,
economic and political structures and represents a form of social
control over women. This practice is a violation of the human rights
of girls and women and is recognized as a harmful practice.
Together with the international legal instruments for the specific
protection of children, there are other indispensable documents for
the protection of women and that are extensive to children. As an
example we have the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which defines the
structural nature of gender inequality. Approved by the United
Nations in 1979 and having entered into force in 1981, this
convention is based on the commitment of the signatory States to

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promote and ensure equality between men and women and to
eliminate all forms of discrimination against women.
The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against
Women (CEDAW, 1979),51 addressing itself to the States parties,
appeals for the application of appropriate and effective measures
with a view to eradicating the practice of female genital mutilation.
This instrument explicitly calls for the abolition of traditional
practices that are harmful to the health of women and children.
CEDAW (1979), enhanced by General Recommendation 19, states the
need to combat cultural practices such as early marriages and genital
mutilation, which assent, since childhood, to the exclusion of women
from access to and the exercise of human rights, and defines the
obligation of the States to develop, evaluate and register progress
made in their promotion. In this line, in 2003 the Economic and
Social Council of the United Nations, through the Commission on
Human Rights, urges the States to take measures that allow to
identify and combat gender-based violence. In this scope we can
recognise the initiation rituals and rites in the framework of the
formatting of gender identities that are preserved and reproduced in
and through the discrimination of girls.
Critically analysing the approach that devalues human rights to
cultural contexts, this document mentions the need for States to
combine the international legal mechanisms ratified by them with
the development of local policies that discourage cultural practices
and dispositions contained in religious traditions based on gender
violence. In the scope of the Vienna Conference, held in 1993, and of
the International Conference on Population and Development, held
in Cairo in 1994, recognizing the indivisibility of human rights and
the necessary intervention for the defence of sexual and reproductive
rights, the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations
severely criticises the omission of States regarding the definition and
monitoring of the violation of human rights.

51 Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1979),

Recommendation 14.
119
The Platform for Action adopted in 1995 by the Fourth World
Conference on Women, held in Beijing, was one of the main elements
for the development of public gender policies, namely regarding
violence against women. Deepening the sexual and reproductive
dimensions in the promotion of women’s human rights, the Platform
for Action emphasizes the protection of the rights of women and girls
throughout their lives, identifying early childhood as a marker of
women’s lack of access to rights, caused by power relations
legitimating male domination. The Beijing Declaration states:
“in order that a girl may fully develop her potential it is
necessary to grow up in a favourable environment, in which
her spiritual, intellectual and material needs for survival can
be satisfied and her rights are protected in conditions of
equality. (…) it is time to recognise the girls’ human dignity
and value and to ensure their full enjoyment of their human
rights and fundamental freedoms (…)”.
The discrimination and violence against girls start in the first phases
of life and persist until death. Girls have less access to sufficient and
healthy food, to physical and mental health services and to education,
and enjoy less rights, opportunities and benefits than boys, in
childhood and in adolescence. They are often victims of various kinds
of sexual and economic exploitation, paedophilia, forced prostitution
and possibly the sale of their bodies and tissues, violence and
harmful practices such as female infanticide and the antenatal
selection of sex, incest, genital mutilation and early marriage (Osório,
2011). Concerning the measures that should be taken for the
promotion of Human Rights of girls, the Platform for Action urges
the States to enact and strictly enforce laws to guarantee:
• “that marriages are only entered into with the free and full
consent of the intending spouses; in addition, enact and
strictly enforce laws concerning the minimum legal age of
consent (…)” (art. 274, e).
• the development of “policies and programmes, giving
priority to formal and informal education programmes
(…) on the need to eliminate discrimination against girls

120
 in food allocation, early marriage, violence against girls,
female genital mutilation, child prostitution, sexual abuse,
rape and incest” (art. 277, d).
• The adoption of “appropriate legislative, administrative,
social and educational measures to protect the girl child,
in the household and in society, from all forms of physical
or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent
treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual
abuse” (art. 283).
With regard to the African continent, we should note the African
Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, adopted in the Conference of
Heads of State and Government of the African States, members of the
Organisation of African Unity, held in 1981 in Nairobi, the African
Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, promulgated in 1991
and ratified by Mozambique in 1998, the SADC Protocol on Gender
and Development, adopted in 2008 and ratified by Mozambique in
2010. These are the main instruments for the defence of human
rights. Though all these mechanisms state the principle of equal
rights of men and women, emphasizing the need to develop policies
and adopt legislative measures based on the international
instruments adopted by the States Parties, we consider that, with the
exception of the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development, the
power structure mainstreaming the exclusion of women and children
from rights is not conveyed. This means in the first place the absence
of thoughts about the patriarchal model that is persistently followed
in the majority of the African states and which is reflected in the
construction of an ambiguous discourse about rights. In the second
place it may allow (given the lack of clarity in their formulation) the
omission on the part of some States to develop strategic policies and
actions committed to gender equality.
The SADC Protocol on Gender and Development (which elaborates
on and explains the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and
Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, adopted in 2003
and ratified by Mozambique through Resolution 45/10) urges States
Parties to adopt measures that promote equal rights, monitoring and
evaluating their progress in all areas of political, social and economic
121
life and revoking legislation that somehow violates the principle of
equity and equality. With a cross-cutting and inclusive view of equal
rights, it defines gender equality as “the equal enjoyment of rights
and the access to opportunities and outcomes, including resources,
by women, men, girls and boys” (art. 1), recommending the
elimination of practices which are detrimental to the achievement of
the rights of women and their sanctioning (art. 6).
Regarding the rights of the family, the Protocol reasserts that no
person under the age of 18 shall marry and that men and women
shall enjoy equal rights in marriage (art. 8). If we consider that in
Mozambique early “marriages” continue being decriminalized and
that the initiation rituals stimulate, through the values they transmit
and through the behaviour they convey, marriage as the foundation
of identity, we observe the inadequacies in the application of the legal
mechanisms with respect to cultural practices harming gender
equality. The same can be considered when in article 11 the Protocol
specifies the measures to be developed by States Parties with respect
to children. Clause 1 of this article stipulates that States Parties shall
adopt laws, policies and programmes to ensure the development and
protection of the girl child by: a) “eliminating all forms of
discrimination against the girl child in the family, community,
institutions and at State levels; (…) c) ensuring that girls enjoy the
same rights as boys and are protected from harmful cultural attitudes
and practices (…)”.
Along the same lines of holding the State responsible for equal rights,
the Protocol stipulates in article 14 that States Parties shall
promulgate Laws that promote equal access to education and prevent
dropouts. Similarly, article 21 states that:
“States Parties shall take measures including legislation,
where appropriate, to discourage traditional norms (…) which
legitimise and exacerbate the persistence and tolerance of
gender-based violence with a view to eliminate them”.
On the other hand, article 16 of the Protocol stipulates explicitly that
“States Parties shall conduct time use studies by 2015 and adopt
policy measures to ease the burden of the multiple roles played by

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women”. Well then, recognizing that initiation rites are cultural
practices shaping the social roles and functions of women in a
subordinate condition, being capable of strengthening their
“domesticity” and stimulate, in addition to “early marriages”, school
abandonment, it is important that the fight for gender equality is
reflected in the development of counter-cultural policies which put
equal rights in the centre of the strategic actions.52 This means in the
first place the mainstreaming of policies, legislation and procedures
in favour of the promotion of rights and in the second place the
involvement of leaders, State agents and Civil Society Organisations
(CSOs) in raising gender awareness and the inclusion of gender in
the programmes to be developed.
It is observed that, in spite of a few limitations, mainly concerning
the analysis of the power which structures social relations, it can be
said that important progress has been achieved in the African
continent, mainly regarding the drafting of legislation and the
obligation of States Parties to develop mechanisms for the protection
of women’s human rights.
In this sense, in 2010 the Maputo Plan of Action for the
Operationalization of the Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights
Continental Policy Framework (2007-2010) was approved by the
Executive Council of the African Union, emphasizing the need to
universalize until 2015 access to sexual and reproductive health
services, and stating the importance of eliminating harmful practices
present in the patriarchal cultural model, together with the
implementation of measures that effectively combat gender violence.

2. Mozambique: legislation and public policies

In this section we will endeavour to articulate the legislation ratified

or developed in the country with the gender policy and the strategic
plans of the Health and Education sectors that guide the strategies in

52 Counter-cultural policies is a concept adopted by the United Nations Development

Fund for Women (UNIFEM, 2009) to indicate the need for States to implement
procedures centred at a rights perspective, which contradict the values and
practices based on the exclusion of women from the exercise of rights.
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favour of the defence of women’s human rights. Taking into account
that the initiation rituals are conducted in childhood and/or in pre-
adolescence, the legislation and policies specifically concerning
children will be described and analysed, while we will address the
mechanisms that guide equal rights in Mozambique.
The first reference determining that children should not be subjected
to initiation rites, early marriages and lobolo (dowry) is made by
Resolution 23/79, in the framework of the approval of the
Declaration of the Rights of the Child and the adoption of the year
1979 as the International Year of the Child. It is interesting to note
the political context of that time: having been independent for four
years, the Mozambican government was engaged in the elimination
of the elements of identity cohesion through the discouragement of
cultural practices that were considered harmful.
As can be noted, though international instruments have been ratified
and national mechanisms have been produced, violation of girls’ and
women’s rights still exists. Although there is commitment with
gender equality, there is a gap between the legal instruments, the
institutional mechanisms and the practices developed by the State.
The 2004 Constitution states that "men and women shall be equal
before the law in all spheres of political, economic, social and cultural
life " (article 36). The embodiment of the fundamental principles of
the CRC into the Constitution of the Republic constitutes the
recognition on the part of the Mozambican State that children have
these rights and liberties and that the country should create all
necessary conditions through specific legislation, in order that these
are effectively exercised and respected.
Article 47 clearly explains that "all acts carried out by public entities
or private institutions in respect of children shall take into account,
primarily, the paramount interests of the child " (CRM, art. 47). In
the same way, article 121 says that "all children have the right to
receive protection from the family, from society and from the State,
having in mind their full development". The promotion of the
Mozambican culture and the free expression of the traditions and
values of the Mozambican society are guaranteed by article 115 of the

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Constitution of the Republic. However, we think that the
dissemination of traditional values and practices must not clash with
the rights of equality enshrined in the Constitution. This means that,
when the defence of the full development and the highest rights of
the child are defined as a principle, one cannot simultaneously have a
“blind” perspective with respect to traditional values which violate
equal rights, such as the initiation rituals which have the function to
distinguish and differentiate the social roles of women in terms of
inequality. For this reason, we think that the references to culture in
the Constitution only take into account those elements that neither
contradict the international instruments ratified by Mozambique nor
national legislation, for example the Family Law (Law 10/2004) and
the Law on Domestic Violence Perpetrated against Women (Law
29/2009), which reaffirm the principle of the equality of women and
men.
In the scope of the need to study in depth the international
legislation ratified by Mozambique in the course of the last few
decades and turn it into domestic instruments, the Basic Law on the
Promotion and Protection of the Rights of the Child was promulgated
(Law 7/2008). This Law establishes the legal regime for the
protection of the child, considering his/her rights and obligations,
and also defines the bases for all legislation to which this law refers.
Defending the best interests of the child, this mechanism holds the
family, the State and society responsible to guarantee his/her
integrity and protection against mistreatment and neglect, while the
State is competent to punish those who in any way violate children’s
rights, in accordance with the provisions of article 24:
“It is the child's right to be guided and disciplined according
to his/her age, physical and mental condition, no corrective
measure being justifiable if, by reason of the child's young age
or any other reason, the child is unable to comprehend the
purpose of said disciplinary or corrective action”.
According to Law 7/2008 of 9 July, article 9, paragraph 3, the Child’s
Best Interest means “anything relating to the defence and
safeguarding of the child's integrity, identity, maintenance and sane,

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harmonious development”, while the State shall provide it with
adequate care in case the parents or other people responsible for the
child are unable to do so. The Law also recognises education as a key
factor for the development of children. Thus, in article 38 it is
established that children are entitled to education in order to achieve
the full development of their gifts, aptitudes and potential, preparing
them to function as citizens and qualifying them for work, ensuring
specifically:
(i) “equal-opportunity access and permanence in school;
(ii) the right to be respected by their educators;
(iii) the right to challenge evaluation criteria by resorting to
higher educational authorities;
(iv) the right to organize and participate in youth and student
organizations;
(v) access to public schooling as prescribed by the laws in force”.
Concerning special rights, the Law stipulates that the State shall take
specific measures to protect children from kidnapping, selling and
trafficking, as well as from all forms of exploitation, sexual abuse,
prostitution and illicit sexual practices (articles 62 and 63). The Law
also states that harsh punishments shall be given to all those who
entice, coerce, abuse, use or exploit children, whether they are
parents, guardians, foster families or a legal representative.
Following the approval of this mechanism, Decree 8/2009 created
the National Council for the Rights of the Child (CNAC), the principle
of which is the “need to institutionalize intersectoral consultation and
coordination mechanisms (…) in the framework of the promotion
and protection of children’s rights, creating conditions allowing their
full development”. The prerogatives of the Council are, among others,
the adoption of procedures that may affect children’s rights.
Although without references to the specificities expressed in the
construction of the female child’s identity, particularly affected by a
cultural model which limits her access to and exercise of rights, this
Decree considers the need to promote gender equality. It is clear that,
considering gender equality as a principle, the CNAC should in its

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action take into account the family structure and hierarchy, based on
inequality between the two sexes.
Analysing the progress achieved in the development of measures that
put an end to the violation of children’s rights, in 2009 the United
Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC/C/MOZ/2)
introduced recommendations on the basis of the periodic report of
Mozambique. Although the country has achieved significant progress
regarding the protection of children, the Committee conveys
concerns about the continued existence of differences between the
different regions, namely the North, Centre and South of the country,
resulting in unequal enjoyment of the children’s rights enshrined in
the Convention. The differences to which the Committee refers are
reflected in a set of demographic and social indicators, covering
enrolment and school completion rates, child mortality rates and
access to health care, also indicating constant discrimination against
girls, handicapped children, children living in rural and remote areas
and also children of economically underprivileged families
(CRC/C/MOZ/2, 2009).
With regard to children’s opinions, the Committee is uneasy about
the fact that they are insufficiently consulted regarding the various
situations affecting them, with respect to education, debates about
public policies and other issues. The Committee states that certain
tradition-based social attitudes continue to limit the full exercise of
children’s rights, mainly the free expression of girls. The Committee
praises the creation of the Children’s Parliament but is worried about
the fact that the work methods used may affect its legitimacy and
efficacy, inclusive of possible political manipulation.
Thus, according to article 12 of the CRC, “the State Party shall
incorporate, facilitate and implement, in practice, within the family,
schools, and the community as well as in institutions and in
administrative and judicial proceedings, the principle of respect for
the views of the child” (CRC/C/MOZ/2, 2009:9).
Concerning corporal punishment, we should mention that they are
still being applied in families and schools, and are frequently
considered being the main form to discipline children. Although

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there are laws that protect the child, corporal punishment continues
not being object of penalization. Thus, the Committee urges the State
to:
a) "explicitly prohibit by law corporal punishment in the family,
schools and institutions and ensure that those laws are
effectively implemented and that legal proceedings are
systematically initiated against those responsible for
mistreating children;
b) conduct a comprehensive study to assess the causes, nature
and extent of corporal punishment;
c) introduce public education, awareness-raising and social
mobilization campaigns on the harmful effects of corporal
punishment with a view to changing the general attitude
towards this practice and promote positive, non-violent,
participatory values and forms of child-rearing and
education" (CRC/C/MOZ/2, 2009:11).
These are also some of the questions raised in 2009 by the United
Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, with respect to the
implementation by Mozambique of the Convention on the Rights of
the Child. Some of the recommendations to be implemented by the
State are listed below:
• That “the Convention prevails when there is a conflict with
domestic legislation or common practice and that it is directly
applicable;
• That the State Party ensures that the dispositions of the
Convention are widely known and understood by adults and
children;
• That the State Party reinforces the systematic training of all
professional groups working for and with children, including
law enforcement officials, teachers, health personnel, social
workers and personnel of childcare institutions; and
intensifies cooperation with the media to promote and
strengthen its responsibility in disseminating information
about the Convention;

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• The Committee urges the State Party to consider measures,
including affirmative action policies, to give priority to
ensuring the equal enjoyment of their rights for girls and
boys;
• That the State Party ensures that perpetrators of child abuse
and neglect are prosecuted in a manner that is child sensitive
and respectful of the privacy of the victims;
• That the State Party strengthens its child protection system
with effective mechanisms to receive, monitor through the
collection of data and investigate reports of cases of child
abuse, in a gender sensitive manner;
• There is also concern on the part of the Committee regarding
harmful traditional practices, such as high rates of early
marriage and the persistence of initiation rites, which lead to
early and harmful sexual behaviours. Thus, it is
recommended that awareness-raising programmes are
developed, with the involvement of families, community
leaders and society at large, including children themselves, to
curb the practices of early marriage and sexual initiation rites,
particularly in rural areas;
• The State Party shall design strategies to prevent the
occurrence of sexual violence in schools by organizing
nationwide communications programmes on the impact of
sexual violence in school and strengthen the recruitment of
female teachers who provide valuable role models to young
girls and lessen the probability of abuse by teachers;
• School and health services shall be encouraged to detect and
report evidence of abuse, ensure full and unannounced
inspection of school facilities and wide publicity of the
investigations conducted and establish clear reporting
systems of cases of violence in schools;
• All necessary measures shall be taken to prevent, prosecute
and sanction teachers who commit sexual violence;
• Finally, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, meeting in
New York in its fifty-second session, recommends that the
Mozambican State take all appropriate measures “to ensure

129
 that those who perpetrate sexual offences against children are
effectively punished and that children are supported in
denouncing and reporting sexual abuse” (CRC/C/MOZ/2,
2009:7 to 24).
However, the inclusion of the principles of the Convention does not
guarantee that children’s rights are respected. It is evident that in
many countries the reality lived by children does not reflect their
rights as guaranteed by the national legislation. The success of
legislation depends on the application of the Law and on changes in
social attitudes and practices, as well as on firm principles and
mechanisms promoting their rights. Many of the practices that are
more harmful to children are part of social traditions and cultural
attitudes that prevail through the generations. Therefore, the simple
approval of a law is not sufficient. It is necessary that this law is
supported by a continuous process of education and by initiatives
aimed at its clarification, by the construction of capacity, by sufficient
resources and by collaborative partnerships, including the children’s
full participation. These conditions are especially applicable in the
case of the protection of the child against violence, abuse and
exploitation (UNICEF, 2009).

3. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

In 2000, the United Nations (UN), analysing the most serious

problems faced by societies all over the world, defined eight
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The adoption of the
Millennium Declaration in September 2000 by 189 States Members
of the UN gave priority to the theme Development and Eradication
of Poverty. The goals are a partnership between the so-called
developed countries and the developing countries with the purpose to
create a national and global environment, which leads to
development and the elimination of poverty. The members endorsed
the goals of the Declaration unanimously and committed themselves
to reach them, namely:
(i) “Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger;
(ii) Achieve universal primary education;

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 (iii) Promote gender equality and empower women;
(iv) Reduce child mortality;
(v) Improve maternal health;
(vi) Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases;
(vii) Ensure environmental sustainability; and
(viii) Develop a global partnership for development”.
The Goals of the Millennium Declaration (2000) were prepared with
the purpose of combating poverty and promoting sustainable
development, especially gender equality, the empowerment of
women and access to universal primary education. In this context the
Government of Mozambique committed itself to invest in education
to reach the goals and target established. In the area of education
strategies were defined and various plans were prepared with a view
to the elimination of gender inequality in Primary and Secondary
Education by 2005, aiming at the reduction of the illiteracy rate by
2015. The institutional instruments and mechanisms include free
access to Complete Primary Education for boys and for girls.

4. Agenda 2025

The main objective of the Agenda 2025 is to increase capacity in the

Government, in institutions and in civil society for defining and
implementing national economic policies, programmes and projects.
In the field of education, the Agenda emphasizes the need to give
priority to primary education and considers that, to ensure basic
education for all by 2025, it will be necessary to further and increase
the opportunities for establishing pacts and partnerships between the
State and civil society organisations, the private sector, and
international organisations. The need is thus recognised to increase
investment in education and training, as this will provide the
practical and theoretical tools that will allow citizens to have access
to education. It is also emphasized that this education shall cultivate,
from an early stage in primary schools, civic, ethical, moral, patriotic
and peace-culture education. For this purpose, the agenda
determines the need for the country to develop an education based
on family values and respect for African traditions, and made

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compatible with the universal values of modernity. This vision has
contributed to the development of school curricula and
programmatic contents for the various levels of schooling, mainly
primary education.

5. Government’s Five-Year Programme (2010-2014)

Taking Gender as a mainstreaming issue, the Government’s Five-

Year Programme for 2010-2014 defines the following strategic
objectives:
“i) Promote gender equality by enhancing the status of women
and boosting their participation in the country's political,
economic and social life; ii) Promote the dissemination of
legislation and operational strategies to support women, in
order to ensure social justice, equal rights and opportunities
for men and women in society and before the law”.
The first question is the need to establish a commitment with the
defence of the rights of women through actions allowing not only the
establishment of provisions and mechanisms ensuring fairness and
women’s access to resources, but also control over their own life. The
absence of a systemic vision of gender equality is also reflected in the
existence of a chapter integrating women, the family and social
action in an essentialist notion of female vulnerability. While it is
true that when one talks about women, this does not mean gender, it
is difficult to understand the emphasis laid on strategies of women
empowerment from a reflection that should pass through the
assumption of a cultural model based on unequal access to and
exercise of rights.
In the field of education, the Government’s Five-Year Programme
(2010-2014), similar to the 2005-2009 Programme, continues to
favour basic education with the objective to ensure that, by 2015, all
children have access to education and complete basic primary
education. As a consequence of this prioritization, there has been an
increase of the school network, namely regarding 1st Level Primary

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Education (EP1) and 2nd Level Primary Education (EP2) and
subsequent levels, as shown in the table below:

Table 2: Number of public education schools,

by level (2006-2010)

Level of education
Primary Secondary
1st level 2nd level 1st cycle 2nd cycle
(1-5) (6-7) (8-10) (11-12)

2006 8 954 1 514 190 49

2007 9 303 1 842 253 58
2008 9 649 2 210 286 76
2009 10 027 2 577 312 90
2010 10 444 2 990 374 119
Source: INE, Statistical Yearbook, 2010.

As shown in Table 2, the data indicate that the number of 1st level
primary schools (EP1) increased from 8 954 in 2006 to 10 444 in
2010. With respect to EP2, in spite of there also being an increase,
the situation is critical as there is only a small number of schools
teaching grades 6 and 7, namely 1 514 schools in 2006 and 2 990 in
2010. The same happens with secondary education, where the
number of 2nd cycle schools increased from 49 schools in 2006 to 119
in 2010.
Table 3 shows the evolution of the number of students, by sex,
between 2006 and 2010.

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 Table 3. Students enrolled by sex and level of education

Level of education
Primary Secondary

1st level (1-5) 2nd level (6-7) 1st cycle (8-10) 2nd cycle (11-12)

M F M F M F M F
2006 1,915,260 1,682,132 288,023 208,008 147,830 107,737 21,649 13,801
2007 2,051,821 1,815,085 350,715 265,376 179,190 132,713 28,694 18,694
2008 2,170,587 1,938,711 395,237 309,269 208,332 158,013 34,674 24,053
2009 2,222,593 2,010,861 450,005 376,592 337,076 274,041 73,364 50,849
2010 2,301,191 2,084,366 472,586 405,256 360,540 303,856 91,242 66,038
Source: INE, Statistical Yearbook, 2010.

As we can see from the table, in 2006 there was a total of 3,597,392
students (M and F). In 2010 this number had increased to 4,385,557
students. In general, gender differences occur at all levels of
education, being more pronounced in the classes following grade 1, as
the number of enrolled male students is higher than that of female
students (MEC53, 2008). This situation shows that as girl students
get older, school abandonment on their part increases. On the other
hand, the subsequent classes have a high number of boys. According
to the MEC report (2008), sociocultural factors have been the cause
of the phenomenon of school abandonment on the part of girl
students. The same factors hinder access to formal education, since
the families give priority to the education of boys in detriment of the
education of girls. There is however evidence that the families believe
that for their daughters to have success in life, they should be
submitted to initiation rites, through which their children will be
considered ready for marriage (MEC, 2008).
It is observed that many actions the Government’s Five-Year
Programme (2010-2014) have not yet been implemented, because it
is insufficient to intend to achieve parity without developing other
levels of intervention, which in our view is through the identification

53 Ministry of Education and Culture, currently Ministry of Education.

134
of values and practices producing stereotypes that cause school
abandonment.
We consider it important that the Government Programme should
convey a more integrated and analytical vision as, despite the existing
legislation and institutional mechanisms, violence perpetrated in the
country against women throughout their life cycle persists and in
some cases increases. Although it can be said that the function of the
sector plans is to develop and accomplish the defined principles at
macro level, the instructions for guaranteeing women’s human rights
are insufficient.

6. Gender Policy and Implementation Strategies

(2006)

The Gender Policy and Implementation Strategies, approved in

2006, constitutes the basic document which informs the integration
of gender into the plans of the various State sectors. Based on the
principles of the fight against discrimination and gender violence,
this document refers to the various domains in which it is necessary
to introduce a gender approach in the plans of the various State
sectors. It is important to note its recommendation for the need to
take children as subjects of rights and sensitize the communities to
discourage practices that prevent girls from enjoying the same
opportunities as boys. From this point of view, the National Plan for
the Advancement of Women (2007-2010), operationalizing the
gender policy, identifies the actions to be adopted by each one of the
sectors with the purpose of decreasing gender asymmetries.
The initiative to reduce gender differences had appeared before this
period. In 1998 the Social Action Policy was approved defining
women as a priority due to their situation of vulnerability and social
discrimination. This policy establishes the strategy of the promotion
and adoption of measures for the prevention and combat of domestic
violence and assistance to victims. In 2000 the former Ministry of
Social Action (created in 1994) was transformed into the Ministry of
Women and Coordination of Social Action (MMCAS). In 2001
MMCAS produced the first National Plan for the Advancement of
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Women 2002-2006 (PNAM). The purpose of this document was to
deal with women and gender issues at short, medium and long term.
In 2004 the National Council for the Advancement of Women
(CNAM) was created, which is a consultative body, through which
MMCAS coordinates, boosts and monitors the implementation of
policies and programmes approved by the Government for the area
of women and gender (MMCAS, 2006). Although there has been
some progress, the existence of inter- and intra-institutional
harmonization and coordination difficulties is recognised.
In 2007 the second National Plan for the Advancement of Women
2007-2009 was approved, with the goal to study in depth the
strategies relative to the defence of equal rights. This second Plan
strengthened the areas that had been identified in the previous
PNAM (2002-2006). With the purpose of stimulating the
implementation of policies and programmes for the area of women
and gender, this plan contains various objectives, activities and
strategies for the various sectors, among which the social security
sector, with a view to decrease gender imbalances. Seven areas of
intervention were identified in the Plan, among which that of
women’s rights and violence. The Plan also broadened its target
group with the integration of victims of gender violence, aggressors,
women and men.
Education and training constitute one of the strategic options of the
PNAM (2007-2009). In the document progress achieved in girls’
access to basic education was analysed, namely the increase of school
attendance from 42% in 2001 to 46.8% in 2006. According to Osório
and Silva (2008), the areas of intervention defined by the PNAM are
related to equal access to primary education, the improvement of the
retention rate and performance at all levels of education, the increase
of teacher training and strengthening institutional capacity for the
promotion of gender.

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7. National Plan of Action for Children (PNAC, 2006-
2010)
Taking into account the need to develop an intersectoral policy for
the defence of children’s rights, the National Plan of Action for
Children (PNAC) for 2006-2010 was prepared. Taking as a starting
point that children between 0 and 14 years of age constitute half the
population of the country, the PNAC defines various areas of
intervention for the defence of children’s rights, emphasizing the
need to harmonize the international legislation ratified by
Mozambique with both the legal and the institutional mechanisms,
highlighting the need to institutionalize monitoring mechanisms.
Fundamental strategic areas defined in the Plan are the preparation
of a legal framework for the protection of children and the
supervision of the implementation of the legislation. In fact, the non-
implementation of the legal mechanisms referred to in other studies
(Osório, 2011) is one of the main problems for the identification and
sanctioning of violence against children. With respect to the violation
of children’s rights, the PNAC also encourages the creation of
mechanisms for prevention and the attendance of children, from
community awareness-raising actions to the training of police
officers and health agents so as to favour the integration and
mainstreaming of strategic actions.
The Plan of Action for Children is the result of collaboration between
the Government and its development partners and will guarantee the
continuation of actions for the protection of children. The
implementation of this plan is based on the fundamental principle of
“children first”. The first National Plan for Children (PNAC I) was in
force from 2005 to 2010 and was complemented by the National Plan
of Action for Orphans and Vulnerable Children (PACOV). An
evaluation was made of the two plans calling attention to the need to
have only one plan reflecting the needs of all groups of children, to
improve inter-institutional coordination, to have its own budget and
the need for a monitoring and evaluation mechanism. The
preparation of the PNAC II (2013-2020) reiterates the commitment
to the implementation of children’s rights and welfare under the
coordination of the National Council on the Rights of the Child. Key
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areas of the PNAC II are health, nutrition, education and leisure,
protection and participation. This mechanism is based on the
principles defined in the Constitution of the Republic of
Mozambique, the Law on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights
of the Child (Law 7/2008), the African Charter on the Rights and
Welfare of the Child, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and in
other legislation in force in the country.
Concerning education, the PNAC II builds on the Strategy for the Full
Development of the Pre-School Child (DICIPE) 2012-2021,54 to
overcome the poor quality of primary education and facilitate the
attainment of the Millennium Goals. In the Government’s Five-Year
Plan it is stated that by 2015 all children shall have the opportunity to
complete good quality basic education. Thus, in the scope of the
education and leisure sector, the goal of the PNAC II is to improve
children’s access and retention and the quality of education. The
interventions comprise the following levels:
(i) Pre-School: Promote children’s access to pre-school
education. The defined target is that by 2020 about 15% of the
children of the respective age will have access to pre-school
education;
(ii) Primary: Ensure that all children have the opportunity to
complete 7-year basic education of good quality. The defined
target is that by 2016 the gross enrolment rate shall be 54%,
with 51% for girls;
(iii) Secondary: Increase of access to vocational secondary
education, focused on quality and importance. By 2016 the
gross enrolment rate in ESG1 shall be 50%, with 47% for girls.
Concerning protection, the PNAC II recognised the children’s
vulnerability, with cultural practices that stimulate multiple forms of

54 Strategy for the Full Development of the Pre-School Child 2012-2021, approved by
the Council of Ministers on 26 June 2012. The aim of this strategy is to increase the
welfare of children and their families, through the protection of pre-school
children’s rights, guaranteeing the beginning of a healthy life, adequate care and
early stimulation, so that they can fully develop their potential.
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abuse, violence, discrimination and violation of fundamental rights.
For this reason the Plan developed the following specific objectives:
(i) “The construction of a favourable environment to achieve
children’s welfare and remove traditional practices that are
harmful to their development;
(ii) Capacity building of the various sectors with regard to the
protection of children;
(iii) To prevent and protect children against all forms of abuse,
violence, discrimination and exploitation;
(iv) To ensure the right to identity and citizenship;
(v) To guarantee the protection of the rights of vulnerable
children” (PNAC II, 2013-2020:30).
We should point out that the actions laid down in the PNAC II will be
a challenge, since we currently live in a socioeconomic and cultural
context in which an increased appeal to identity cohesion is observed,
through the release of African cultural values, the consequence of
which is the maintenance of a power structure based on gender
inequality.

8. Action Plan for the Reduction of Absolute Poverty

(PARPA II, 2006-2009)

The Action Plan for the Reduction of Absolute Poverty (PARPA II,
2006-2009) strengthened the Government’s commitment to step up
efforts for gender equality and identified gender inequality as one of
the main barriers to economic development. This Plan, starting from
an analysis of the situation of women in Mozambique, defines the
principles that should guide the sector programmes and plans in
order to decrease gender asymmetries. Referring specifically to the
fact that about two thirds of the illiterates are women and that only a
quarter of Government investment in EPS (General Secondary
Education) benefits girls, the PARPA II proposes, among others, the
following priority actions:

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 (i) “The approval and implementation of the gender policy and
its strategy, including the institutionalization of gender units
in all sectors at the central and provincial government levels;
(ii) The training of people in the effective integration,
implementation, and monitoring of gender issues in sector
plans and budgets;
(iii) Integration of the gender perspective into national
development policies, programmes and projects” (PARPA II,
2006:62).
This document reasserts the responsibility of the Ministry of Women
and Social Action for the coordination of policies and activities
developed in the various sectors. The evaluation and monitoring of
the level of implementation of the programmes are done through the
National Council for the Advancement of Women (CNAM).
Having in view the improvement and clarification of the policies and
actions for the reduction of poverty, the Action Plan for the
Reduction of Poverty (PARP) 2011-2014, approved on 3 May 2011, is
a medium-term strategy of the Government of Mozambique,
operationalizing the Government’s Five-Year Programme (2010-
2014) and continuing the PARPA II. The Action Plan emphasizes the
objective to combat poverty and to promote a work culture, with a
view to achieve inclusive economic growth and a reduction of poverty
and vulnerability in the country.
One of the priorities defined in the 3rd general objective of the PARP
is to ensure universal access to 7-year primary education of good
quality, guaranteeing the acquisition of basic skills. This consists of
the promotion of actions to retain children in school, particularly
girls, through the monitoring of the teaching/learning process in the
classroom.

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9. Economic and Social Plan of the Health Sector
(PESS, 2010)

With respect to the health sector, though there is a proposal since

2010 for a gender strategy, the purpose of which is to ensure greater
access of women to health care and calling attention to the exposure
of women and children to gender violence, the preparation of the
Economic and Social Plan of the Health Sector (PESS, 2010) did not
take into account the gender perspective defined in this proposal.
With a view of health limited to the medical field, this document
excludes the integrative vision present in the Gender Policy and in
the proposal approved by the sector. This situation is all the more
curious when it is acknowledged that the health sector has a key role
to play in the identification, attendance and referral of cases of
violence against women and children, mainly sexual violence (Osório,
2011).
The National Policy of Sexual and Reproductive Health (PNSSR) was
approved in July 2011 and was adopted in the scope of the approval
of the Maputo Plan of Action. Its objectives are: to promote respect
and the exercise of Sexual and Reproductive Rights among all parties
involved; to ensure the provision of Sexual and Reproductive Health
Care services (SRHC); to provide timely and adequate sexual and
reproductive health care services to the beneficiaries.
One of the areas of intervention of this policy is the integration of
gender aspects, the prevention of STI and HIV, as well as the
prevention and combat of gender violence and of practices that are
harmful to the health of women. In the context of the PNSSR it is
recognized that “male and female sexual behaviour is determined by
how the concepts of gender and sexuality are constructed on the basis
of social, cultural and economic power, affecting the distribution of
power” (PNSSR, 2011:14). It is in this context that in some places
women have their first sexual intercourse soon after the initiation
rites, exposing themselves from very early on to the risk of pregnancy
and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI) and HIV.

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The aim of the PNSSR is to promote sexuality, promoting relations
based on equity and mutual respect between men and women, thus
contributing to a better quality of life for both and avoiding all kinds
of violence (PNSSR, 2011).
Thus, it is proposed that the Sexuality, Gender and Violence
component is integrated into Sexual and Reproductive Health Care,
with a view to a rapid and multidisciplinary attendance (gynaecology,
psychology, forensic medicine) of victims of sexual abuse, covering
emergency contraception, prophylaxis of STI and HIV with
antiretrovirals (PNSSR, 2011).
INSIDA data55 (2010) indicate that the age of starting sexual activity
is in general similar for urban and for rural areas, both for women
and for men. In Cabo Delgado province sexual activity starts at the
youngest age. For women, the increase of the level of education is
related to a late start of sexual activity. According to the INSIDA
(2010), the North of the country is the region with the largest
proportion of sexually active girls and boys, particularly Niassa (40%
of the girls and 41% of the boys).
These aspects show the challenges of the expansion of access to
sexual and reproductive health services by the youth, mainly in rural
areas where information is scarce, thus contributing to the limitation
of the exercise of sexual and reproductive rights.

10. Education Sector Policy

With regard to the education policies we should identify a series of

instruments that contributed to changes aimed at an improvement of
the sector. Thus, the various interventions have been defined by the
1995 National Education Policy, which established a review of the
National Education System, and by the various Strategic Plans, in
which basic education and adult literacy were identified as top
priorities. The promotion of the education of girls is also considered a

55 National Survey on Prevalence, Behavioural Risks and Information about HIV and
AIDS in Mozambique (INSIDA).
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priority in this document, which recommends measures such as the
creation of a gender-friendly school environment.
With a view to the promotion of equality and equity in girls’ access to
education, the PNE envisages:
(i) The creation of a school environment which is sensitive to
gender issues by identifying and defining the methods of
organization of the educational process and by introducing
changes in the teacher training programmes;
(ii) The creation of social awareness of the need to reduce the
household chores load of girls;
(iii) The promotion of alternative systems for the provision of
education for girls, such as through the organization of non-
formal educational programmes;
(iv) Entering into agreements with NGOs, religious organizations
and other partners in order to involve them in the
implementation of programmes for the education of girls;
(v) Increase of the number of women teachers;
(vi) Provision of financial support for the purchasing of school
material for underprivileged girls.
The first Strategic Education Plan (PEE I) was in force from 1999 to
2005 and focused on Primary Education. Its specific objectives were:
to increase access to education, improve its quality and strengthen
the financial and political institutional capacity (MEC, 2006). These
objectives remained valid in the Strategic Education and Culture Plan
(PEEC, 2006-2010/11), though with greater emphasis on the
improvement of the quality of education and on the retention of
students until grade 7, as we will see below.

11. Strategic Education and Culture Plan (PEEC, 2006-

2010/11)

The education and culture sector prepared the Strategic Education

and Culture Plan (PEEC) for the 2006-2010/2011 period. The main
challenges of the PEEC are: access of girls and boys to school,
improvement of the quality of education and reduction of gender

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inequalities. For this purpose, and taking into account the
international and national instruments adopted by Mozambique, the
PEEC defines the objective of decreasing the gender asymmetries in
EP1 (until 2009) and in EP2 (until 2015). In this sense the strategic
areas are defined, among others, as: “to improve access to and safety
at school, including concerted actions to put an end to the problem of
sexual abuse at school; to identify and implement strategies for
dealing with other direct and indirect costs of sending girls to school;
to improve planning and identify strategies for dealing with regional
gender asymmetries; to encourage the recruitment of girls to train as
women teachers; to establish support mechanisms for women
teachers in the rural areas; to encourage women to apply for
administrative and management posts; to ensure effective
monitoring systems to measure the impact of specific initiatives; to
include themes in the syllabus of teacher training courses, such as
gender, sexual and reproductive health and HIV/AIDS, to improve
the quality of education and its gender sensitivity” (PEEC, 2006:66).
The PEEC establishes the Government vision with respect to the
development of Education and Culture in Mozambique, at short to
medium-term. For the 2006-2011 period and in agreement with the
MDGs, the Agenda 2025, the Action Plan for the Reduction of
Absolute Poverty (PARPA), the Government Programme for 2005-
2009, the Dakar Education for All Targets and the Education for All
Accelerated Initiative, the PEEC identifies the following main lines of
action: increase of access to education; improvement of the quality of
education; strengthening the institutional, financial and political
capacity to ensure the sustainability of the system; improvement of
the quality of education; and retention of students until grade 7.
However, the implementation of the PEEC still faces various
challenges, seeing that in 2008 863,000 children, 56% of whom girls,
were still not attending school. This fact is due to factors such as
"practices, attitudes and behaviours” which attach little importance
to education in the rural areas of Mozambique, mainly for girls, early
marriages, lack of classrooms, poor support for increasing school
access and retention on the part of girls, through the Direct Support
to Schools Programme (ADE) (PEEC).
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With respect to the fight against gender violence, the education
sector, through Ministerial Order 39/GM/2003, curbs the sexual
involvement of teachers with students and stipulates that all
pregnant girl shall be transferred to evening classes. In the event that
a girl gets pregnant with the involvement of a teacher or education
officer, the Order defines the following immediate effects:
(i) If the offenders are teachers and other educational officers,
the suspension of their duties and salaries and the institution
of disciplinary proceedings;
(ii) Those girl students who are pregnant are prohibited from
attending day classes at elementary, basic and medium-level
of the National Education System, as well as the respective
authors, if they are students of the same school;
(iii) Whenever justified, and in the case of schools that don’t have
evening classes, the attendance of classes by the pregnant girl
students will be authorized, by decision of the School Council.
However, the legal instruments are rarely applied because the
perpetrator and the relatives of the victim seek to solve the problem
in the family, which often results in the payment of a fine or in
marriage. There is lack of clarity about the concepts of “harassment”
and “sexual abuse”, except when the sexual abuse results in
pregnancy. The ignorance of these concepts makes that some parents
don’t take their daughters seriously, when they present cases of
harassment and attempts to sexual abuse. As Osório (2011) states,
there is no unanimity for the treatment of these concepts. "Sexual
violation is both taken as synonymous with sexual abuse and is
considered only a dimension of this concept (…) the same principle
exists in the treatment of sexual violence which is sometimes
confused with abuse and sometimes with violation. The vagueness of
concepts allows the appearance of cultural interferences in decision-
making" (Osório, 2011:13).
Going back to the 2004 Constitution of the Republic of Mozambique,
article 88 defines education as a right and a duty of all citizens and
that the State shall promote the extension of education to
professional and continuing vocational training, as well as equal

145
access to the enjoyment of this right by all citizens. We can present
the definition of priorities of public policies in the education sector at
three separate points in time:
(i) “The post-independence period, between 1975-1979,
characterised by a big expansion of the school network and of
school enrolment numbers as a result of the nationalization of
Education;
(ii) Armed conflict period, between 1980 and 1992, in which a
significant reduction of the school network occurred;
(iii) Signing of the General Peace Agreement, from 1992 to the
current phase, which was characterised by the expansion of
the network and of school enrolment numbers, first of
Primary Education and later, particularly during the last few
years (the PEEC period), of Secondary Education” (PEE 2012-
2016:36).
Public Primary Education is free and is divided into two levels: 1st
level Primary Education (EP1, from grade 1 to grade 5) and 2nd level
Primary Education (EP2, grade 6 and 7). With the introduction of the
new syllabus in 2004, this education was structured into three
teaching cycles with the perspective of offering 7-year basic education
for all: the 1st cycle (grade 1 and 2), the 2nd cycle (grade 3 to 5) and the
3rd cycle (grade 6 and 7). The official age for entering grade 1 is six
years, completed in the year of entering school. The primary schools
normally function in two shifts of six periods (45 minutes per
period), one in the morning and the other one in the afternoon. To
accommodate the expansion of the system, some primary schools,
mainly in towns, function in three shifts of five periods (40 minutes).
There are schools that also teach EP2 in the night shift, but this
situation tends to decrease. Less than 2% of the students attend
primary education in private or community schools (PEE 2012-
2016). The evaluation system in Primary Education is based on
automatic transition between classes and semi-automatic transition
between levels.
General Secondary Education has two cycles: the first cycle
comprises grade 8, 9 and 10. After completing this level of education

146
the student may keep studying in the second cycle of general
education (grade 11 and 12) which precedes entry into Higher
Education. General Secondary Education is not free and tuition fees
are collected. To respond to the big demand for places in secondary
education, this level of education operates with night shifts, mainly
for students over 15 years of age. Moreover, many private schools are
appearing at this level of education, particularly in towns. In 2011,
these private schools were attended by 10% of the total number of
secondary education students.
In addition to Basic Education the Educational System also includes
technical-professional and higher education, whether through face-
to-face teaching, through distance education or through other
educational arrangements.
The current Education Sector Strategic Plan (PEE, 2012-2016),
developed on the basis of an analysis and evaluation of the progress
achieved and of the challenges identified during the implementation
of the Strategic Education and Culture Plan 2006-2011, promotes
education as a human right and an effective tool for the affirmation
and integration of individuals into social, economic and political life.
This analysis resulted in the formulation of the following main
objectives of the education sector for the 2012-2016 period:
(i) Ensure inclusion and fairness in access to and retention at
school;
(ii) Improve the students’ learning;
(iii) Secure good governance of the system.
Taking fairness and inclusion as principles, the PEE (2012-2016)
promotes the integration of specific interventions directed at cross-
cutting areas such as HIV and AIDS, gender and others, into the
existing programmes. The Government’s vision about the role of
Education is reflected in the PEE (2012-2016) in the following way:
"education and training shall give supreme value to the
empowerment of the Mozambican citizens providing them, especially
adolescents and youths, with the practical and theoretical
instruments to be successful in life” (PEE, 2012:17). To achieve this
purpose, we are committed to the transmission of rules of good

147
conduct, respect for others, cleanliness and hygiene, from pre-
primary education onwards, through civic, ethical, moral and
patriotic education. However, this education will be developed taking
into account the values absorbed in the family, respect for African
traditions made compatible with the universal values of modernity
(PEE, 2012). However, it is through the discourse of respect for
African traditions that the rights of women are not respected and are
continuously violated, camouflaged by cultural practices which
legitimate them and contribute to a situation in which men and
women do not have equal opportunities and access to resources,
mainly basic education.
This situation can be demonstrated by the difference in school
attendance between girls and boys, with a high number of male
students at all levels to the detriment of female students, despite the
Education sector, since its first strategic plan, having developed
specific instruments to guide and integrate a gender perspective in
the education system. However, the gender focus in the strategic
plans continues to be only concentrated on equal opportunities
through the promotion of children entering the school at the age of
six, particularly girls. The purpose of the creation of gender units at
ministerial level, as well as at provincial and district level and in
complete primary schools (EPCs), with a view to the development of
specific actions, is the inclusion of a gender approach in the school
environment. However, Osório and Silva (2008) state that, because
of the lack of autonomy and insufficient empowerment of these
gender units, their capacity to influence actions concerning public
policies is limited, so that there is no guarantee that they can
eliminate the gender asymmetries in the education sector.
The PEE (2012) states that in the course of the last few years, the
proportion of girls attending Primary Education and the 1st cycle of
Secondary Education has increased constantly, particularly in the 1st
cycle of General Secondary Education, where the percentage of girls
increased from 41% to 47%. The same evolution occurred in the
districts “since in 2004 there were 22 districts with a female student
population of less than 40% and in 2010 there was only one district,

148
Morrumbala, which still had a female student population of 39.7%”
(PEE,2012:28).
In spite of the country having made progress in girls’ access to
education, the majority of the children outside of the school is of
female sex and the measures adopted to guarantee that the children,
mainly girls, complete basic education have not had the expected
efficacy. As mentioned above, gender differences occur at all levels of
education, but are more visible in the classes following grade 1. In
2006 the difference between boys and girls in grade 1 was 2% in
favour of boys, while it increased to 20% in grade 7, while in 2008
this difference in grade 1 was 3.6% in favour of boys, while it
increased to 12.6% in grade 7. This means that, as the girls get older,
they drop out of school. The annual and inter-annual dropout rates
are still high, mainly in the North and Centre of the country (PEE,
2012). Cultural factors have been mentioned as main causes of
unequal access to education, expressed in the fact that the families
give priority to the education of boys to the detriment of girls, and in
the occurrence of dropouts caused by early marriages or unwanted
pregnancy, which in most cases are related to sexual harassment and
abuse.
Along the same lines, Macia (2011) states that gender equality and
equity in access to education in Mozambique is a challenge because,
notwithstanding the efforts made, there are still snags on the road to
real gender equality and equity, some of which related to cultural
factors inducing girls to early “marriages” and to their involvement in
household chores and also the fact that their parents give priority to
the education of boys to the detriment of the education of girls.
According to the analysis and projections produced by the MINED in
the PEE (2012-2016), in the next few years it will not be possible to
achieve gender equity. It is necessary to make efforts for the
realization of the rights of women and children in the country.

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12. Education Sector Gender Strategy for the 2011-
2015 period

Since 1995, the Government has developed various tools to guide

actions with a view to greater access to education, mainly basic
primary education. The Gender Integration Action Plan (PAIG)
appeared as the main tool to guide the implementation of the PEE in
a gender perspective. However,
“the fact that the PAIG is developed at the margin of the
national education strategy has limited the achievement of
progress in narrowing the gender gap in the education sector,
whether with respect to the participation of girls and women
as students, or concerning the participation of women as
teachers and in decision-making processes in the institutions
as well as regarding the adoption of measures to make the
sector more adjusted to the desired changes” (EGSE, 2011).
Between 2004 and 2008 the Education Sector Gender Equity
Strategy was developed, with a view to the production of a series of
strategic guidelines on the basis of the strategic axes of the sector,
namely access to education and permanence in school, the quality of
education and institutional development. In order to continue these
actions, and because gender differences in the education sector still
prevail, the EGSE (2011-2015) was prepared, with the following
objectives:
(i) To contribute to the achievement of equal rights and
opportunities both for women and for men concerning
education and its benefits;
(ii) To guarantee a more equitable participation of both sexes in
the development actions planned by the Ministry of
Education;
(iii) To contribute to the implementation of agreements and laws
for the promotion of gender equality in Mozambique;
(iv) To improve the capacity of the education sector to deal with
gender equality and women empowerment themes;

150
 (v) To strengthen the gender mainstreaming processes in the
structures, systems, policies and programmes of the Ministry.
This plan is supposed to be a continuation of the actions aimed at
achieving basic primary education, so as to comply with the
Millennium Development Goals. However, many challenges still
persist regarding the protection of children, which the strategy will
have to face.
In spite of all these actions, many girls abandon school and there are
more inequalities in terms of access to education and opportunities,
calling into question all efforts that have been made to offer
education for all. Most of the existing child protection policies do not
identify a relation between cultural issues and failures at school,
which leads to the development of strategies and actions that are not
linked to the issue of girls having access to and remain at school.
As can be seen from the description presented, there are legal and
institutional mechanisms in Mozambique promoting equal rights.
However, it is evident that, in spite of the formalization of the
protection and defence of children and women, the efforts made and
the resources spent have not produced the desired effects. Issues
such as sexual violence against children and women, the continuation
of traditional practices such as early “marriages”, genital
manipulation rituals, pitakufa56 and domestic violence, are still
socially legitimated and not sanctioned by the system of
administration of justice. This means that the problem is not the
inadequacy of legislation and procedures but the incapacity to act on
the social and cultural reality, i.e., when the gender order is not
considered a basic order of inequality, and when one seeks to
reconcile a culture of exclusion with human rights, the efficacy of the
strategic intentions will be limited to isolated actions that conflict
with the preservation of a profoundly conservative gender structure.
Therefore, whenever (or almost whenever) culture and rights enter

56 WLSA (2011). "Pitakufa" is a purification ritual that obliges a widow to sleep with
the brother of her deceased husband. http://www.wlsa.org.mz, Acceded on 27
December 2010.
151
into conflict, as is the case of early “marriages”, the social and
institutional silence neutralizes the illegality.
As already mentioned, there are legislation and public policies which,
when applied, could safeguard the rights of women and children.
However, many proposals for change in legislation or public policies
encounter an hostile environment with the argument that they clash
with cultural practices. Girls face violence at home, at school and in
the community. “There is a big barrier, which is the lack of legal
support to legitimate and make the protection of girls against
violence effective. The practices, attitudes and behaviours in the
community educate girls in the sense of submission and obedience to
boys, thus contributing to their vulnerability, with respect to the
various forms of violence against them" (UNICEF, 2009:49).

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Chapter III - Initiation Rites: Cultural
Cohesion and Power Strategies
While the purpose of the previous chapter was to set out the
legislative and judicial assumptions and the public policy
commitments regarding human rights, particularly in Mozambique,
it is also necessary to emphasize that these legal mechanisms are
clashing with unfavourable contexts for the enforcement of these
rights. In other words, we are faced with a certain degree of
ineffectiveness in the use of this set of legal instruments, which may
partly be explained by the existence of a power which structures
cultural institutions such as the rites, without taking into account the
principles guiding access to and the exercise of human rights.
With this chapter we intend to analyse the social meanings and
power relations of the ethnolinguistic groups, in the context of the
legal force of the modern State. It is not our intention to give an
ethnographic description of the rites, their moments and contents.
Besides, the observation of Peirano (2003) is relevant, that to
understand the rites, we have to bear in mind the social order that
the cultural bodies intend to reproduce. Thus, for example, the rites
may be analysed through a symbolic approach of their
representations and their role in the construction/constraint of
identity (i.e. with respect to gender, a group and relationships). The
question is that the rites should be seen as institutional symbolic
systems (in the view of Pierre Bourdieu, 1981), culturally and
politically structured and structuring, of social power relations and
“intrigues” (including the very dimension of the more formal State
power) and identities. In this sense, we adopt her analysis as “special
types of events, more formalized and stereotyped and thus more
liable to analysis because already cut out in native terms, as critical
events and rituals are more stable, having an order which structures
them, a sense of event with a collective purpose” (Peirano, 2003: 8).

153
As we already had the opportunity to discuss, our main concern in
the course of this study, and present in this chapter, is to seek to
understand how the rites established themselves as tools for the
construction of a world vision and for the projection of a place for the
production and reproduction of a political, social and cultural order,
recognizing the mechanisms transforming it in a field of revelation
and support of powers, mainly the constituent power of social gender
or group relations.
Without intending to repeat the above already developed theoretical-
methodological precautions and options, our analysis of the rites is
supported in this chapter by empirical evidence, taking into account
the dynamist perspective of the rites-State adaptability or conflict, in
the tradition-modernity and power-countervailing power
perspectives. This allows us at once to start from the above-
formulated concepts, such as those of culture, power, ethnic/
ethnolinguistic group, as well as the correlated concepts of the theory
of action and/or the theory of power.
Seeking to understand the dynamics of the rites as power structures,
we will do so bearing in mind that the power relations in which they
are included exist at two levels, a macro level (in their relation to the
State) and a micro level (within their endogenous contexts of
reproduction). In any one of the cases they are perceived as
autonomous social power and countervailing power relations, which
are organised and circumstantial, synchronic and diachronic,
reproductive and short-lived, peaceful and discordant, i.e., as a
provisional and reformulating system. We should note that the
analysis of the interpretation of the meanings of the rites on the basis
of the ethnolinguistic groups being studied (differences, specificities
and similarities), including the forms of reproduction of roles,
identities and powers resulting from the rites, will be guided by a
dynamic analysis view of power and countervailing power, i.e.,
perceiving them as symbolic power institutions. This will allow us to
understand the clashes and the recomposition/readjustment
strategies of the rites, when confronted with other forms/instances of
power (for example, the State), with the objective of breaking with

154
the analytical impasses in the explanation of naturalized practices by
the culturalist view, according to authors such as Sardan (2010).
Thus, we will start dealing with symbolic power, social expectations
and the differences and similarities of initiation rites. Then we will
deal with the changes and resistances/readaptations of the rites with
modernity. Finally, we will discuss the contextualization of the rites
in the broad context of State power (threats, alliances and
countervailing power/reaffirmation), taking into account their
inclusion/legitimation in the campus of religious ideologies.

1. Structure, organisation and functional system of the

rites

1.1. Concept, organisation and functions/objectives

Rites are classified in different ways, but here it is important to focus

on rites of passage (from adolescence to adulthood), what Terrin
(2004) calls rites related to the life cycle. According to this author,
the term rite is derived from the Latin ritus, what means established
order, which involves a cultural community expression, without
however any discursive or thought system prescription for its
practical identification. With this assertion the author reveals the
complex character of the rite, distinctive from what, for example, the
accompanying rituals would be.
Alongside overtures of a more religious character, related to periodic
practices of consecration of rituals of mythological sacredness, of
gestuality or instrumentalism in beliefs (where the approach of
Turner, 1974, comes forward), Terrin also indicates another
conceptual line, of authors such as Goody (1961),57 which considers

57 J. Goody. (1961). Religion and Ritual: The Definitional Problem. The British
Journal of Sociology, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 142–164.
155
rites a manifestation of symbolic-mystical performances, and not
necessarily instrumental.58
The phenomenological nature brought by Terrin gives a social
contextualization to the rite as:
“an act of worship, a moment of expression of a whole at
community level, an act of cult that has its meta-empirical
direction, and as such is capable of unifying in a profound way
the experience of the real” (Terrin, 2004: 35).
Thus, alongside their religious nature, the rites should be socially
integrated in the perspective of the meanings given to them and of
the behaviours.
Although also referred to in the description of the approaches taken
by Terrin (2004), in this chapter the psychoanalytic and cathartic,
ethological and ecological perspectives, among others, will not be
studied in depth. What is central to the study is the analysis of the
continuation and restructuring of a social order that is achieved by
the rites.
For Van Gennep (1977), in the wake of the dynamic sociology a ritual
is an autonomous object, structured in ceremonies that are in
agreement with the type of moment (birth, coming of age, marriage,
death). The ceremonies are thus operations that are conducted taking
into account their implicit aims. The rituals regulate and order,
constraining individuals to a more general social and economic
order. For this author, an understanding of the rites is subject to
knowing their mechanisms and what gives them meaning. Whatever
the rites are, they mean a passage that contains a sequence:
separation, margin, and aggregation. Each one of these sequences
and rites has a different meaning, according to the stage of life to
which they refer.

58 “…with the rite we make reference to a category of standard behaviours in which

the relation between means and ends is not intrinsic, i.e., it is neither irrational nor
non-rational” (Goody, 1961, quoted by Terrin, 2004).
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In the understanding of Van Gennep (1977) and as subsequently
stated by Medeiros (1995), it is also observed that the rites of
passage, as well as those of the puberty of boys and girls, have a three
phase structure: separation, margin and aggregation. Separation
involves the violence of a compulsive detachment of the adolescents
from the mother’s home. There are also traumatic effects of the
violence of the initiation rites through the exposure of magical-
religious contents, and with recourse to the animal (snakes) and
plant (roots, grass, the menstruation tree (mpila) in the case of the
Makhuwa-Lomwé group in Zambézia) domain, all this to express the
symbolic death of the provisional beings of the community.
The differences and changes characterising the current organisation
of the rites in their three phases (separation, margin and
aggregation) will be discussed below. For now, we observe that there
are two scenarios to bear in mind according to the empirical data of
this study: first, the difference between the geographical regions of
the study (north of the country – Cabo Delgado, centre-north –
Zambézia, and centre – Sofala), which somehow coincides with the
ethnolinguistic specificities of these regions – Makhuwas,
Makondes, Chuwabos, Makhuwas Lomués, Senas and Ndaus);
second, the proximity of the regions with respect to towns and cities.
Although these aspects will be dealt with in detail in subsequent
subchapters, at this point they draw attention to the fact that the time
used for the performance of the rites has been reduced.
As seen in previous studies (Medeiros, 1995, Braço, 2008) for boys
the separation still continues without a mark (though in this study
the majority of the interviewers had mentioned circumcision as a
ritual demarcation factor). I.e., while for girls the first menstruation,
the appearance of breasts, among other physiological marks, still
remain decisive elements for being taken to the godmother’s house,
the criteria for the separation of boys are age, the breaking of the
voice, the parents’ suspicions about their sexual biological
development, as is established by these remarks from a Makonde boy
in Macomia District:

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 “A time came at which my father started to take me out for
fishing and to the machamba (agricultural field), and when
my uncle saw this he talked to my father to take me to the
ceremonies, because they thought that I had already grown up
… I had already started to have hair in my pubic area” (Diogo
1d).
While in the past the departure for the rites was evidently a group
movement of youths and adolescents to the “mato” (the bush, in the
case of boys) and to the “cabana” (the hut, in the case of girls),
organised by the holders of ritualistic power, today it is more a
movement led by the parents/families who deliver their children. The
tendency still continues to send the boys and girls at an earlier age,
often on an individual basis for the latter. In addition to this, even if
for girls the first menstruation is decisive, their entry into the rites is
already no longer only determined by this event. In other words,
some vagueness of the criteria for the initiation of girls begins even to
call into question their menstruation as an unquestionable mark, as
is shown by the difference between the examples below of two Ndau
girls of the same focus group, in Beira City:
“I went to the initiation rites when I was 10, but had not yet
started to menstruate; my godmother took me to the house of
my grandmother and a few days later I joined other girls in
the rites, who were older than me and had already started to
menstruate” (Luísa 1).
“When I started to menstruate I was 13 years old. (…) At that
time my mother did not explain anything to me, she only
called my aunt, the sister of my father, to take care of me, and
after that I had the ceremonies” (Luísa 2).
Anyway, mainly in the southern region of the country the recruitment
criteria (for the separation phase) tend to be more imprecise for boys
than for girls. For girls, criteria such as the first menstruation, the
development of breasts and virginity still remain valid/observable,
though we have come across cases in which the entry of non-virgin
girls is not prevented. With respect to boys, the scenario still
continues that their physiological puberty corresponds to

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sociocultural puberty. This distinction is developed by Van Gennep
(1977), when he states that one aspect has to do with the point of
view of the social expectations and commands that individuals
assume outside of their childhood condition, about to prepare
themselves for adult life (social puberty), and another aspect has to
do with the maturation stage or anatomical and physiological
evolution of the individuals, giving them pubescent physical
characteristics of final human pre-maturation (biological/
physiological puberty). Besides, even the boys come to the rites
without knowing what they will find there (in terms of teaching
contents and mechanisms). This justifies perhaps the functional side
of the generational secrecy, i.e., the pact of silence of the more
“adults” towards the “non-adults”. We can see this diversity of the
criterion of age and physiological maturation for going to the rites in
a focus group of Makonde adolescents in Cabo Delgado, Macomia
District:
“I participated in the ceremonies of the initiation rites at the
age of 10” (Diogo 1a).
“I also participated in the ceremonies of the initiation rites at
the age of 8” (Diogo 1 b).
“I think I was 7” (Diogo 1 c).
“I was 11” (Diogo 1d).
An important aspect has to do with the fact that among
ethnolinguistic groups of Makonde and Makhuwa origin there still
remains a tendency to perform the male initiation rites in groups
(including the case of adolescents of the same groups in the capital
towns, without excluding Maputo City where we did the pilot study in
the Makonde area of concentration in Military District and the
Makhuwa area of concentration in Mafalala District). In the cases of
the Ndau group ritual collectivisation is infrequent and in the Sena
group this collectivisation has sometimes been making way to ritual
individualization, granting a greater degree of intervention to the
families. These observations are evident in these remarks from Ndau
boys in Búzi District:

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 “The ceremonies occurred in a hut in the bush. It was my
uncle who took me to the bush. When we arrived there, there
were other boys. We shaved our head. (...) They circumcised
us. (...) We sang together. (...) We were going to the bush
singing and hunting” (Luís 3).
“I stayed in the house of my grandfather for a week. My father
took me there during this time. I stayed only with my
grandfather but sometimes other people would come to
perform a few traditional ceremonies with me” (Marco 3).
An interesting aspect of the recruitment of boys has to do with the
entry on the stage of agents representing the public State authority.
While the Education sector participates urging the organizers of the
rites to conduct them during school holidays, the health units
contribute with health personnel, who attend to a list of candidates
for circumcision, brought in by the local traditional authorities and
rite masters, through technical and hygienically safe means (though
there still are symbolic incision practices on the penis of boys, under
the pretext of respect for the ancestors and local culture).
An officer of the Health sector in Cabo Delgado had this to say:
“The circumcision of adolescents during the initiation rites is
carried out by nurses here in the health unit, according to a
list which the village head has previously given to us. (...) This
is good for us because in this way the boys are not exposed to
risks of contamination through sharp tools used collectively,
and a well performed circumcision allows personal sexual
hygiene as the inexistence of the foreskin is an unfavourable
environment for bacteria” (Achirafo 2).
Another officer of the Health sector in Sofala said this:
“Circumcision allows safer sexual intercourse, the skin of the
glands of the penis becomes more insensitive to corrosion and
microscopic injuries that may facilitate contamination, (...)
including HIV and AIDS” (Daniel 1).
Well then, on the one hand, in addition to the correlation between
circumcision and sexual hygiene or between circumcision and safe
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sex being an assertion without acquired material or scientific
evidence, in our view this leads to the legitimation of circumcision in
the initiation rites, even if it was previously non-existent in some
groups, as is the case of the Ndau and Chuwabo groups. For
example, a man of the focus group of Ndau traditional leaders told us
during the interview:
“In our days we didn’t have circumcision but today some
young parents already take their children to hospital to
perform circumcision. (...) It is good because it avoids a few
diseases” (Ernesto 3).
As we will see below, this observation is part of a political effort to
appropriate an attempt for scientific reasoning with respect to
circumcision, promoting an agenda of ideological harmonization
between the political discourse of the State and that of the rites
(through a legitimation strategy of both).
On the other hand, even if the Health authorities ultimately and
without an objective intention end up interfering in the field of
traditional power regarding the performance of circumcision, this
results in a transformation of its symbolic meaning. However, though
the introduction of circumcision occurs through a strategy negotiated
with the public power, it does not annul the social and symbolic
power of the traditional circumcision agents. This may be
exemplified by the observation that the act of circumcision is first of
all a moment where two performances are present.
In the first place, the exercise of a mythical professional power that
marks the identity of a social group, which is why, even when the
boys are circumcised by nurses, when entering the ritual space, a
small symbolic incision/cut is made with traditional tools, indicating
the authenticity of the circumcision. For example, a Makonde master
in Pemba, Cabo Delgado told us:

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 “When the boys return from the hospital we prick the penis
with a needle prepared by our wanalombo59 so that this
circumcision has the effect foreseen in our tradition”
(Armindo 1).
In the second place, the preparation of male sexual power over
women, i.e., circumcision is seen as moulding the penis so that the
man can obtain greater control over the sexual act. Without scientific
evidence of this fact and observing that this world view does not
make any reference to women as a co-participant subject of the
sexual act (the female body is perceived as an object), a ritualized
Makhuwa youth in Mecúfi informed us that:
“A circumcised penis is more potent than a non-circumcised
penis, because while its erection is easy it also lasts longer
during the sexual act, because the removal of the foreskin
puts the gland of the head of the penis exposed to the natural
environment and is thus less sensitive to premature
ejaculation” (Vasco 3).
The margin phase continues to be very important as it is a moment
marked by sexual education, education about the social division of
work between men and women, teachings about “respect” for older
people and sociocultural values acting in the sense of preserving a
scheme that organizes social relations and hierarchies by gender and
by generation. In all the four ethnolinguistic groups (Makonde,
Makhuwa, Ndau and Sena) a ritualized woman shall always crouch
when she is in front of older men of the family, and shall never sit
down at the same table where her husband and other relatives or
friends are seated; when Makhuwa, Ndau and Sena husbands are
dissatisfied with the behaviour of their wives they should first
complain to their aunt or older sister; when the ritualized boys,
already men, return or pass by the house of their parents they should
not enter the room of their parents or touch intimate things of their
mothers without asking permission; in the Makonde, Makhuwa and

59 A Makonde master of initiation rites and of other magical-traditional ceremonies

and prayers.
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Ndau groups it is the man who should – repeating the obligation –
build a house for his family. However, in the Sena group women also
participate in this activity.
Still concerning education for the adult phase, we should note the
counsels and coercion in order to establish certain masculinizing and
feminizing attitudes in the profile of the “completed” boys (men) and
“completed” girls (women). With respect to girls we should note tests
of household chores (i.e., sweeping, cooking), of care of the husband
(i.e., respond to signs of hunger and/or signs of sexual desire), of
sexual and reproductive performance. With respect to boys, resorting
to a symbolic coppice (except in the capital towns) is still being done,
simulations of the penetration of the penis into objects that simulate
a vagina, or even instructions for sexual assault of any woman who by
chance passes in the proximity of the place where the boys being
initiated are “marginalized” (in the margin phase). In the initiatory
period girls are taught to have good performance as women, with
emphasis on the demonstration of the sexual act by older women,
through dances and other subtle forms of staging and “cultural
performance”.
Regarding the aggregation phase an expressive festivity continues to
exist, evident in the new social statuses (because it is also a moment
of sharing and meeting between tradition and the public and civil
order). Because these parties are perceived as displays of “cultural
heritage”, the public and local power authorities are called in this
phase as guests of honour to the initiates’ adulthood consecration
event. In the same logic of proud display of the new adult, in many
cases the families (the initiates’ parents) reserve for this occasion the
only moment in which the parents’ unrestricted affection for their
children is displayed, through toasts and various presents (mainly in
rural areas where parents have few material possessions for the
economic sustenance of their children). During the study, many
youths said that this is the only festive moment of their life, as a
Makonde student in Mecúfi, Cabo Delgado told us:
“I never had a party at home, my parents never had an
opportunity to throw a party for me or my brothers, but when

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 we returned from the rites we got new clothes, slippers, there
were soft drinks and biscuits, there were lots of people in our
house” (Vasco 2).
So we see that it is from the aggregation phase that the rites reveal
that they clearly represent what Medeiros (1995) calls a decisive
element of how individuals appear and position themselves in the
social domain. Well then, the rites force the course of social inclusion
or exclusion of individuals. We will exemplify this point when dealing
with the role of rites in the determination of the social integration of
individuals and in the social reproduction of group identities.

1.2. Agents, expectations and social integration

The power of the rites, as factors of social inclusion or exclusion,

reveals itself in the form of social recognition ties between
individuals, within a framework of expectations of the social group
or, if we prefer, within the campus of socio-identity reproduction. Let
us for example consider the information of a female teacher living in
Búzi District, in Sofala:
“When I got here, coming from Inhambane, after marrying
my husband who is Ndau, but who had passed through the
Sena-Makhuwa rites, so he had been circumcised and all his
sisters had done matinji, his family, mainly his sisters,
exerted pressure on me that I should at least create matinji.
(...) For a long time I refused, until they started spreading
word around the entire district that I was a little child and was
not a woman to be married. (...) I already started hearing
these things in the chapa“60 (Deolinda 3).
For his part, a young Makonde man said the following:
“With this age (19 years) I am still in grade 7, after an
interruption of five years, because I had to leave the house of
my uncle, where I lived after my parents had died, and which
was near the only school in the small town. (...) I moved to the

60 Semi-collective public transport.

164
 house of my grandmother in an area without a school. (...)
What me did abandon school was the fact that my school
mates, friends and neighbours of my age discovered that I was
waanasunke, a dirty man who has not been circumcised, and
they spread this information to all school girls and female
neighbours. (...) Therefore I did the rites in Muidume in the
house of my grandparents” (Vasco 2).
The statement of Deolinda 3 and of Vasco 2 also show a framework of
stereotypes revealing a structuring power, with social and
institutional recognition and non-recognition mechanisms affecting
individuals for having, or not having, been subjected to rites and
because of the sex-gender and/or ethnolinguistic qualities conferred
by the rites. In this respect, Bourdieu (1981) gives a more
institutional meaning to the rites by classifying them as
institutionalization acts/processes.
The rite agents (the organizers, executors and companions) ascribe
social features to the initiates which are, ultimately, the expectations
of the operating rite agents, i.e., gender roles, physiological physical
identity and identity features of the group. For now it is important to
highlight the importance of the relation between the rites and the
confirmation features of gender roles, as well as of the confirmation
features of the relation of those with group identities (in this case
ethnolinguistic-cultural identities) and from there seek to establish
the link between these two scopes and the social expectations
determining their “success”, which in our view are of two levels: on
the one hand we have expectations projected to social gender roles to
be assumed and exercised by the new “adults” and on the other hand
we have the expectations projected to the social reproduction of the
sociocultural values and qualities of the identity of the social group to
which the initiates belong.
In the first case, the rite agents act, through teachings, empirical
demonstrations, examples of social inclusion and exclusion, in order
that the “new adult” boys are and act as “true men/good men”. I.e.,
heads of family, owners of family property, intolerant with respect to
rebellious attitudes of their wives, privileged and dominant in the

165
relations of the division of the rights of expression and of decision in
the relation to women, legitimate sanctioners of the family order.
And that the “new adult” girls are and act as “good women”. I.e.,
mothers, responsible for the health care of the children, for the
cleanliness of the house, for the moral education and behaviour of
the children, for the kitchen, for water and fuel supply for domestic
use, obedient to the spouse and his relatives, exclusive and
unconditional sexual “devotees” of the husband.
In the second case, the rite agents act through the use of the
mythology of the ethnolinguistic group (i.e., historical origin, cultural
values, power symbology, safety/protection or spiritual and social
success). In this scope, values are transmitted to the new adults
which should be perpetuated as instruments of social acceptance
(when accomplished) or of social disapproval (when not
accomplished): in the context of formal work economy often directed
through clientelistic/neopatrimonialist mechanisms (according to
the assertion of Médard, quoted by Geffray, 1990b),61 and in the
context of testing group identity relations during moments of social
companionship (during these moments the identity of the
“masculinizing or feminizing purity” conferred by the social group’s
order of values is also tested), and in the context of decision-making
power and of the choice of a spouse. In this regard, a Makonde
master had this to say:
“We, Makondes, have to take our children to the rites because
there they will have protection from our ancestors. About
anything they need to consult, all the values they will have to
use to educate their children as well, the correct decision
about the woman they should marry, they will know it thanks
to the rites (Armindo 2).
On the other hand, a Makhuwa master said that:

61 J. Médard (1976). “Le rapport de clientèle. Du phénomène social à l’analyse

politique”. In: Revue Française de Sciences Politiques, No. 1, Vol. 26.

166
 “Nowadays, the majority of our youths, mainly those who did
not go to the rites, have had a lot of bad luck in life, for
example, their marriages are dissolved very quickly because
the women do not know their role in the household, their
relations with their parents and with the elderly are
disrespectful, they marry with any person without knowing
the origin of the tradition of these people, they do not know
how to treat some diseases of their children in a traditional
way, they do not know which cults they should perform in life
to steer away from bad luck in life” (Armindo 3).
Well then, it is true that the power of these two scenarios of
sociocultural expectations of the rites, in the media coverage of the
social inclusion-exclusion of individuals, is not only due to the
exposure of the initiates to the symbolic framework of the actions,
practices and discourses of the separation, margin and aggregation.
There is here at the same time an intervention of “professionals” (in
the statutory sense of social role) and mainly of their “institutional
power” which in our view is conveyed in three fundamental
campuses (in Bourdieu’s perspective, 1989) of micropower: the
campus of intellectual memory power (parental, inherited or
acquired professionally), the campus of the traditional authority and
its pact with the local public power/authority and the spectre of
domination by social and/or charismatic legitimacy (in Weber’s
words, 2004), strengthened by its alliance with the power.
Previous studies consulted by us (Medeiros, 1995; Braço, 2008), as
well as the exploratory study of this research conducted in 2011 in
Maputo City (in Mafalala and Military Districts), seem to have shown
that the agents responsible for the rites, whether those of boys or of
girls, are exclusively or almost exclusively related to the activity of the
initiation rites of this group of youths and adolescents. However,
what we note is that these agents develop strategies in order that
their professional practice strengthens other sources of social power.
I.e., the rite agents are clearly the organizers, executors and
legitimators/companions of the entire ritual process, and we found
four categories or forms of power of the rite agents, namely,
traditional power, public power (domain of the formal authority),
167
parental heritage and religious power, though these forms may not
necessarily act together.
There are several parties involved in the supervision of the rites, the
more important ones of which are the masters, matrons, godfathers
and godmothers, due to the fact that they appear in the three phases
– separation, margin and aggregation – while in many cases the
godfathers and godmothers of the initiates accompany their life cycle.
The organizers of the rites (parents, uncles, godmothers, older
brothers, heads of the village/quarter, chiefs/queens) act in the
separation and margin phases, the executors (informal nurses or
surgeons, masters, matrons, preachers of divine and spiritual
prayers, healers, elders guardians of mythological knowledge about
the group’s identity values, already initiated boys/girls, sentinels and
executors of punishments to the initiates, singers) intervene in the
margin phase, and finally the community and family companions
(absent in the two previous phases) receive the new initiates in the
integration phase. It should be noted that it frequently happens that
the companions of the integration are to a large extent the same who
played an important role in the separation, the most important ones
being the godmothers and godfathers. The social control of the
initiates is carried out by people holding social power over the rites,
the community and the families (i.e., community leaders
masters/matrons). Besides, as shown above, it is due to this fact
(mainly in rural areas) that the social inclusion or exclusion of
individuals occurs through the rites.
Ultimately, these situations show, in line with the reasoning of
Bourdieu (1989) who treats the “rites as institutional acts”, that the
rites tend to produce a habitus within the social group, i.e., for
example, how boys mould their sexual expectations about women
and vice versa, how expectations about the domestic sexual division
of labour are aligned, how ideas about sources of marital conflicts are
pre-conceptualized, how criteria of group identity are judged, even
between members of the same community, having furthermore to do
with the limits of the modus operandi of the rites in the

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institutionalization of practices and discourses for the social life of
the initiates.
And it isn’t by chance, for example, that specialised professionals
appear to put pressure on already adult individuals who passed or
not through the rites (among the Makhuwas in Maputo and in
Pemba), or who, having done so, were not circumcised (among the
Chuwabos). The same applies to cases in which women without
othuna62 suffer various kinds of pressure and disapproval for not
having them.
It can be concluded that individuals feel integrated or excluded
through the construction of gender identities (masculinization and
feminization) and of an ethnolinguistic group identity. The
preparation of gender roles for conjugal life, the civic order
(transmission of “respect” and preparation or manipulation of the
“good man/good woman”), the genital and physical modelling,
constitute a creation/legitimation of men and women for the
matrimonial/conjugal market, culminating in the consecration of the
mandate of family parental power and return on the social
investment in the children, as can be concluded from the statements
of a Makonde teacher in Pemba:
“A boy is fit to marry/having a wife when he is 13 to 15 and
already an adult. After a girl has started to menstruate she is
already a woman and is fit to marry/have a husband. A
serious man shall be one who knows how to take care of his
wife, who does not let there be lack of food in his house, and
who knows how to discipline his children. And a good woman
shall know at what time to leave and return home, how to take
care of the children, how to cook and take care of the house.
Today there are those women who are married but do not
even know how to hold a baby on her lap or how to cook”
(Álvaro 1).
Another Makhuwa teacher in Mecúfi adds:

62 Othuna for Makhwuas and Makondes, matinji for Senas and Ndau.
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 “A serious man shall respect his ancestors, shall build his
house and shall have employment, and a good woman shall be
one who produces children and who respects the family of her
husband” (Álvaro 3).
With significant importance for the social integration of individuals
(according to the social status conferred by the rites), the
sociocultural strategies of monitoring access to the matrimonial
market (i.e., social reconnaissance of the relatives of the fiancées or
fiancés) and to the productive economic market (i.e., agricultural
land and/or housing plots) were also identified for the domestic
economy, mainly on the part of rural families in some districts
(Macomia, Mecúfi, and Gurué). Besides, it is this what in our view
continues to determine the power of female rites, because it is here
where the matrimonial and economic market for the procreators who
see in their daughters direct material or financial sources (from their
birth, in the case of Búzi District, dominated by the “paratu”
phenomenon63), is controlled. In the case of the acceptance of the
“good son” or rejection of the “bad son”, the parents find legitimation
to attribute or withdraw from their son some succession, inheritance
and property management power. This also happens when, on the
basis of the positive or negative assessment of the daughter-in-law or
of her family, as this Ndau leader in Búzi District says:
“I had bad luck with my oldest son and my subsequent
daughters, but thanks to God my youngest son fulfilled all the
ceremonies of the rites and has already introduced his wife.
We are very happy, I and my wife, therefore we invited him to
live with his wife in our house and we gave our machamba
and our goats to the couple so that they can manage. (...) Now,
that bandit [referring to another son] would not deserve this.
(...) We don’t even know where he is and what he is doing
there in Beira, and the daughters are only producing
grandchildren just like that for us to bring up. (...) If only they

63 This traditional matrimonial arrangement is an element belonging to the cultural

model legitimised by the initiation rites.
170
 had listened to us… (...) But also, nowadays, we don’t have
those mankôssi64 of our times” (Ernesto 3).
Finally, it should be noted that an order of gender relations that may
be expected for the social integration of individuals is based on the
reproduction of androcratic power, identified in the discourses of
parents and adolescents. In other words, the entire direct and
indirect discourse is constructed around virilocality and also of
parental power of the men in the family. Hence it is clear that the
rites are producers of androcracy, as can be seen from the statement
of a female teacher in Búzi:
“After they start seeing menstruation it is better to have our
daughters here at home, married to a good husband and
taking care of their household, than to be there at school,
vulnerable to frivolities with their colleagues or even those
irresponsible teachers, and as a consequence get pregnant
without anybody taking responsibility” (Deolinda 3).
In the same way, a male teacher in Búzi District says:
“It is very important for us that our daughters are virgins until
the day of their marriage, therefore after coming out of the
rites it is much better to marry before any disgrace happens; it
would be a disgrace if she had been unofficially beheaded65
before marrying” (Dinis 3).
Thus, we note that both the patrilineal and the matrilineal
organisation of kinship are similar with regard to the androcratic
power, strengthened by the rites with respect to virilocality. In other
words, while it has been assumed that the matrilineal order goes
against the direct role of husbands in taking control of the family and
the children, of the land and of production, giving primacy to the
brother of the fiancée, the rites, through their teachings of the boys,
have been contributing to the transformation of this order, by
teaching the boys to be direct holders of parental and property power
in the family.

64 Name given to the master of rites and of magical-traditional ceremonies.

65 Slang used to refer to a girl’s loss of virginity.
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1.3. Ethnolinguistic identity and rites: the case of the
Makhuwa, Makonde, Chuwabo, Sena and Ndau
groups

In the first place, we want to repeat here that the objective of this
study is not to analyse or describe ethnographically the
ethnolinguistic groups with which we have been working. The idea
contained in this section is to make a brief characterisation of the
identities, from a cultural point of view (regarding the practices and
symbology of their rites), of the Makhuwa, Makonde, Chuwabo,
Sena and Ndau groups. We should also mention the difficulties
encountered due to the fact that in some cases we did not find factors
of cultural regularity related to the rites and also because the
historiographical or ethnographic literature is scarce. Besides, even
the literature found does not offer historiographical or
anthropological details about the subject of initiation rites in the
Chuwabo (in Zambézia), Mwani (in Cabo Delgado), Sena and Ndau
(in Sofala) societies and other societies in the regions studied.
The correlation between rites and ethnolinguistic group evolves
through the process of social reproduction in which both occur
simultaneously. Medeiros seeks to demonstrate this relation saying
that:
“The rites should also be seen on the basis of a socioeconomic
dimension, in which the link to a social structure and its
function in social reproduction occurs; and they should also
be seen in a sociopedagogical dimension relative to the
production of the “man”, a cultural and symbolic production,
part of which is the reproduction of the group culture; and
finally, in a psychological socialization and enculturation
dimension” (Medeiros, 1995: 316).
Alongside Medeiros (1995), Augé (1994) and others summarize the
social function and objective of the rites as being the fulfilment of
roles of reproduction and restructuring of the order of secularizing
powers to guarantee group identity between generations. Without
studying the rites in depth, on the basis of the groups of the regions

172
studied, it would be necessary to verify previously how this
(socioeconomic, symbolic, psychosocial, sociopedagogical and even
political) correlation occurs between the ethnolinguistic belonging
group and the functions/roles of the rites.
But how would the rites participate in the social co-reproduction of
the sociocultural (identity, gender and even political) order of the
ethnolinguistic groups?
It should first be noted that the ethnolinguistic groups that are object
of this study will be described taking into account the socio-
organizational historicity and its correlation with the influence of the
rites on the construction of identities. The idea is that this correlation
is demonstrated via the symbolic and institutionalizing power of the
rites for purposes of cognition, beliefs, gender roles, kinship and/or
political order, taking however into account the unequal balancing of
the content of empirical information on the occurrence of initiation
rites in these groups. We will have three descriptive categories for
this purpose, namely the group identity marks in the rites (for
example, traits of kinship, mechanisms of social inclusion and
exclusion), the reproduction marks of androcratic power and the
present time and encounter with modernity (changes and inclusion
in the field of State political power). For organizational reasons, this
last aspect will be integrated into the section about the analysis of the
rites in the context of State power in Mozambique.
According to the ethnolinguistic map of Mozambique (Map 1), there
are about twenty ethnolinguistic groups within the geographical
borders of the country, some of which corresponding to population
agglomerations on both sides of the border with neighbouring
countries – South Africa (Zulus and Tsonga-Changanas), Malawi
(Chewas, Nyanjas and Yao), Swaziland (Swazis and Tongas),
Tanzania (Makondes and Kiswahilis), Zambia (Chewas) and
Zimbabwe (Shonas, Ndaus). In the Northern Region the Makhuwa
(the largest demographic group) the Yao, the Nyanja, the Mwani
and the Kiswahili (these last two on the coastal region) dominate; in
the Central Region and along the Zambezi valley, to the south and the
north, the ma Sena, Xitewe, Nyungué, Shona and va Ndau

173
dominate, and in the Southern Region the Tsonga, the Tonga and va
Nguni dominate (NELIMO, 1989: 6, 7).

Map 1: Ethnolinguistic map of Mozambique

Source: NELIMO. 1989: 8.

Brief history of the ethnolinguistic group identity

Makondes

The Makondes (see Map 2) are a Bantu people from Eastern Africa,
inhabiting three plateaux in Eastern Africa, in the north of
Mozambique and in the south of Tanzania. In Mozambique, though
without statistical demographic information, there are two big
plateaux inhabited by Makondes, namely, Macomia and Mueda, in
Cabo Delgado Province (Dias and Dias, 1964: 49-50). The hypothesis

174
of this origin resulted from an analysis of written and oral sources
and is also endorsed by cultural similarities with the Chewa people,
who even today inhabit a vast area south and southwest of Lake
Niassa, in Malawi and in Zambia. The Makondes would thus have
belonged, in past centuries, to a large Marave federation which,
according to historical data, would at that time have started its
migration to the northeast, along the Lugenda River valley.
History reveals that the Makondes kept themselves very isolated for a
long time, because only in the 20th century the Portuguese, who at
that time colonised Mozambique, managed to control the areas
inhabited by them. This late occupation was due to their location,
protected by sharply sloping regions, difficult to get to, and by dense
forests. A social characteristic of the Makondes is their socialization
for war (whether to face the hostility of animals on the plateaux or for
quarrels with other villages about the preferred occupation of the
plateaux). As a result of this they were portrayed as violent and
irascible, a reasoning supported by their geographical isolation (Dias
and Dias, 1964).
While common sense ascribes a combative dimension to the
Makondes, it is also true that the idea that Makondes must always be
ready for war was a common mark in the discourses of Makonde
masters and boys, as becomes clear in the remarks of this master:
“We, Makondes, teach not to be afraid of the bush. (…) We
educate our children resorting to ferocious animals and
weapons, so that they will not be afraid” (Armindo 1).
As Dias and Dias (1964) recognise, the geographical location on the
plateaux allowed their relative isolation which, associated with a
certain social constraint, allowed them to preserve a strong cultural
cohesion which, in spite of having decreased in the years following
the arrival of the Portuguese, nevertheless succeeded to resist in
various aspects (the symbolism of masks and tattoos, the ideals of
matrimonial (in)compatibility with respect to some historically
hostile peoples, virilocality, the initiation rites, superstition with
respect to the forest and ferocious animals, including traditional

175
religious aspects that were only subjugated and dominated by
Christianity around 1930) (Dias and Dias, 1964).
Another interesting aspect has to do with the fact that compared to
other groups we observed a tendency in the interviewed Makondes of
greater secrecy in sharing the values and practices of the rites. This
may, in our view, raise questions about the form of socialization of
the Makondes, as revealed by these remarks:
“A Makonde learns that he must know with whom and where
he should talk, because this means respect for the elderly who
teach those things, and to be careful with respect to the enemy
who may attack us while we sleep” (Armindo 2).
It is true that there are epistemological questions here that could be
raised. However, the observation remains that the rites point, with
particular visibility among the Makondes, to an education which
emphasizes courage with respect to danger and justifies secrecy in
cohabitation relations (a permanent mistrust of the other).66
The Makonde rite occurs precisely by and for the group and is
directed to a “closed” sociocultural circle (of great community
control), even given its behavioural ethnolinguistic characteristic
(from there, for example, its high level of secrecy and little exposure
of its content on the part of individuals, a factor even observed by the
closed character of the answers which the interviewees were giving
us). We saw that, compared to other groups, the duration of the rites
is longer, with an earlier recruitment of adolescents (even with cases
in which the initiatees enter at the age of 6). It was not surprising to
have observed, for example, circumcision in cold blood and at ages
below those of other groups, and for girls teachings about the
manipulating of the lengthening of their labia, deliberately, in a
different way than that of the Makhuwas (reference group of
ethnocultural opposition for the Makondes), as was said by a
Makonde master: “Makonde women lengthen their labia in a

66 Comando Naval de Moçambique, 1969. Moçambique: Agrupamentos

Etnolinguísticos. Aspectos do Estudo do Meio Humano. Lourenço Marques:
Empresa Moderna Sarl.
176
different way than Makhuwa women, because they prefer to have
lengthened labia of greater length” (Armindo 3).

Makhuwas
In the analysis made by
Map 2: Geographical area of the
Geffray (1990b), the
Makhuwas
Makhuwas can be designated
in different ways, from
Macoua, Macua, Macuas,
Makhuwa, Makoane, Makoa,
Mako, Makoua, Makouwa,
Makuas, Makuwa, Makwai,
Makwa, Mato, Metho,
Makua, Wamakua, among
others. The writings of
historians state that the
Makhuwa are a people of
Bantu origin from Eastern
Source: NELIMO
and Central Africa who
settled, through secular
voluntary migrations, in Mozambique, in Tanzania and in Malawi.
The slave trade widened the distribution of these peoples of Marave
Bantu origin to regions such as The Seychelles, Madagascar and
Mauritius, obviously with linguistic derivations.
In Mozambique, the geographical settlement of the Makhuwas
covers the entire northern, north-western and north-eastern region,
from the coast to the interior, until the north-western part of the
Zambezi valley (see Map 2). The geographical location of the
Makhuwas occurs in a crossroads of several other ethnolinguistic
groups, many of which having, in the course of history, waged wars
for the occupation of territories and local chiefdoms. It is also for this
reason that internally the Makhuwa language itself and its
subdialects experienced significant variations until the establishment
of the Makhuwa-Lomué, Makhuwa-Moniga, Makhuwa-Saca,
Makhuwa-Metho, Makhuwa-Marrevone and Makhuwa-Shirima

177
subgroups, with autonomous cultural and social organisation traits
(Medeiros, 1985).
Another important fact is the crossbreeding which the original
Makhuwa group had with other peoples of other ethnolinguistic
origin (by virtue of Islam or other socioeconomic and political
factors), giving the Makhuwa group a dominant perspective in this
contact, at least in the region, very much as a result of its
demographic size (well-known even today)67 and/or by virtue of its
first Islamization which promoted the creation of xeicados
(sheikdoms – Afro-Islamic chiefdoms) in the area, as forms of
political organisation, long before the Portuguese colonial occupation
of Mozambique (Geffray, 1990b).
In the framework of their social organisation the Makhuwa villages
owe their dances (tufo, n´soope), cultural customs (the use of
musiro, of the capulana), cookery (consumption of sorghum and
millet), socioeconomic activities (trade of knickknacks, agriculture
and fishing) and their religious art of dressing to the crossroads of
two contexts, a Bantu one and an Arab-Swahili one (also secular). In
this panorama, the matrilineal kinship is the decisive factor of social
organisation (Martins, 1989). Besides, as Medeiros (1985) states in
his study “O sistema linhageiro makua-lomué”, among the
Makhuwas group consciousness precedes a sense of family
belonging. At this point, we observe that, though similar to the
Makondes (historically their main ethnolinguistic rivals of the
region), the Makhuwas resume their sense of family belonging after
entering the adult phase – which is strongly shaped by the initiation
rites (not as secretive as those of the Makondes, recalling their

67 The data of the last Population Census of 2007 of the National Statistics Institute
(INE) show that the Makhuwa-speaking subpopulation (46.1%) is the largest one.
Nampula (until today considered the national geographical Makhuwa refuge) is
the province with the largest number of inhabitants of the national population,
with a population of 3,985,613 (19.4%) against a total population of the country of
20,579,265), followed by Zambézia Province, with 3,849,455 inhabitants. It is clear
that it is not correct to state that all inhabitants of a region belong,
ethnolinguistically or culturally, to its dominant group, or that the entire 46.1% of
the Makhuwas are concentrated in Nampula (or in the northern region of the
country). This does however not annul these data as general base indicators.
178
historical characteristic of group openness since their migration,
settlement, crossbreeding and various exchanges with other peoples
in the regions where they settled), as we will see below.
It is through the matrilineal framework that, by the order of
succession of the chieftaincies (of the clan, the chiefdom – nikholo –
or the family), the oldest son of the uterine sister of the deceased
chief has priority over the others in the line of succession. This,
according to Osório (2006), does however not change the patriarchal
order of the distribution and organisation of power. This is even
more significant from a community than a family point of view,
according to the respect paid by individuals at each one of the two
levels (i.e., the nikholo has the power to interfere in the family order);
the village heads control access to land for all internal male
dependants and for newcomers, by kinship, to the Makhuwa group
(Martins, 1989).

Chuwabos

In his article about the Chuwabos or Chuabos, Medeiros (undated)

states that these names are of Lolo origin and indicate the Zambezian
coastal people, between Pebane and the mouth of the big Zambezi
River. The ethnolinguistic Lomwé group constitutes their basis and
local mythology considers the Chuwabos natives from Mount
Limene, in Tacuane. On the other hand, “the majority of the authors
writing about this people say that they are descending from the
Marave”, therefore related to the Nyanjas and the Chewas of Tete
and Niassa (Medeiros, undated). For Freitas (1983), Chuwabo means
fortification of a place, not with stones or bricks, but with tall, thick
stakes. It would thus be the translation of erika or eringa, which in
the Portuguese language became aringa. Chuwabo is in fact native of
Quelimane, the capital of Zambézia Province.
The Chuwabos spread to the north, until Maganja da Costa
(Macuze), to the south (Inhassunge and nearby regional
continuation) and also to the west (Mocuba). The Chuwabos are said
to be the product of the crossbreeding of peoples who travelled
through the Zambezi valley due to wars and trade. According to the

179
Chuwabos’ traditional cultural standards, a widow should preferably
marry the man of the uterine family of her husband and, in case of
refusal, should return the pethe.68 And when a woman gets divorced,
she must leave the older children with her ex-husband, because the
relation the children of the couple have with their paternal
grandparents is stronger than that with their maternal grandparents.
The paternal grandfather is the head of the entire lineage (Prata,
1983). In this respect, a member of a civil society organisation had
this to say:
“In spite of the children being of the husband and
[representing] the extension of the paternal grandfather’s
lineage, the Chuwabos, given their strong crossing and their
difficulty to refer to a nominal ancestor, were losing their
names and surnames in favour of the names of the bosses of
the prazos, of Portuguese origin or even invented Portuguese-
like names; therefore you can find here someone with the
name Tesoura (Scissors), Alfinete (Needle)” (Ziro 2).

Ma Sena/Senas

According to Rita-Ferreira (1968), the Sena group (ma Sena) lived

historically in the Zambezi valley, covering Sofala, Tete and Zambézia
provinces and part of Manica (Map 2). The origin of this group seems
to be at the end of the 18th century, after the Tsonga victory over the
Marave and the migratory movement towards the lower Zambezi.
There is a lot of controversy around the identification of this group as
an ethnolinguistic group with a singular identity. It is therefore, for
example, that, though some scholars suggest, as is the case of the first
religious missionaries, signs that in the 17th century the Sena
language was already being spoken, Serra (1998) states that “the
identification of ma Sena is related to the old Sena fortress rebuilt in
the 18th century”. According to Braço (2008), the Senas themselves
are hierarchized according to their degree of belonging or proximity
to an ethnoregional purity – ntupo (place of origin). Hence there is

68 Pethe is a matrimonial compensation offered by the fiancé to the fiancée’s family.

180
among them a distinction between Sena Podzo (the “true ones”),
Sena Chuezas, Sena Gonzo and Sena Ntualas (the last ones are the
furthest from the Ntupo group which, mythologically, is referred to
as a rock in Caia Sena that gave rise to the organisation of the group,
and where the Sena fortress was subsequently built, according to
Serra, 1998). The Senas of Cheringoma District are said to be a
mixture of the Chueza and the Phodzo subgroups.
Similar to the Ndaus, the social organisation of the Senas, their
leadership and orientation of the kinship (i.e., belonging of the
genitors, name of the family), is organised in small aggregates
corresponding to a structure whose leadership follows a patrilineal
paternal line; by customary law widows do not inherit, the children
take the surname of the father and belong to him in case the conjugal
companionship comes to an end (separation by death or rejection of
one of the parties) – but women can be queens when successors
through the male parental line. Marriages are contracted with a
marital compensation in the sense that the family of the fiancé pays
material goods for a virgin fiancée (a virginity confirmed in the girl’s
rites). This payment made that polygamy, child marriage or a union
between an adult man and a child were legitimate.69 Male adultery is
not culturally condemnable, which is not the case of female adultery,
because a woman is regarded a reservoir of reproduction and faithful
carer of her man (thus the Sena and Ndau boys learn, since
childhood and in the initiation rites, to call their wives “mother”).

Va Ndau/Ndaus

For Rita-Ferreira (1968), the Ndaus are an ethnolinguistic group

inhabiting the Zambezi River valley, in the centre of Mozambique
until the coast and the east of Zimbabwe, south of Mutare. They

69 It is noted that the “leave paratu” phenomenon is also practiced among the Senas.
Most important is the marriage, in its various forms, in order that the dzinza (the
legitimate family) is constituted. According to Rita-Ferreira (1968), within this
matrimonial exchange, the younger sister of the woman was often also given to the
man as proof of respect of her parents.

181
belong to the Shona-Caranga linguistic family with origin in
Zimbabwe. In Mozambique their area is limited by the Save River, to
the south, and the Búzi River, to the north. There is no uniform
explanation for the appearance of the word Ndau, but some authors
situate its adoption at the time of the Nguni invasion, a historical
occurrence giving Tsonga-Changanas characteristics to the Ndaus
(i.e., in the kinship structure, lobolo, linguistic derivations, power
organisation structure). The power structure of the Ndaus comprises
hierarchically the mambo, the mambo mudoco70 and the saguta71.
The mambos are counselled by the council of elders (madoda or
matombo), which sometimes assume a power superior to that of the
mambo himself (holder of spiritual power).
According to Florêncio (2005), the Ndaus are organised in
patrilineal-based units, called bhavumbu or dzinza (also a Sena
name), which can mean race, ethnicity or region. Contrary to what
happened before, today one can marry within the same bhavumbu.
The Ndaus practise polygamy and the levirate. Marriage implies the
payment of lobolo and the form of residence is virilocal. Although
women do not exercise power (contrary to the Senas), sometimes and
in some contexts the sisters of the mambo may have some political
power, such as to administer small regions, but there are no queens
among this people, contrary to what happens with the Senas. They
are organised in ucama (extended family), which is subdivided in
muzi (wife and/or wives and descendants).
The succession of the mambos is carried out through the oldest son
of the first wife of the mambo (the first one who had been acquired
through the payment of lobolo). The successor may in certain cases
also be a brother of the deceased mambo, in a rotation within the
same ucama, but power should always return to its first origins. An
important fact is that the colonial administration in the Búzi Council
introduced changes in the traditional power structure. This means
that there is only rarely a coincidence between the ucamas who held

70 Expressingwhich literally means “little chief”.

71Chiefs who, in the Ndau traditional political power structure, occupy the rank just
below those of the mambos and the mambos mudoco.
182
power at the end of the colonial period and those who did before the
administration of the Companhia de Moçambique, whether through
the unification of the chieftaincies (regulados), or through the
extinction of others, or even through a colonial intervention in the
succession (Florêncio, 2005).

Rites and social reproduction of the social group

organisation model
Makondes

Among the Makondes, some practices are important as identifying

signs of belonging. In this regard, Dias and Dias (1964: 72) state that:
“Linked to the ergocultural practices of esthetical expression,
the drawings of tattoos or scarifications of the skin (i.e. on the
face, the breasts, the chest and the lower abdomen, dental
mutilations consisting of breaking the edges of the teeth,
giving them a pointed form, as well as the perforation of the
lips), though currently in disuse, should be noted. This
practice is more frequent among women, allowing in the past
and at present identifications between and within
ethnolinguistic groups”.
Well then, these marks reveal forms of social organisation that
distribute social roles within the group. The men, for example, are
responsible (taught since the initiation rites) for the construction of
family houses and for being holders of the children and the family
lineage (repercussion of the virilocal and patrilineal characteristic).
In their turn, the women mark with masks their faces according to
the status they are assuming in the course of their life (for example,
fiancée awaiting marriage; married woman without any group
function; married woman with some group function, for example of
successor daughter). Women are in charge of water supply for the
family (for example, when as daughter at home or even after she is
already a wife in another house) and in agricultural production on
the land of the men (for example, her father or her husband). The
transition from boy/girl to man/woman is guaranteed by the

183
initiation rites marked by the circumcision for boys and the
lengthening of the labia minora for girls. In marriage, while evidence
in the case of girls is not very visible, for boys the permanence of an
ideology of incompatibility of crossbreeding is however visible, i.e.,
the idea of the preference for marriage within the same group is part
of the content of the male ritual teachings, presented as a form of
preservation of group purity and values, as we can see from these
remarks of a master:
“Today we are having problems because of young boys who
want to marry in town and young girls who want to marry
anyone for money, in town. This is what makes that we,
Makondes, are in danger, because our secrets are scattered
about and because all remaining adolescents are seduced by
the town and by money, ending up abandoning their land”
(Armindo 2).
From the point of view of the man-woman hierarchy, we observed an
aspect correlating with the “combative” group representation aspect.
This is not only based on the traditional assumption that men are
stronger that women, but is also related to the fact that among the
Makondes, greater importance is ascribes to the male initiation rites
(likumbi) than to the female ones (emwali) – rituals whose
importance is based on the fact of symbolizing the transition of boys
and girls to the status of adult members of the community and
defenders of this community and of the families. Another factor of
group identity is the male dance ritual, in which masks are used (the
mapiko) and where boys learn to preserve their commitment to the
defence of the community group, well beyond the protection of the
family domain, as happens in the case of other ethnolinguistic groups
(for example, in the rites boys are taught to have a canhangulo72). As
was said by a boy in Macomia:
“We are taught that when our neighbour is shouting all men
must leave their house, listen to commands of the oldest chief,

72 Name of a hunting rifle and former gift for the father of the fiancée in the act of
payment of the matrimonial compensation.
184
 and try to see where the danger is, to react immediately. (…) It
doesn’t matter if it is a lion, what matters it to defend our
women and children”.
It is thought that it is due to this symbolic characteristic of combative
group (inculcated in the rites when boys are taught to face lions and
other wild animals), that the Makondes have “naturally” been
integrated into the military ranks since the national liberation
struggle. Later on, residential districts of Makonde soldiers, on active
service or as a reservist, were created in other towns outside Cabo
Delgado, which came to bring/assist their relatives, thus becoming
new poles of identity.
Given their historical limited social openness, among the Makondes
the idea prevails that the participation of other entities alien to the
group distorts the rites. This is why, contrary to the Makhuwas, they
do not accept the entry of “others” (people outside of the Makonde
community) in their rites. Besides, even the official intervention of
the Health sector in the circumcision of boys is superimposed, on the
occasion of the initiation, and as mentioned above, by a symbolic
incision on the penis to give such legitimacy to the act. Although also
identical for other groups of collective rites, the forests (i.e., the
plateau for the Makonde) are an important symbol of the rites, and
for that reason they are represented even in spaces outside Cabo
Delgado.
On the basis of the model of male domination, the male rites are
considered legitimate when they are conducted by a Makonde man
and in the forest. However, some subversion (for example, traditional
male roles in the hands of women) leads today to the appearance of
reactions such as this one from master Armindo 2: “nowadays things
are in disorder and therefore even women already interfere with this
issue”.
The youths learn to see themselves as adults and to disassociate
themselves not only from non-initiated other youths, but also from
others who do not belong to their status and identity social group.
They face and dialogue with the difference, as if these distinctions
could be indelibly marked by the symbolic capital and by how the

185
hierarchical positions are defined. This means to identify the
mechanisms used by the youths in the negotiations between the
individual and the collective, in the relation between “what I am” and
the “other” (this self and the other marked by fluidity, by resistance
and by alliances), considering that the individual identity only makes
sense in relation to the “other”. It is thus that we also seek to analyse
the mechanisms of identification with the collective, by opposition
and similarity with other collective identities (based on gender,
religion and ethnolinguistic group).

Makhuwas

This ethnolinguistic group is considered matrilineal, with the

characteristics of uroxilocality and matrilineal parental power over
descendants. However, in addition to the fact that these aspects do
not change the patriarchal mark of the group, they also start to be
object of a few profound social transformations, some of which
pointed out in this study. Well then, the first evidence that this group
or society has a matrilineal basis, but with/for a patriarchal
orientation is found in the dominance of the male initiation rites as
compared to those of girls, in terms of duration, recruitment,
community organisation, domestic material investment, heterosexual
education directed at male domination (an also strongly present
element in the female rites), among others, described by Medeiros
(1995). This does not mean that the female rites are extraneous to
male control of power, but rather that this control (which goes from
the orientation of social roles to control over the body of women) is
present even before the time of the rites. Besides, this trajectory for
the case of the Makhuwa-Lomués and Chuwabos, in Zambézia, has a
symbology even in nature, in the case of the menstruation tree
(mpila), for example, and whose meaning goes until the expression
of the symbolic death of the provisional beings of the community (as
asserted by Medeiros, 1995).
Among the Makhuwas it are the initiation rites (with the mountain
forest as their geographical reference centre – perhaps due to the fact
that the Nairuco mountain chain in Nampula is situated in the

186
mythological order of the Makhuwa ancestors) that guarantee the
teaching and social reproduction of the hierarchy of parental power
of the maternal uncles, the mother’s brothers. It is, for example,
enough to consider that these uncles decide about the moment of
recruiting their maternal nephews for the rites, approve the choice of
the godfathers of the boys to be initiated, while they themselves in
many other cases even assume this function. Excluding the cases in
which the rites occur away from the regions of origin of the boys’
families, the male rites tend to take place in territories dominated by
the nikholo of the line of maternal descent, contrary to other
patrilineal groups.73
While among the Makondes, Ndaus and Senas, for example, the
construction of a house and the property of the children on the part
of the husband is the “natural” norm of patrilineal and virilocal male
domination, emphasized by the rites, among the Makhuwas the boys
learn already in the rites to be direct holders of the matrimonial
property (for example, the house, machambas and children) without
being previously subjected to the traditional “proof” of masculinity
which the fiancé should take still in the fiancée’s parental territory.
Excluding, in cases of absence or being far away from this territory,
that the supervision by the brother of the fiancée’s mother over the
household of the couple is seen as a symbolic reference, remaining
any live grandmother, brother or female cousin (first or second, even
if not consanguineous, as a Makhuwa master told us) of the fiancée’s
mother directly responsible for what will happen within this couple
(conflicts, reproduction and diseases, among others).
Another aspect that distinguishes the Makhuwa rites has to do with
sexuality. With the exception of the justifications related to hygiene,
the boys’ circumcision symbolizes their preparation for sexual
pleasure. However, among the Makhuwas, circumcision is related to
the Islamic religious identity. It is in the circumcision, as we saw
above, that the Makhuwas distinguish themselves culturally from

73 Comando Naval de Moçambique, 1969. Moçambique: Agrupamentos

Etnolinguísticos. Aspectos do Estudo do Meio Humano, Lourenço Marques:
Empresa Moderna, Sarl.
187
their symbolic rivals (particularly the Makondes), by how the cut in
the foreskin is made. This difference is taught in the rites, also with
respect to how the female genitals are manipulated (i.e., the absence
of tattoos on the face and breasts as is practiced by the Makondes,
but rather along the pubic area and next to the labia majora). This
diversity, which may apparently not produce differences, generates
and reproduces an ethnic consciousness, whether in the agents or in
the initiates, as we can establish from the statement of a master,
according to whom a pure Makhuwa (which according to him refers
to an individual from the interior and not from the coast, Islamic,
and/or a Makhuwa descendant who has married a Makhuwa
woman) does not grow up without having been circumcised and
without taking his children to the rites. Continuing, this master said:
“For us a waanasunke is haramu.74 We take our children to
the rites from 12 years onwards, because at this age they are
already capable to understand our tradition. Other races and
other rites only do this without knowing the Koran” (Armindo
3).
Almost in line with an interethnic Makhuwa-Makonde symbolic
dispute, Armindo 2, a Makonde master, gave the following
statement:
“Nowadays things are distorted because in our times we were
taught not to marry men or women from other tribes here in
the neighbourhood. (...) We could even marry a Mwani but
never a Makhuwa, but nowadays many of our youngsters
don’t want to listen to us. (...) Our children should go to the
rites very early, even before they have their heads full of bad
ideas, so that we can correct and re-educate them”.

Chuwabos

This group is of patrilineal influence though it has also a population

group recognized by matrilineal descent (for example, when some

74 Religious Islamic term meaning sinner in the Koran.

188
boys mention the influence of the mother’s brother and others of the
father or their father’s brother, in supporting the initiation rites).
This fact does not contradict the patrilineal characteristic of the
Chuwabos coupled with some matrilineal aspects (i.e., the role of the
maternal uncle in the marriage of his nephews). In the initiation rites
of the Chuwabos, the boys are for example taught to credit the family
of the girl they intend to marry materially (through work, agricultural
foodstuffs, or other means) by his own effort, i.e., the matrimonial
arrangement is the initiative of the boy and it is only afterwards
passed on to the family, as testified by a Chuwabo youth:
“I did the rites at the age of 12, I already have a girlfriend and
I can say she is my wife. I had to work in the machamba of
her family and after that they liked me. Then I talked to my
uncle, the sister of my mother, and my sister accompanied me
to be introduced to her family, taking what I brought to offer
to the family of my girlfriend” (Gil 1).
This situation exemplifies the fact that until today the wedding
ceremony is in general held in the house of the fiancée’s parents, and
before that the proposal (mavudho) is made, to which the fiancé’s
relatives should take five litres of a fermented beverage, a capulana
and underwear for the girl (Medeiros, undated).
Gil 1’s statement strengthens the idea of Freitas (1983) that,
following the boy’s pledge, the construction of a house of his own, the
wedding, the long and prolonged absence, seeking employment,
among other actions considered important, shall be done with full
knowledge and agreement of the girl’s maternal uncle. Interesting in
the Chuwabo ethnolinguistic group is this matrilineal intervention
which, after marriage having been accomplished, is superimposed on
the patrilineal profile (i.e., the surnames of the children), while the
maternal uncle accompanies the boy to the rites and becomes his
godfather, as was said by a master:
“In our days it was our uncle, our mother’s brother, who
would take us to the rites. It is true that today this also

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 happens, but in town the parents or their brothers have been
taking our little ones to the rites” (Zuber 1).75
The initiation rites confer maturity to the boy, not only to marry but
also to position himself as an adult in the relation to his (maternal or
paternal) uncle, in subjects such as the kind of talk and advice for life,
affinities, his uncle’s company in work activities for adults. It is the
stage called opahamwiiko and, according to a boy:
“The rites are good because all of us want to conquer what we
here call opahamwiiko, because from there we already have a
voice at home, we can already eat certain things which we
couldn’t before” (Gil 3).
A large part of the social roles between women and men is learned in
the rites and according to models that are identical to those of other
ethnolinguistic groups, for example, with regard to sexuality and
power between the sexes, namely: the initiative for the sexual act
belongs to the husband because according to tradition he needs
frequent sexual intercourse; the wife should seek to satisfy him,
according to the instructions received from the godmother on the
occasion of the preparation of her goddaughter’s marriage, otherwise
she will be sent back to the house of her parents to be ‘educated’,
according to Medeiros (undated); in the case of infertility, it is always
the woman who is held responsible. Thus, she is obliged to accept
that the husband takes one of her sisters or another girl of the family
as his second wife in order to have descendants in the home
(Medeiros, undated). Although, contrary to other groups, among the
Chuwabos the idea is accepted that the husband may also be sterile
since, as a master says:
“When the problems of sterility continue, even when the man
sleeps with other women, such as the absence of procreation,
the two families meet, and after this meeting the mother and
the mother-in-law consult a soothsayer who, after identifying

75 The role of the maternal uncle to accompany his nephews to the rites is known as
n’luga.
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 the cause of the sterility, indicates the adequate namungo
(healer) to treat the couple”.76
Similar to the Makhuwas and Makondes there is no fecundity test in
the Chuwabo rites. As is the case with the Senas and Ndaus, the
Chuwabo rites in urban environments tend to be conducted
individually.
This and other aspects help us to conclude that the characteristics of
the Chuwabo rites are similar to those of the rites of other groups,
given the large crossbreeding of the group’s social organisation.

Ma Sena/Senas and va Ndau/Ndaus

The reason for using the same approach for these two groups is
related to three reasons: first, because unlike what we observed, to a
certain point, with the Makhuwas and Makondes (mainly in Mecúfi
and Macomia or in Alto-Molocué or Mocuba), with the Senas and
Ndaus, the fieldwork found similarities and also vaguenesses that are
not helpful to distinguish these two groups, particularly in Beira City,
although the other two study sites (Búzi and Cheringoma) have
historically a Ndau and Sena basis, respectively.
Second, what nowadays contradicts greatly this historical
differentiation is the near impossibility to make out (even in Búzi and
in Cheringoma) a Ndau or Sena alignment from the second
generation of individuals, evaluated by the social (parental) profile of
the interviewees. In other words, at some moment all interviewees
informed having Ndau and Sena ancestors. This does however in no
way mean harmony or companionship between these two groups.

76 If in the second or third marriage of the husband there are no children and/or the
first wife becomes pregnant with another husband, it is proved that the infertility is
the husband’s. In this case his parents will try to keep his situation secret, but
nobody in the community will want him as son-in-law for being sterile (ngomwa).
To be able to marry he will have to move to places where he is not known and he
will never tell his future wife that he is sterile, because according to tradition the
man is always fecundating (Medeiros, undated).

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Many statements differentiate and even place Senas and Ndaus in
opposition:
“The ma Sena are considered anarchists, pigs and confused,
while the va Ndau are especially considered kings of the
mpfukwa (capacity to harm others with witchcraft), but they
are sometimes also considered civilized and conservative, and
sometimes strange because they eat cats, crocodiles and
crows” (Serra, 2006).
Third, it is true, as Braço (2008) points out, that on the Sena side
history shows the importance of the initiation rites in the social
organisation of this group, though with some variants between the
various Sena subgroups (Podzo, Gonzo, Ntualas, Chuezas), even
appearing a few similarities with rites of some Makhuwa subgroups
of the same geographical scope (such as the maseseto practice).77
Today, the big change occurred in the Senas was the weakening of
the collectivist character of the rites to give way to a more
individualizing tendency.
Although the Sena and Ndau rites do not belong to the same
hermeneutic and ontological sphere as those of the Makhuwas or
Makondes, it is possible to align some traits of the history of the
ethnolinguistic construction of these groups of Central Mozambique
through an analysis of the initiation rites.
The Sena and Ndau initiation rites are similar in various aspects:
1. With the exception of some cases (which are being reduced,
according to the traditional authorities of Cheringoma), the rites
are more directly organised by the families, between the
grandparents, a few representatives of the traditional authority
(i.e., a healer for the spiritual protection of the boy) and their
grandchildren. This fact makes that the figure of the masters in

77 Although meaning the female ritual, the name is also ascribed to a kind of female
dance which, in the female rites, is a mixture of a display of eroticism to seduce the
man and a ritualistic practice to learn the sexual movements on the part of the
woman.
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 these two groups may not have the same symbolic weight we
found in the past and in other groups;
2. In the two cases there still are sacred places of the rites but with
the purpose of testing the boys’ fecundity (through the
assessment of the potential quality of the sperm in a washbasin
with water or through the duration of the erection, as the
adolescents informed us). It is necessary to mention that neither
the Makondes nor the Makhuwas mentioned men’s fecundity
proof (it either does not exist or it is one of the top-secret items of
the rites). Masculinity is also conferred through teachings of the
boys of work activities as a source of economic sustenance of the
family, while the girls are taught how to preserve their body as a
guarantee of marriage and social prestige for the family.
3. In the two cases, the girls are controlled by their brothers when
they are children, and through the “leave paratu” mechanism.
4. According to the adolescents of the two groups, the paternal
aunts exercise power over their nephews in the selection and
continuous evaluation of the performance of their wives. They are
the vanyamayinga (godmothers in the Ndau context and in the
Sena context).
5. We were told that in spite of the fact that the Sena Phodzo
perform circumcision, an important number of the other
subgroups no longer perform it as a group practice (i.e., Sena
Gonzo and Ntuala, as a Sena master told us: “Here this stuff of
circumcision happens more with those people there in Caia”
(Dipac 2). This information was confirmed by two Sena boys in a
focus group in Cheringoma: “I was not circumcised because my
father also wasn’t” (Marco 2 a); “I also wasn’t but I will do it alone
in hospital” (Marco 2 b).
This last aspect is more widespread in the Ndau tradition.78
Virilocality and patrilineality are strongly demonstrated marks in the
construction of social gender roles among the Senas and Ndaus.

78 Even having started in regions such as Búzi and others, the practice of
circumcision for boys cannot be considered an ethnolinguistic aspect of the group
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Given that historically the two groups come from rites traditions with
different ethnic origins, some differentiations have not yet been
toned down by the contact/crossbreeding between them. First of all,
while the virginity test among the Senas is a qualifying factor for girls
(for the rites, and the masasetu,79 for marriage, for family prestige
and the evaluation of their mother’s performance for continuity at
home or the assumption of godmother roles or roles in the
community chieftaincy succession), among the Ndaus this test only
intervenes as qualifier of the girl for marriage and for the prestige of
her family (an additional factor is the social disapproval of the girl’s
woman/mother). Even without an overall profile of collective rites,
there still is the weight of the community with respect to them, in the
case of the Senas, hence for example, as a Sena youngster says:
“We here, before having been with our grandfather, having
received his teachings, and for the spiritual protection by the
mambo, we cannot know yet about jerwa80 neither can we be
a munhu81” (Luís 2).
The munhu assumes various attitudes, such as for example the
gesture of “not looking back” which symbolizes not returning to
childhood. The age for being considered a munhu varies a lot
between the two groups and within them. It may vary between 11 and
18 years, though there is a tendency to be concentrated between 11
and 14 years. The reference to the rock of origin of the Senas is
symbolized in the rites, they therefore choose a space in the bush
with similar landscape features to perform the rites, where no visits
(lango) are allowed and where only the old man (master) transmits
the traditions.
Well then, while a more family/individual model of initiation rites
organisation among the Ndaus and the Senas is observed, a

because it derives from an effort that is to be made by the public discourse of the
local Health authorities.
79 Dance of the sieve in which the girl makes movements with her hips, imitating the

positions of sexual intercourse, while showing the matinji.

80 Cult, dance and poses equal to the masasetu for girls.
81 Individual having come out of childhood, recognized as adult by the community

and with legitimacy to marry and produce children.

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consequence is that the rites do not occur in other spaces outside of
the regions of origin (even with the population relocation imposed in
times past by the socialist State). Besides, this may be understood
when, for example, a traditional Sena leader and healer in
Cheringoma states that:
“When Frelimo came, they started to confuse the people. They
took us away from our land, brought people who do not know
the Sena traditions, they prohibited us from doing our things,
therefore today our rites and ceremonies have been
adulterated. We, the original Senas, unlike these Senas
Ntualas, we know how to perform the true rites. For example,
we never take a child who is no longer a virgin or whose father
is not a Sena to the rites, because we would be handing over
our spiritual secrets to strangers and this is what has brought
us a lot of misery” (Daniel 2).
Through sociodemographic movements in the country, since 1975,
there has been a massive displacement of populations and people,
previously established by the colonial administration, by virtue of
political and socioeconomic objectives, resulting in the creation of
ethnospaces (in the meaning given by Dias and Dias, 1964) in the
places where these populations settled. This makes that Nampula, for
example, is no longer exclusively inhabited by Makhuwas, with the
representative presence of ethnospaces of former Makonde soldiers
(this is the case of Muahivire, Muhala-expansão, Carrupeia districts),
Maputo City (Makondes in the Military District and Makhuwas in
Mafalala District) or in Beira City (Manga and Munhava districts).
The very rites strengthen these ethnospaces outside the
place/province associated with the origin of the Makhuwas or
Makondes, therefore these districts are considered representative
ethnic spaces where initiation rites are regularly conducted, with all
ritualistic pomp (i.e., dances, such as the mapico for the Makondes,
and tufo for the Makhuwas). For the case of the Senas and the
Ndaus, the ethnoespatial interpretation should probably be different
from that among the Makondes and Makhuwas, due to their more
dispersed character and their occupation, or not, of the political

195
arena by these groups, in the construction of independent
Mozambique.
After this brief ethnographic description of the rites of these five
groups, it should be noted that we did not deal with the subgroups
descended from them, neither with their ascendant groups. We
should particularly mention the expansion and distribution of these
ethnolinguistic identities in a context of social mobility, which makes
that we should pay attention to the continuation of the rites in
territories outside of their original historical spaces (the ethnospaces
as defined by Dias and Dias, 1964). It should be noted that this
continuation of the rites in the various ethnospaces existing in the
country is more evident in the case of the Makhuwas and the
Makondes, while the Senas, Ndaus and Chuwabos are more
dedicated to a dynamics of individualized rites, whether within or
outside of their places of origin.

2. The rites nowadays: changes, countervailing power

and reaffirmation

2.1. The rites yesterday and today: distinctive

historical differences

The studies consulted (Martins, 1989, Medeiros, 1995, Braço, 2008)

assumed as facts the ideas that: (i) the duration of the ceremonies
and the time of the year in which the rites are conducted have been
subjected to the political and social contexts experienced by the
community; (ii) the circumcision age varies between 6 and 15 years,
lasting to about 30 days; (iii) the status of the godfather and the
godmother depends on the status of the father and the mother of the
initiatee; (iv) the initiation is performed in hidden places built for
this purpose; (v) the education is directed to distinct sexual roles and
to the community group’s profile; (vi) medicines are given to the
initiatees with the purpose of curing, protecting, purifying and
guaranteeing procreation; (vii) the dances, drums and the use of
masks constitute relevant elements during the performance of the
rites, marking the most important moments; (viii) the rites split into

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rites of separation in which the initiatees are taken away from their
relatives and start their confinement, rites of margin in which the
boys are circumcised, subsequently receiving advice and a new name
(which is called the first and second phase of confinement) and
finally rites of aggregation in which the youths return to the
community, already adults for marriage.
As we will see below, there were changes in the proceedings of the
three phases, however strongly maintaining the objective of the
reproduction of gender inequality (social roles, sexuality,
expectations and rights), as we will show in Chapter IV. These
aspects exist in all the ethnolinguistic groups, though there are other
distinctive marks of the changes according to the influence of the
historical dynamics of the group in question, namely: (i)
collectivisation (Makhuwas and Makondes) or individualization
(“other” Senas, Ndaus and Chuwabos) of the rites described in the
previous section; (ii) preservation of circumcision for the Makhuwas,
Makondes, Chuwabos and Senas Phodzo, decrease of circumcision
for the Senas who are not Phodzo, reaffirmation of circumcision for
the Ndaus, for political-administrative and not cultural reasons; (iii)
expansion of ethnospaces for the Makhuwas and Makondes, which
does not occur for the Senas, Ndaus and Chuabos; (iv) finally, and as
we will see below, if we compare the Makondes and Makhuwas with
the other groups, we observe that in the latter the changes in the rites
have a more formal character (i.e., new places, new agents, decrease
of the duration) than one of content and functionality.
The present study was conducted in 2012, at a time when some
aspects of the organisation of the rites had already been changed
(mainly due to the increasing approximation of urbanization).
However, irrespective of these changes, the organisation of the
separation phase continues to be a moment full of magical-religious
mystery (consider the prayers and supplications of the healers for the
protection of the places where those selected for the rites will be
received, the introduction of the newcomers to the use of roots,
plants and animal hides, mainly in the case of the Mecúfi and
Macomia communities, in Cabo Delgado, and of Gurué in Zambézia).

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As already mentioned, the trip to the rites was evidently a group
movement of the youths and adolescents to epic places of special
geography (the bush in the case of boys and a hut in the case of girls),
organised by the holders of ritualistic power, conferred to them by
heritage/succession. Mainly in towns, today it is more characterized
as a movement initiated by the parents/families when handing over
their children for a rapid and symbolic intervention of professional
agents (necessarily without community recognition), together with
the tendency to decrease the boys’ and even the girls’ ages (also
increasingly ritualized in an individual way). In the case of the latter,
we emphasize the fact that the selection itself no longer has to wait
for evidence of their physical transformation, which makes us believe
that the risk of losing them as a source of economic resources for the
family becomes bigger with the advent of modernity.
In the margin phase, the change is much slower. While in the
separation the recruitment processes and criteria, the duration and
the symbolic and identity demarcation are being modified, and in the
aggregation phase the epic and community references give
increasingly way to the central family (responsible for ensuring
awarding the new adult, by offering new clothes, a party). The
changes in the margin phase are less clear, standing out only the
sophistication of the contents and the new profiles of the power-
holding rite agents (this is a source of internal conflict, around the
controversy of the legitimacy of power in the exercise of the activity,
for example, the criterion of professionalization).
Besides the fact demonstrated by the masters that the decrease of the
children’s age serves to find them in a phase of complete
unawareness of the facts and processes of their future life, the age of
the boys and girls we have interviewed in all places shows that the
phenomenon of the decrease of the ages of the initiates occurs in all
social and ethnolinguistic groups. Furthermore, there are two other
factors causing this phenomenon: one has to do with the role of the
school in the construction of the adolescents’ awareness of
citizenship and the other one is a corollary of the context of
rural/periurban economic survival which makes the families to place

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their daughters earlier on the matrimonial exchange market. It
should be noted that, while in the past:
“Depending on the existence of a greater or lesser need to
introduce the youths more rapidly or more slowly to the
movements of the productive domain and of the matrimonial
domain, they were later or earlier submitted to the rites of
puberty” (Medeiros, 1995:138).
Currently, the entry into the rites has also to do with a presumed
context of risk/threat they are facing in modernity, conferring a new
social face with respect to their functionalities.
These new functionalities have more to do with the intersocial and
political crossroads, to be considered in three perspectives. In the
first place, the relation between the power of the holders of the
organisation of the rites (organizers, masters, matrons, spiritual
agents) and State power, with co-legitimation complicity of the
different powers. The first ones are consigned to the category of
cultural/traditional power and act for the legitimation of the
discourse of the central political power for the “defence/appreciation
of our culture”, which also silences tacit matters of the violation of
human rights, the privation of liberties, early marriages and
pregnancy, produced by some of the normative precepts of the rites.
Related to the function of political survival is the survival of ethnic
integration in a distant context such as Maputo City and the survival
of the group in the context of a State acting as aggregator and
disrupter of individual identities.
In the second place, the current scenario characterised by the
acceptance of other groups of people who come nearer/are interested
in participating in the rites as a way to respond to another type of
private objectives, different from the original ones. This situation has
mobilized the holders of the organisation of the rites, mainly in
towns, to give a positive answer to this new market as a mechanism
to ensure ensuing material gains. This is the function of economic
survival.

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In the third place, the construction of male and female identities and
control over the body. This function is the core of the ritual teachings
and the reason for deserving special attention in this research is
related to two aspects observed during fieldwork, first its limited
treatment in the literature about rites and second the curious
phenomenon of the maintenance, and in some cases even
sophistication, of the forms of construction of gender identities and
of control over the female body.
Though the chronology of the rites and the sociological character of
their actors has been affected, it is important to note that the changes
they have gone through have not changed the core of their
performance (i.e., for the case in which the rites have a collective
dimension, among the Makondes and Makhuwas, the critical events
and the singularity of their occurrence and place in the context of
social life of the communities continue), neither when the dimension
is more related to the personal status of the individual (which is also
an element of the collective rites), in the communities in which the
initiation rites have only a more family character (Senas, Ndaus,
Chuwabos).
Alongside this scenario of changes of the rites, there is another
parallel scenario, interfering with the power relations in a structural
and conjunctural way, and which has to do with the framework of
relations between the professional rite agents, with the relations
between these agents and the target group of individuals and with the
relations between cultural and State institutions.
Regarding the first framework, in the interviews it became clear that
the direction of the change of the rites, for masters and matrons,
points to a scenario in which a synchronic displacement of their
power manifests itself, arising from the reduction of their
action/intervention and respective material and symbolic power
compensations. It is this perspective which nowadays makes the
older agents to hold the younger organizers responsible for the
apparent failure of the youths’ social expectations of the rites and to
consider them illegal/not authentic. This non-“authenticity” of many
organizers causes, according to the older generations, conflicts and a

200
trivialization of the order of the rites, in contradiction with the
rigidity and predictability of their expectations in time immemorial.
It is worth noting that this “outdated” rigidity could be related to the
limited or non-existent democratization of social relations, allowing,
for example, that violence is clearly (and even publicly) a teaching
mechanism in the rites that had to be silenced with the coming of the
Constitutional State.
We can observe how this framework is spread from this interview
with a traditional leader in Zambézia Province:
“I was subjected to the rites in the bush in Maloa (Mecuburi).
There, in the real bush, deep into the bush. I can say that the
rites of that time and the rites of today are equal and aren’t
equal. Many things are not normal today. Formerly, that
excitement we had about the rites has already changed now. A
long time ago, when a person would arrive at a place where
there were older people, he would have to keep out of the way
with respect. A person who had passed through the rites
would greet everybody on the street, would let older people go
first or offer them a seat, he would mind his language, in
public and with his parents. The people who conducted the
rites were very old and knew the spiritual secrets for things to
work out all right, but today they behave just like that, they
don’t respect the time. In the past we would stay in the bush
for three months, now only one week, and ready, and they
also don’t assess well if a person is ready to be submitted or
not. Thus, we have adults just like that. Nowadays people only
want money” (Feniasse 3).
In the same diapason, a Sena leader in Sofala Province said:
“In the time of our parents things were much more original.
When Frelimo came to power everything started to be
corrupted, they brought this democracy and now we are
unable to educate our children, we are unable to organize the
rites for our children in a good way” (Ernesto 2).

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In this discourse the nostalgic idea of the loss of power to use
violence/coercion (legally sanctioned in the education of minors)
seems to be implicit.
The second framework of relations between agents and subjects of
the rites has more a scenario of expectations and a need for change
on the part of the latter, rather than an awakening on the part of the
former. I.e., when we analyse the interviews of the adolescents we
observe that, though they don’t question the continuation of the rites,
the direction of the change is different. I.e., the adolescents, perhaps
due to their role as object-subjects of the rites, mention the need that
they should stop being violent (a violence which the masters and
matrons consider absent, but which, as we can establish from the
statements of a few adolescents, is still obvious) and assume a more
democratic level, as is shown by this extract of an interview with a
Makhuwa focus group in Pemba, when they responded to the
question if they liked the rites or not:
“I didn’t. I didn’t like it because they beat me a lot. In spite of
this I will take my children to the rites because it is part of our
culture. I am a Makhuwa” (Diogo 1a).
“Yes and no. To learn how to hunt and dance was good, but I
didn’t like the food, we only had cooked maize flower. I will
also take my children to the rites because otherwise they will
not be lucky in life” (Diogo 1b).
“Certain things yes and others no. I didn’t like that they cut
the foreskin in cold blood. They tricked me at that time,
saying that we were having a walk through the bush to collect
bee honey, but they tied me up to cut that thing; I think that
circumcision only done in hospital would be enough” (Diogo
1d).
With these statements of adolescents, we can say that the public
withdrawal from violence, urbanization (a movement opposed to the
need for and role of the bush for the performance of authentic rites,
according to their guardians) and the monetization of the activities of
the rites (a movement producing new professionals, without the

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respect considered necessary for the traditional criteria of
professionalization) characterise the context of change. Furthermore,
there is an important appeal for an urban and democratic or
citizenship context, in which girls and boys can have a participatory
and critical role regarding the rites. Well then, will this be peaceful in
a context in which the rites have established and asserted themselves
historically on a basis of coercive power relations, of secrecy, and
through a process of the transmission of uncritical knowledge, which
perhaps no longer fits into the profile of modern individuals?

2.2. Apparent objectives and secrecy of the rites:

continuity and sophistication

It is certain that there is no homogeneous collective consciousness

among the actors who at various levels intervene in the rites.
However, the disposition of the practices of the actors involved
(fathers and mothers, masters and matrons, children, godmothers
and godfathers, community and religious leaders) makes us to
conclude, according to the summary idea of Feliciano (1998), that
together they follow an order of the distribution of powers and
sexual, reproductive, social and economic roles, between men and
women, in the structure of societies in which initiation rites are
highly important.
We can also establish that one of the marks of the symbolism of the
rites is essentially their character of being an object of secrecy,
whether regarding their content or their ultimate roles linked to the
idea of the transformation of adolescents into adults (some people
even argue that the rite persist even today due to the preservation of
secrecy). Well then, according to the findings of the research we
would say that the causes that make that secrecy is a key element
have to do with the preservation of unquestionable social roles and
functions, namely the sexual division of labour, circumcision (in the
case of Makhuwas, Senas and Makondes), the inevitable “respect”
for older people and traditions, education for the “non-exercise of
citizenship” (anti-rights obligations), control over sexuality and over
the body (mainly of women), the preservation of a status quo of

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political, symbolic and economic domination by traditional leaders,
female and matrimonial instrumentalization and commodification
and the reproduction of violence and obedience as mechanisms of
control over the social order. Continuing as secret domains, the
objective of the rites is to confer immobility to the model and to the
cultural institutions.
The preservation of the “secret” fields of the rites is today
accompanied by sophisticated mechanisms for its performance in the
modern era. We are talking about mechanisms of sophistication of
the rites that go from the updating/modernization of discourses, for
example the cautious discourses of the agents about their effective
objectives and contents, as well as the ritualistic or even performative
practices occurring there. We should also bear in mind that the
discourse that the rites are necessary for the teaching of “proper
values” and “respect” (for example of younger people for older
people, of women for men) may influence the updating of the form of
relationship with State public power, thanks to how the State
positions itself with respect to the context of “traditional” power.
All boys, without exception, revealed having gone to the rites without
knowing where they were going and even less what they could
eventually find there (the majority had been cheated, had been
convinced they were going to the bush under any pretext), and that,
after having arrived, their eyes were covered with a cloth during the
first ritual processes (traditional circumcision, penis erection test,
ejaculation and fertility test).
As a Makonde boy in Cabo Delgado informed us, he was surprised
and frightened because of all the apparatus found in the ritual
spaces:
“When the time had come to go to the rites, I had no idea, my
father took me for a walk in the bush saying that we were
looking for a bee hive to collect honey” (Vasco 1).
In the same way, a Sena boy in Cheringoma said:
“They forced me to masturbate and ejaculate, then put my
sperm into water, I didn’t know why, later on I understood

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 that they wanted to see if, when married, I would be able to
produce children” (Luís 2).
Secrecy is thus one of the fundamental mechanisms for the
imposition of the rites, considering the transmission of values meant
to be unquestionable, through the establishment of relations of
charismatic domination (in the Weberian vision) and through an oral
process of transmission of uncritical knowledge (in which cognitive
power follows rules of sociocultural status and legitimacy).
Although some parties involved in the rites subvert the norms of
obedience, the majority does not reveal information in this regard,
leaving us with the alternative to analyse by tabulation of
information, such as for example, the link between secrecy and fear
and between fear and violence and the relation between age and early
marriages and pregnancy, once the girls are ready for marriage after
the initiation rites, as a health agent in Zambézia stated:
“They will never say it, but in addition to health questions in
the rites, there is a social factor in them because, in general,
the father of the girl wants immediate gain or symbolic money
in exchange for his daughter. This also happens with mother
widows or grandparents and uncles who take care of orphan
children. The more girls they have the more wealth there is in
the family. What is important for them is not love, but money.
Therefore, though I have never read about this and though I
think that the lengthening of the labia does not harm the
biological development of the child, the process of
lengthening the labia minora is linked to the need for the girl
to stimulate her hormonal system, producing oestrogens and
progesterone. She will therefore seek somebody to stimulate
her. This practice may lead to the appearance of the first
menstruation earlier on and, in other words, sexual desire”
(Zubaida 1).
We would thus say that among the secret functions are: privation of
women’s rights in favour of male power (inculcation of violence as a
control and domination mechanism of the social order), control over
biological reproduction and female sexuality, propagation of a

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traditional order of (demographic and health) family and educational
planning, in the sense given by Braço (2008) when writing about a
romantic perspective of social roles related to the education of
individuals (which, according to him, may even be object of official
education syllabuses, with an approach that presupposes peaceful
cohabitation between not only differentiated but even contradictory
educational standards).
Even though in a hidden way and masked by a perpetuated unofficial
discourse, a public and official discourse emerges of hygiene and the
transmission of good civic values of a “good man/good woman”.
These are paradoxical discourses because, first, hygiene is based on
non-homogeneous and dispersed criteria of public and/or personal
health (some communities, such as the Makhuwas and Makondes,
see male circumcision as a mechanism of protection against
infections, while others, such as the Senas and Ndaus, don’t have the
practice of circumcision in the male rites). In the second place, for
women hygiene starts and ends with the sexual spectre of
menstruation, while for men it starts and ends with the sexual
spectre of circumcision, thus excluding a full range of public and
personal health and hygiene questions. In the third place, the notions
of “good man” and “good woman” fit on the one hand in the
framework of the naturalization of social gender roles and on the
other hand in the framework of the legitimation of the power of male
domination over women. A “good man” is a head of family and main
provider of food and of family income. A “good woman” is a wife who
produces children, obeys her husband and his relatives, knows her
occupational and decision-making place among the other members
of the extended family, takes care of the children and of the house,
perpetuating the position of women within what Meillassoux (1975)82
sees as:

82 This does not mean that we are giving an economy-driven stamp to this reality, as
Claude Meillassoux is accused of. We are only bringing another dimension, in this
case of the order of the organisation of the socioeconomic intentions and
performances of the reality in question.
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 “a socioeconomic exchange of women (i.e., for matrimonial
purposes, kinship control, incest control) included in a wider
control of the management of the domestic economy or, more
precisely, of the relations of production” (Meillassoux, 1975:
30-31).
Therefore:
“In general, the procreative potentialities of women are
negotiated at the time of their entry into the host
community/family, even including the planning of terms for
the observation of the effects of their fecundity. This
negotiation and control of the exchange belongs to the
patriarchal domain, in which older women also participate in
the selection, preparation and making available of girls for the
exchange. In this sense, the family, clan, lineage and
community are part of a wider framework of control over
reproduction and over girls, through strategies of social
reproduction” (Meillassoux, 1975: 77-81).
It is necessary to add to this position of Meillassoux the contents of
symbolic transformation and countervailing power on the part of the
actors of the rites, seen for example in the confrontation between the
modern and the traditional discourse, regarding their continuation.
On the other hand, the occultation of the ritual ceremonies and a
large part of the instruction methods also belong to the order of
secrecy (which symbolically constitutes a dimension of power) and
has also to do with the influence of the current political order on the
traditional bodies, as said by Armindo 3, in Mecúfi:
“a girl is being taught to be stupid, but it is clear that she will
not be stupid, this depends on the intelligence of each person,
what we want is that she learns to pretend that she didn’t see,
didn’t feel, didn’t hear, in order that there are no conflicts in
the family”.
Thus, the rites conceal themselves in the discourses of “hygiene” and
“respect/morals/proper education”, as strategies of affirmation in the
public domain. To analyse the efficacy of this silence we resort to

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Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic power (1989) and Weber’s concept of
domination (2004). According to this author:
“domination occurs in a situation in which a manifest wish
(mandate) of the dominator or the dominators wants to
influence the actions of other (dominated) people and, in an
effective and material or symbolic way, influences them in
such a way that these actions, to a socially relevant degree, are
performed as if the dominated persons had turned the very
content of the mandate into the maxim of their actions
(obedience)” (Weber, 2004: 192).
In this sense there would be two possible radically opposed types of
domination. On the one hand, domination by virtue of a constellation
of interests (especially by virtue of a monopoly situation) and on the
other hand domination by virtue of authority (the power of command
and the obligation of obedience) (Weber 2004). If, according to the
author himself, the type and mechanisms of domination and coercion
are linked to the types of traditional, charismatic and
bureaucratic/public authority, the two cases characterise the power
relations in the rites between professionals and the target group of
the rites (including their families) in a monopolistic framework of
reproduction of a type of society (which, in a gender relations
perspective, is meant to be and/or confirmed as androcratic).

3. State, religion and rites

3.1. Traditional social loyalties of the political power of
the Mozambican State: the cases of the discourses of
“our culture” and “national unity”

We would say that the State, like the political associations that
historically preceded it, establishes a relation of domination of men
over men, supported by means of legitimate coercion. In order that
this relation endures, the dominated people have to submit
themselves to the authority invoked by those who dominate at a
certain moment. We can only understand when and why they do this,

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if we know the internal justifying foundations and the external means
supporting the domination.
For Weber:
“The modern State begins neutrally with a power of rational,
contractual and bureaucratic domination, finding its most
advanced expression in the Constitutional State” (Weber,
2004: 525).
In line with this point of view, Amselle and M’bokolo (1985) state
that:
“In Africa the behaviour and practices of civil service are
appropriated as an understanding between the State, Public
Administration and the dominant political elites, and these
tend to be an extension of the context of inclusion of the
legitimacy of political power at the level of the structure and
distribution of traditional power. A deterministic analysis of
the phenomenon is determined by what I would call an
African cultural tradition, leaving out elements of political
dynamics and the problems of culture without any critical
analysis” (Amselle & M´bokolo, 1985: 419-421).
This position allows us to see the phenomenon of connivance
between public and traditional powers by means of conflict game
factors, brought by agents of the traditional order who seek
affirmation in the discourse and context of the modern State, while
the State power holding elites seek recognition in the logic of “African
tradition or culture” (in this case Mozambican culture), since this is
the strongest strategy for the maintenance of power, at least at a time
when the democratic game is still incipient.
In the political and academics debates held in Mozambique, mainly
since the 90s, a lot of attention was paid to the traditional political
institutions. “In Government circles (particularly in the Ministry of
State Administration), discussions were held about the social future
and necessarily about the political past of the so-called traditional
authorities, opposing the ideological position of the authoritarian
and coercive Marxist-Leninist State (after national independence)

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with respect to the traditional authorities and practices of an
obscurantist ethno-cultural nature” (Lourenço, 2008: 115).
The change of the ideological position and propaganda of the State is
for example evident in the introduction of the concept of “local
power” in the 1996 constitutional amendment (this local power was
expressed as a way to exercise political administration through
consultative or binding competences at local community level:
chieftaincies, local administrations, local councils, etc.), or even in
Decree 15/2000 of 20 June of the Council of Ministers, which
subsequently recognises the traditional authorities as an extension of
the administrative and territorial action of the State (with roles, for
example, in the Land Law and in other natural resources, or in the
community conflict resolution forums). It was a turn which sought
alliances with traditional authorities, in cases of an “historical”
extension of political-party links between rural communities and the
party in power, Frelimo, and the reinvention of the traditional
authority in cases of an “historical” interruption or inexistence of
political-party links between rural communities and the party in
power (Brito, 1995).
According to Lundin (1998), this whole new offensive of co-option of
the traditional power on the part of the Mozambican State is justified
by the need to solve the problems of low legitimacy of the
representation of political power in the Nation State or the national
unity project in Mozambique, a global factor a bit all over Africa,
experiencing diversity and ethno-linguistic disputes for the
occupation of the national political space. This makes that in
Mozambique, for example, the political pact between public power
and traditional power is increasingly in force, given the specific elitist
and structuring form of African/Mozambican State power
(Forquilha, 2006). As Médard would even say, a “neopatrimonial and
clientelistic form” of which nepotism is a direct consequence
(Médard, 1976).
Martin’s proposition (2002) is relevant when stating that the State-
citizens political game is dominated by intrigues, apparently
coincidental or occasional, hiding intentionalities to which political

210
science should increasingly pay attention, given their occurrence in
social, economic and political life (i.e., representations, interests,
opinions, disputes, languages, discourses, etc. of politicians and
citizens). And, according to Geffray (1990a), the elitist,
neopatrimonial clientelistic intrigue expresses, in the case of
Mozambique, the controversy arisen around the Changana group in
the domination of post-independence State power and the correlative
exclusion and contestation of other ethnolinguistic elites (mainly
Senas and Ndaus of Central Mozambique) – which may explain the
social support of the guerrillas against Frelimo in the 16-year war
(besides, for this reason the armed conflict was classified as a civil
war by authors such as Geffray, 1990a, and Cahen, 1987).
Mainly for reasons of electoral gains the traditional elites, by their
reaffirmation in the composition of the ruling class of the State and
fruit of the new approach of State power with respect to traditional
elites and power, enjoy today political status and restored recognition
within their communities and secured in the context of public power
and discourse (the complicity of micro/community and macro/State
powers is justified here).
Furthermore, according to Decree 15/2000, the holders of traditional
authority come to be subsidized by the State (residence and
remuneration for public activity) and secured by symbols of State
sovereignty, such as the national flag in their residences and official
sashes (there are authors, such as Cohen (1974) and Mamdani
(1996), who see this fact as mechanisms of co-option of traditional
power by the State, which Public Law jurists would call the
privatization of the State). In this confluence of powers in which the
traditional authorities are placed as holders of public and community
powers, one would ask: what is to be expected in this context for the
development of the status and social power of the rites?
On the one hand, the study establishes that the social and political
status of the rites is legitimated in the current context of the power of
traditional authorities. In other words, the rites occur in the context
of the exercise of power roles by the traditional authority, while
political strategies are developed aiming directly at State power.

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Besides, we see this “traditional authority” of the rites also as a
process of customary jurisdictional, religious, social or political
domination, emanated from historical heritage and conveyed by
social credit/capital. In this context the chiefs, queens, sheiks,
sampandas, fumos and mambos, the council of elders, and
sometimes healers, are holders of this form of power/authority. It is
in line with these ideas that during the fieldwork of this study it was
no surprise that we had contacts with chiefs and sheiks who bring
together rite masters and matrons in their jurisdictional court (see
the case of chief Luís-filho in Beira/Sofala, of sheik Lakina Leli in
Mecúfi/Cabo Delgado, and sheik Sulemane Momba in
Macomia/Cabo Delgado).
On the other hand, the study understands that through this “State-
traditional authorities” political intrigue a game of complicity
unfolds, through predictable or exceptional, manifest or latent,
enduring or circumstantial mechanisms for not questioning the place
of the rites in the social life of the communities practicing it, for two
reasons: the first one has to do with the silent pact between the State
and the traditional authorities, who also survive on the “business” of
the rites, and the second one has to do with the discourses of “our
culture” and “national unity” which lately have dominated the search
on the part of the party in State power for sympathy from the
populations. In other words, as traditionally the practice of the rites
is a key process of the authenticity of the construction of families,
and is under the jurisdictional and material aegis of the traditional
authorities (in its various forms), hence the legitimacy of the rites at a
moment in which the traditional power seeks public legitimacy.
Furthermore, if the rites are the strong point of “our culture”, then
the State must respect them as “cultural wealth”, and accordingly the
favourable stances with respect to the rites on the part of some
Education and Health authorities and members of central
Government become convincing, as well as the institutional
conformism of the provincial Social Action departments.83

83 We should for example remember here that in the movement of legal and
institutional contextualization of traditional authorities, as a “natural” extension of
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Related to the discourse of “our culture” is that of “national unity”.
What would this national unity be? Researchers of the nation state
theory 84 say that national unity is a continuous process of the
consolidation of politico-socio-cultural identities of a population
aggregate in a State. And, according to Gellner (2009), the big
problem in most cases is the challenge of the coincidence between
the frontiers of the State and those of the Nation, because while the
former involves artificial efforts of jurisdiction and political power
over modern society, the Nation shapes cultural, sociolinguistic,
socioreligious, etc., identities. In the case of Africa, as Smith (1993)
points out, this national identity appears after the States, which were
defined in a context of an external sharing-out of the African
territories and peoples, making national unity often mainly related to
coercive political projects.
It is our perception that national unity is an object contaminated by
dominant political ideologies of the organisation of the social basis of
any State. And, for the case of Mozambique, this political project of
national unity appears with two distinct and paradoxical dimensions.
The first one has to do with the fact that, with national independence
in 1975, the monoparty Marxist-Leninist orientation delineated a
national unity which destroyed coercively all traditional forms of
sociocultural authenticity and political organisation (Geffray, 1990a).
This destruction, according to Geffray, found expression in the
repression of “tribalism”, in the prohibition of traditional healing, in
the elimination of local chiefdoms and chieftaincies, among other
coercive prohibitions related to initiatives of traditional social,
linguistic, economic and/or political self-determination, all this in
the name of an idea of a new nation without complicity with the
capitalist system (seen as evil) or ideological extensions of the

administrative State power at village, and locality level (Decree 15/2000 of 20 June
of the Council of Ministers), Renamo also took the initiative in giving prominence
to chiefs (for example, sapandas and mambos in some regions of the central zone
of the country, such as Gorongosa, Cheringoma, Chibabava), which put the party in
power on the alert, making it to launch a counteroffensive in the co-option of these
traditional authorities of the opposition (this happened for example in Caia and in
Beira, where the chiefs changed their affiliation in favour of the party in power).
84 For example, Hobsbawn (1990), Smith (1993), Gellner (2009).

213
previous colonial administration regime, of an idea of the “new man”,
of a revolution against the traditional and colonial past, of an anti-
enemy offensive of the revolution and the people (Lundin, 1995).
This policy was thus part of the Frelimist logic of self-proclamation as
the sole and legitimate representative of the Mozambican people,
eliminating all socially different competitors, capable of calling into
question its power (one people, one nation, one culture, one party),
with the pretext of preserving the unity of all Mozambicans.
The second dimension has to do with the assertion of the neoliberal
market model, since the end of the 80s, in which the discourse of
national unity changes, silencing the anti-capitalism, anti-tradition,
anti-healers and anti-local chiefs/chiefdoms positions. After this
short period of silence about national unity, during the Government
mandates between the first general elections in 1994 and the
beginning of the years 2000, the period was characterized by a
discourse of reconstruction of the country at that time destroyed by
the “others” (according to the discourse of the party in power). From
the 2004 Government mandate, the discourse of national unity
returns in full force and with new ideological appearances,
dominated by the ideas of “self-esteem”, “promotion of our culture”,
among others along the same line. It is here where specific
advertising programmes reappear of the “traditionality” of dances,
gastronomy, local games (see for example the blocks of
advertisements of the Televisão de Moçambique, national
championships of traditional games, national festivals of traditional
dances and national gastronomy fairs) which are in line with what
some authors (Lundin and Machava, 1995) call a race for the
reconciliation with traditional local power (for reasons of the above-
indicated ideological and organisational change of the State) and
which others (Forquilha, 2006) denounce as a social
representativeness mechanism of the State by means of strategies of
complicity.85

85 The authors who defend this position argue that in this strategy the silence of the
State with respect to traditional practices occurring in the name of “our culture”
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As we can observe, associated with the above-mentioned dilemmas of
public power with respect to the rites, they (including the
unquestionable side of their secrets, their violence, their
encroachment on human rights) find some consolation in the context
of the new ideological strategy of the State, on the basis of the
discourses of “our culture”, of “self-esteem” and, mainly, of the
official promotion and pact of complicity with the traditional
authorities (main agents of the organisation of the rites).
The observation above does not mean that there is merely a
harmonious coexistence in this relation between the State and the
traditional authorities of the rites. There is, as in any power relation,
a discordant action-reaction determined by factors, such as the
struggle for power of social affirmation in the community domain
between local agents, for example between chiefs (extension of the
State administrative power) and rite masters. We should also
mention the meeting and confrontation of parties, when the party
affiliation of the traditional authorities of the rites (including the
healers) is opposed to the party in power. The position of the
deceased chief Luís I in Beira fits in perfectly in this case. According
to the press, he gave repeated evidence of being a Renamo
sympathizer, at a time when the performance of initiation rites was
discouraged by the State, which today appropriates them to obtain
party sympathy from the current chief. We also emphasize the
struggle for material gains fruit of the business of the management of
the rites, as a traditional leader in Zambézia acknowledged in a group
interview:
“The State allows our activities, but those who work in the
Administrative Posts are more interested in the money we
make with circumcisions and the rites. This money is blood
money, for example, when I take the money to share it with a
local chief, the others and those of the Administrative Post
become aware of this and make war. This is a mistake because
this work, without a ceremony, those children don’t cut

and “self-esteem” in the communities holding this “cultural wealth” also

contributes. The rites fit into this context, for example.
215
 anything, moreover when they manage to get say ten million
for their things, they don’t remember us, divide the money
between them” (Feniasse 3).
Finally, the big question remaining unanswered here (and which has
fed the core of the debates concerning the relativism and the defence
of culture) has to do with the appropriation of "culture" on the part of
the "natives", as an argument to claim the maintenance of
inequalities that are interesting for the "traditional" leaders, such as
the apartheid regime in South Africa which used (through the
statesman Smuts) a relativist argument of the "defence of traditions"
to sustain racial segregation (Mamdani, 1996).

3.2. Rites and the State: meeting and confrontation in

the cases of Education, Human Rights/ Justice and
Health authorities

In this section we intend to demonstrate the force of the rites today,

in spite of its threats in the current context of a democratic and
constitutional State, engendering a situation of complicity (whether
through silence or through its political discourses that accommodate
or at least do not question the anti-democratic and anti-citizenship
side of the rites). For this purpose, let us take three fundamental
fields of visibility in the public domain: Health, Education and
Human Rights.
Starting with Human Rights, the interview with a human rights
activist revealed the following:
“The situation of human rights, here in the Province, we have
been working very hard but we are still facing many
challenges. The big problem here is violation of the rights of
women and children. Worse is that everything is justified by
tradition, for example, “Urumbwana Camkala Nmotcha” is a
cultural expression legitimating promiscuity and male
polygamy, rejecting the claims of the female partner. In my
opinion the rites should be considered an illegal subject. You
see, in the rites they teach the children to be violent. (…) It is

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 there where they learn that men should have several women
and also that they are allowed to beat their women. (…)
Finally, I want to tell you an episode with which we are
dealing at this moment in the Justice sector and which made
that the Attorney General came to Cabo Delgado: it is a case
in which a woman of advanced age was violated by a group of
boys, on instruction of the leaders of the rites, pursuant to the
allegation that she was passing by the site where the rites
were being performed, something which traditionally is
prohibited and the punishment for which is precisely what
she got. You see, an episode occurring right in Pemba Town,
in a place that is a public access road to water points! (…)
Regarding the judicial situation of this case! You see, if it were
not the Human Rights League there would be no case at all.
We are having problems even with the police command and
the criminal investigation police. What gave us strength is
that the Attorney General gave orders to the provincial
Attorney General’s office to take this case to the courts,
though at civil society level we are the only ones defending
this case” (Amélia 1).
This episode (which is a reality in the places where the study was
conducted) is interpreted by human rights defenders, such as
Ntchama (1991), as being part of the difficulties of the application of
the normative contained in international conventions, due to the
dominance of customary law. In parallel, the State’s silence shows
how this law penetrates and sustains its logic of political power in
clientelistic alliances with the traditional power. We conclude that
there is here an ambiguity between the discourse of wanting to give
an image of a constitutional State and a practice based on connivance
and the consolidation of a traditional social order favouring elitist
political interests in the name of the State (the discourse of “our
culture” fits in here).
As a consequence of the above-indicated situation, it is not surprising
when for example the provincial Social Action directorates of the
three provinces (Sofala, Zambézia and Cabo Delgado) were
unanimous in considering that they have little discretionary power to
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intervene in the initiation rites and their consequences for the life of
vulnerable children and women, not being able for example to work
with their parents who impede their daughters and sons to keep
studying in order to marry or work in the machamba, go out fishing
or do other work. On the other hand, the lack of inter-institutional
coordination between the provincial and district levels, for example
between the directorates of the Social Action, Health, Education and
Justice administration departments, such as the Police and the
Attorney General’s office,86 makes that there is no multidisciplinary
dimension regarding the social, human rights, health and educational
problems caused by the rites. Besides, as we were told, the rites are
not yet official institutional intervention subjects (or still in an
incipient way) of these entities. This strengthens the public silence
and impunity of the actions or effects of a penal and even criminal
nature associated with the rites (as happened with the episode of
assault and sexual abuse of women who passed by places where male
rites were being performed).
In addition to the legal question, which is often ignored, the
implementation of the National Plan of Action for Children (PNAC) is
difficult. Besides, authors such as Osório (2011) state that the
development of a legal framework for the protection of children and
the supervision of the enforcement of the legislation are defined in
the PNAC as fundamental strategic areas. However, the non-
fulfilment of the legal mechanisms for its effectiveness is one of the
main problems for the identification and sanctioning of violence
against children. This is joined by the fact that the gender units set up
in the district and even the provincial directorates don’t have
strategies or programmes and consequently have no activities plans
on the argument that there is no budget allocated to them, or that
they are waiting for higher-level directions for their functioning, or

86 Exceptions are the cases of bilateral inter-institutional coordination between for

example Education and Health in the school health, hygiene and sanitation
programmes, between Education and Social Action for scholarship programmes
and schooling assistance to orphan or underprivileged children, between
Health/health units and the Police/Offices for the Attendance of Women and
Children Victims of Violence.
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that their functioning (for those that have some activity) is directed
to cultural actions (i.e., dances and plays about domestic violence)
and needlework, but without calling into question the rites, such a
powerful source of the masculinization of power, of domestic violence
and of early marriages/pregnancies.
With regard to the Health sector, we observe some frustration on the
part of the agents working there, who feel impotent with respect to
sexual abuse of children, early pregnancy and the use of plants to
speed up deliveries, sometimes causing uterine ruptures. Many of the
interviewees refer to cultural practices that systematically impede
access to sexual and reproductive rights, as is illustrated by the
remarks of a female nurse of the mother and child services in Beira
City, in Sofala Province:
“Mostly girls are coming to the Mother and Child Health
services and the Adolescent Sexual Health services, mainly for
visits. [Their age is] more or less between 14 and 20 years,
this is a normal age, though others appear at an age to 24.
Boys come to do a HIV/AIDS test or they accompany their
girlfriends for an abortion. For their part, girls come for tests,
for abortions, and also for antenatal consultations. There are
many early pregnancies here, yes. The data reaching me from
the districts are more alarming than those from Beira City.
The explanation for this is the fact that in the City girls play
around just like that, i.e., they want to have old boyfriends
who buy mobile phones and clothes for them and then, when
they get pregnant, these so-called boyfriends disappear. In the
districts it are the early marriages – big men with children.
For example, it is normal to hear that a 40-year old man left
paratu for a little 6-year old child. This man will wait for
some time but in general he will let the girl pass the age of 13
or 14. The violation of children and adolescents as well as
polygamy also contribute everywhere. Therefore they
sometimes end up assaulting children. Here in Sofala men
practice sexual assaults a lot, because they consume
traditional plants and roots – ngonandzololo, txidja bongué –
that stimulate erection, sexual desire for many, many hours.
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 The result is that they must always have a woman to have sex
and have children, and the most vulnerable ones are the
minors, sold by themselves or by their own parents as a
source of money. As a matter of fact, they even say ‘I have a
chicken for sale’. (...) In one family the man may have seven to
eight women, but do you think this is normal?! In that house
one woman may be pregnant, another one is breastfeeding,
etc. And in the surveys, if you want to know who the lady of
the house is, all of them say they are the lady of the house. (...)
This is not possible!” (Dilma 1).
Well then, whether from the point of view of biological maturation,
or from the point of view of sexual and reproductive rights, this
interview reveals serious public authority and public health problems
in view of the silence of the State health institutions, and mainly in
view of their accessory intervention when we consider that the health
sector only played a single role with respect to the rites (to obtain
lists of the initiates who go to the local health units to perform safe
circumcision).
According to Van Gennep (2011), physiological puberty and social
puberty are two fundamentally different things, which only rarely
coincide. While it is difficult to determine the moment of physical
puberty, in spite of the continuous observation of its material
evolutionary features in an individual, the identification of social
puberty is even more complicated. However, the latter has greater
exposure, mainly from the ceremonies of consecrating maturity
through the social events of the initiation rites. It is in this social
consecration where the child is separated from the adult. The
question is that we are facing two distinct logics for consecrating
children and adults (the traditional rural logic of the rites versus the
urban logic of the affirmation of the modern State).87 Besides,
according to Medeiros (1995), in the world of the rites there are no
intermediate stages between children and adults.

87 This also serves, through the extension of the logic of the rural world to the urban
world (for example, the spaces of the initiation rites), to question the rural-urban
classification itself.
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With regard to the education sector there is a lot of ambiguity with
respect to the reconciliation of the objectives of educating men and
women to be able to exercise their right to citizenship and the
initiation rites, as clearly expressed by an education sector officer in
Cabo Delgado:
“The rites have a good side; when they are performed
seriously, as in the past, people come out of them with more
respect, as adults, prepared for life. We, of Education,
formerly we had problems because the rites were conducted
during school time and the parents preferred their children to
interrupt school to go to the rites. Now this no longer
happens, the rites are performed during the school holidays at
the end of the year. The rites have no influence on early
marriages and early pregnancies among girl students and
consequently dropouts. Here we don’t have school
abandonment in the province. In the districts we still have
only the problem of the distance between the school and
home, which causes school abandonment of the students, but
we are also solving this” (Achirafo 1).
Well then, this idea of institutional reconciliation, which is notable in
the public official discourse, may have the intention to harmonize
public and traditional powers. However, it does not function in a
cognitive and logical sense, because in addition to the educational
logic of the two systems often being antagonistic, this reconciliation
only boils down to superficial aspects such as the scheduling of the
school year and the rites. Other basic aspects are ignored, such as the
new traumatic psychological profile of the children and adolescents
when they return to school after the rites, and the consequences of
the rites (early marriages, early pregnancies and dropouts).
Finally, as will become clear in Chapter IV, part of the recent syllabus
contents of national formal education, contained in the teaching
programmes approved by the Ministry of Education (Civic Education
Manual for grade 6 and 7 of EP2, Moral and Civic Education Manual
of grade 4 of EP1, History Manual of grade 5 of EP1) evoke
sociocultural organisation prejudices and foundations of the

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Mozambican society (not only “culturally” heterogeneous but also
existing under a nation state with an historical problem of baseline
cultural identity) under the aegis of the historical existence of the
Mozambican “traditions”. This, in addition to strengthening the
essentially political discourse of the current movement of “our
culture”, conceals a social and political space for the public
framework of the rites, as assumed as part of “our culture”, as
substantiated by the discourse of the State authorities (at least those
of Education and Health) and the silence of the Justice
administration authorities, with respect to cases of the violation of
rights associated with the rites.88

3.3. Social dynamics of the rites: the sociocultural

capital, political power and religious symbolism
dimensions

Always taking the rite agents as our focus of analysis, here we intend
to show the influence of the sociocultural capital of the rites in the
political and religious frameworks, strengthening by virtue of this
influence the trimensionality of their symbolic power.
As mentioned above about the rite agents, the exploratory study of
this research, conducted in 2011 in Maputo City (in Mafalala and
Military districts) seems to have shown that those agents (organisers,
executors and companions), whether of boys or of girls, are not, as
one might think, exclusively related to the activity of the initiation
rites. There is a confluence of power capital and mechanisms
(including alliances between formal power and traditional informal

88 For that matter, we recall the closing address by the current President of the
Republic, on the 1st day of the Justice Congress (organized in 2012 by the Bar
association), in which he said that “our Magistracy and Justice must organize
forms of jurisprudence that do not collide with the customary standards and
cultural wealth of the peoples of this vast and beautiful Mozambique” (September
2012, STV Television, evening news). With another position, the predecessor of the
current Head of State said in his address that “the initiation rites retard culture”,
adding that if the leaders of the rites were more informed about aspects related to
sexuality, there would not be so many risks (Canal de Moçambique, 31 October
2012).
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power), i.e., as seen above, the activity of the rites is exercised in
various domains that contribute to their social legitimation.
As it is already known that the first and most obvious social
capitalization of the rite agents comes from the internal context of
the expertise of their role, whether as organizers, executors or even
companions, or as supervisors and mediators (including godfathers
and godmothers of the initiates, already previously initiated youths,
and elders guardians of the identity values), this obviously confers an
authority on them from the accumulation and practice of surgical
knowledge, for example for the circumcision of boys (whether in a
traditional way or in hospital), the spiritual knowledge and practices
for preaching the sacred and the profane, the knowledge and
practices for the preservation and preaching of sociocultural/
ethnolinguistic identity values, the accumulated experience of
advisers and supporters (godmothers and godfathers) of the initiates’
daily life, the experience of active witnesses with roles as educators
and sanctioners (i.e., the young initiates of previous seasons), of the
coercive or persuasive executors of the mobilization of the separation
acts, and of the executors of the experiences of the practical teachings
of sexuality and married life.
In general, all parties involved in the teaching process of the rites,
primarily in the context of rural communities, are individuals who
sometimes are prominent in a religious and/or local leadership
context. We are for example talking here about the “coincidence” of
responsibilities for the performance of the rites and religious
responsibilities (for example, rite masters who are sheiks, in Mecúfi
and in Macomia/Cabo Delgado, rite masters who are also healers89 or
members of AMETRAMO). The participation of Christian religious
authorities (priests and ministers) in the canonization of marriages of
underage girls, arranged in a traditional way, can also be included in

89 According to an interviewee, the expression “healer” is more accepted by the class,

rejecting the classification of “traditional doctors”. Could this boil down to the idea
that healers assert themselves as practitioners/doctors with overall powers
(biophysical, spiritual and mental treatment), standing out above the
specialist/partial intervention of “formal” doctors in the treatment of patients?
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this category of “coincidences” of authority capital of traditional roles
and religious roles.
The legitimacy and readiness for this traditional matrimonial
arrangement are almost always determined on the basis of the
initiation rites, which legitimate “wives” who are already marked
from commitments such as “leaving paratu” among the Ndaus and
the Senas.
The symbolic power of the rite agents has also to do with their
position as figures with roles linked to political power (for example,
rite matrons in Pemba and Macomia who are at the same time
members of OMM, organizers of the rites’ community ceremony who
are at the same time members of the party in power with
jurisdictional positions, such as those of district secretaries, almost
all over the country, community leaders, masters and members of the
party in power, in Alto-Molocué).
Well then, according to Bourdieu (1989) faith and belief are
operators of the institutionalization of political capital, seen as a form
of symbolic capital of political recognition. The recognition and
delegation of political capital presuppose institutions/strategies at
the service of this realization, i.e., apparatuses, investment in people,
clients (Bourdieu, 1989: 192-196). In the case of a western
democratic State the operation may become more bureaucratic,
different from the case of an African State such as Mozambique in
which, as we have tried to show briefly, political power is also based
on community and traditional foundations.
In addition to the “coincidence of roles”, a factor contributing to the
politicization (public legitimacy) of the rites is the fact that they are a
subject of semi-official organisation and administration on the part
of public authorities, such as administrative posts, health services
cooperating with the rite agents for the indication of nurses for the
circumcision of the initiatees, or even for the indication of rite
schedules, in which the Education sector participates insofar as it
seeks to reconcile the teaching periods with the ceremonies. Taking

224
into account Gluckman’s study (1958) (quoted by Feldman-Bianco,
1987)90 we include here for example the observation of the
restoration of the entire traditional emblematic framework as a
useful tool for the consolidation of local public power, as we can
observe in the discourse of “we are from here” proclaimed by local
political figures for the symbolic-imaginary restoration of an
apparent umbilical link between politicians and local populations,
even if the previous traditional modus vivendi has been object/target
of rejection, conflict and suppression. “We are from here” has been
uttered, in the north of the country, through proof of having gone
through the initiation rites (assumed as an unquestionable record of
“really being from here”).
A fact revealed in a focus group of masters in Cabo Delgado shows
how the relation between masters and local (religious and
administrative) authorities is organized. One of the Makhuwa
masters describes that:
“The master goes to see his régulo (traditional chief) to tell
him that he is going to work in his area, who will then take
care of informing the district secretary. These children are
then taken to the hospital for circumcision, then to the house
of the sheik to purify the boys, but often the sheik goes to the
huts himself. But there is an interesting aspect here: you, the
master, must take money from the amount collected for your
work and buy your work material and also give it to the
others” (Armindo 1).
We recall that these facts enforce the above-described dimensional
side of the political force and dynamics of the rites, by means of the
sociocultural capital load of their agents in the negotiation and
inclusion in the framework of (traditional and public) political power.
The link between public power (in the ranks of State power) and the
traditional authorities (particularly in cases in which the latter are
directly linked to the management of the rites) is made by the

90 M. Gluckman (1958). Analysis of social situation in modern Zululand. New York:

Humanities Press.
225
recognition they confer to the State as a public and legitimate form to
exert power (with a coercive image, mainly in a State with a history of
coercion given its authoritarian past), and invests the traditional
authority linked to the rites with further power in the context of the
traditional hierarchies.
Like agents who combine various levels of community authority, as
rite godfathers, local party members, AMETRAMO leaders, heads of
local party cells, masters and godfathers, the rite agents enjoy a
symbolic power that combines capital from several fields, in this
concrete case the religious and the political field. This combined
power is the guarantor of the strengthening of the role of the rites in
the social life of the practicing communities and also grants the rites,
in addition to social status, the transition to political capital (as
stated by Van Gennep, 1977).
Since the start of the construction of the disciplinary fields, of the
theoretical corpus and of the methodological instruments of the
social sciences, religion is situated at the base of their concerns, not
only as a preferred empirical research field, but rather as an
epistemological foundation – from Durkheim’s religious categories to
Taylor’s religious forms as cultural differential evolution,91 and to
Weber’s concept of secularization which brought, in modernity, the
distinction between the religious and the civil. In this distinction,
paraphrasing Pompa (2012:159), there is rarely a historical
problematization/deconstruction of the sacred-profane, public-
private, religious-civil binomials.
Without intending to initiate the historical problematization of the
religious phenomenon and its secular binomials today, this study
takes epistemological precautions, indicating three aspects, namely,
the concept and weight of religion in the representations of social
cohesion of individuals in general, the enclave of religion in State
power (the example of Mozambique) and, finally, the meeting of
religion and the indigenous/local sociocultural context of the rites.

91 E. Taylor. (1920). Primitive Culture. New York: J.P. Putnam’s Sons, p. 410.
226
The question of the initiation rites linked to the manipulation of the
concept of “culture” obliges us to problematize, for its part, the
understanding of “religion” also in a socio-anthropological
perspective. Although one of the main problems in the study of
religion is the definition of religion itself, according to Geertz (1966)
the anthropology of religion involves the study of the religious
institutions in relation to other social institutions and the
comparison of religious beliefs and practices in different “cultures”
(religion as a cultural system).
Anthropologists have considered several criteria for the definition of
the content of religion, from belief in the supernatural or confidence
in a ritual. With respect to the sociology of religion, alongside Weber
who focuses on the comparative analysis of the various forms of
belief and of religious institutions, as well as of the respective
contributions to the development of rationality and to social change,
Durkheim brings up the role of religion as "functional universal",
capable of contributing to social integration. This perspective has
been pursued by the functionalist theories of religion and by the
structuralist theories. By taking this view of religion, Durkheim seeks
to establish that religion does not necessarily presuppose a belief in a
transcendent God, i.e., it is first of all a “system of beliefs and
practices” administrating the profane and the sacred for social
cohesion (Durkheim, quoted by Pickering. 2009: 37).92 Durkheim
thus sees religion as a primordial social institution expressed in a
collective consciousness and in the endogenous praxis of complicity
between its actors.
Well then, in Durkheim’s writings religion is seen as a collective
phenomenon, seeking to show convincingly that there cannot be
collective moral beliefs without a dichotomic character of “sacred”
and “profane”. I.e., its existence is based on an essential distinction
between sacred and profane phenomena. Thus, religion is
institutionalized as an entity that defines limits between right and
wrong and makes them operational insofar as it rewards who is right

92 E. Durkheim (1912). “Les formes élémentaires de la vie religiuese”. In: W.

Pickering (ed.) (2009). Durkheim on Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
227
and punishes who is wrong. It is thus a question of promoting a
morality of inclusion in and exclusion from a social order. In this
perspective, individuals adhere to precepts of morality but with a
material feasibility of life in society.
We consider it useful to try to understand the African religious
phenomenon in two perspectives. One, in the line of authors such as
Georg Simmel (1988),93 quoted by D’Allondans (2002), who states
that the classical religions in their first contact with the African forms
of beliefs, sacred rituals, profane symbolization (often viewed by
historians as magical-religious practices due to their abstract-
symbolic character but with pretensions of a material effect on the
life of the people) tried to become hegemonic, in the case of
Christianity with the idea and the project of civilization, for example.
The other idea belongs to the context of the meeting of religion in
Africa with forms of belief and cultural practices of social
organisation. In other words, even for reasons of a symbolic crisis or
of competitiveness between doctrinal religious corporations, religion
will be obliged to establish itself in the world of the “profane and
sacred” not on an orthodox basis but rather, and often, on the basis
of appreciations in the traditional or political cultural symbolic field
(or at least not subverting them), to gain legitimacy for its social
inclusion (D’Allondans, 2002: 120-125).
According to D’Allondans (2002), the 21st century will be
overshadowed by a crisis of the monotheist religions, among various
other factors fruit of a movement, mainly in the “poor” countries (as
classified by the author), of institutions of symbolic beliefs and
complex rites that value collective and individual human experience,
that ultimately form symbolic “mosaics” that give materialism to the
life of the people. In this framework the traditional-modern
dichotomy in the identity structure of individuals and of the
community is lost.

93 G. Simmel. (1988). Pont et Porte. In: Tragédie de la culture. Paris: Petite

Bibliothéque Rivages.
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Well then, the meeting between religion and the rites can precisely
occur because of the fact that the positive acts of the religious ritual
contribute to the moral consolidation of a social collective, of the
from there projected social solidarity (projection with a social effect
and a religious object), also without forgetting, as Meillassoux (1975)
says, the determination of this social inclusion by means of the rites
in their participation in the wider game of economic relations and
daily work.
The Mozambican case of Christianity and Islam in which, according
to empirical data of the study, the religious elites with whom we had
contact are increasingly and sometimes even artificially convinced of
the union between the classical religious dogmas (from outside the
populations’ local African traditional context) and the discourses,
practices and “idiosyncrasies” of the cultural traditional framework
of the rites reveals in this particular case the religion-rites symbolic
symbiosis (even for reasons of power and the material sustainability
of both). I.e., notwithstanding distinct ideological orientations, there
were several episodes in which religious leaders (i.e., Catholic priests
and Islamic sheiks of at least two divergent ideological traditions –
the Islamic Council and the Islamic Congress)94 indicated elements of
the series of cultural practices (reproduced by the rites) for the future
social life of boys and girls. In addition to examples of mimicry of
some religions/cults such as the “Zionists in which biblical
foundations are processed together with those of African traditions,
such as the kupalha and the mhamba phenomena” (Mahumana,
2003: 2), the study found examples of the defence of circumcision,
the repudiation of homosexual marriages, the legitimation of the sex-
gender division of social roles, the glorification of reproduction/

94 The Islamic Congress and the Islamic Council are differentiated, mainly
concerning a few ideological positions about the foundations and the obligation of
religious practices such as the use of the veil, the frequency of the cults, the forms
of performing the material ovation to Allah, etc., and concerning how dogmas,
knowledge and guidelines of the Islamic faith are interpreted, such as the
moment/sign of the appearance of the moon to begin “Eid Mubarak”, all this
derived from the source (places) of legitimacy and inspiration of religious power
and beliefs (i.e., Mecca/Saudi Arabia and Sudan as representative of Mecca for the
Islamic Council versus the Africanism of the Islam for the Islamic Congress).
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procreation, the representations of menstruation, among others,
which are either based on the Bible and/or on the life of Catholic
apostles and of reference Islamites (in this last case religiously
underpinning polygamy and the rituals to prepare the bodies of girls,
from birth, for their protection against infertility).
Let us consider the stance of local religious authorities regarding the
power relations between men and women in Islam: “it is true that
men and women must both be treated with respect but the man is the
head” (Matias 1); “the man is the ‘head’ of the family” (Matias 2);
“men and women are not equal. Women must be controlled” (Matias
3); “the man is the one looking for a woman to marry her and she
should obey the commands of her man” (Feniasse 3).
It is interesting that the Bible also reproduces hierarchical power
relations between women and men, depriving women of access to
and the exercise of rights, particularly sexual and reproductive rights:
“The Bible says that the woman comes from a male rib.
Moreover, even in science life has already started in the male
reproductive organs, therefore we cannot want both to be
equal, otherwise each one will not know her or his place”
(Matias 4).
“The Bible does not approve of family planning, neither of
homosexuality” (Matias 2).
“We advise the parents to have their daughters marry within
the social rules” (Feniasse 4).
“To produce disciples is never against God. It is not correct
when children have an early pregnancy but we can also not
take abortion as a solution. We condemn family planning and
all forms of restricting life on earth, such as abortion and
homosexuality” (Daniel 2).
Therefore, rites and religion have their meeting confirmed, precisely
on the basis of the institutionalization of the instrumentalization of
women and their reproductive social roles and position of a condition
that is subordinate to men, of the essentialization of the official,
biblical or Koranic founding of socioculturalist prejudices of the
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education of the rites, and of the combination of the religious,
traditional and public-political social recognition (amplified symbolic
power) of the rite agents.
This chapter sought to analyse the occurrence of rites in Cabo
Delgado, Sofala and Zambézia provinces. It sought to show changes
of the rites and their reconfiguration in the current context of the
affirmation of a democratic State, with respect to their refinement in
view of new threats to their traditional/original framework of
roles/functions, objectives, expectations, mechanisms of social
education, agents and professionals and organisation.
In general, the rites still perform social group reproduction functions
(mainly when they are more of a community/collective nature, as is
the case of the Makondes and the Makhuwas, in their places of origin
and in the recreated ethnospaces), developing social control
mechanisms, which can for example be established by the fact that
the families still consider them important for the construction of an
adult identity. With respect to the changes experienced by the rites,
we emphasize the professionalization of agents through market
criteria (not traditional criteria, such as heritage and succession), the
ambivalent relations with State and religious power, the reduction of
the duration of the rites (due to the increasingly hasty need of adults
and threats brought by modernity, such as the school, the pressure of
human rights), associated with the lowering of the ages of the
recruitment of initiatees.
The entry of the public discourse (for example through the idea of
“our culture”) in the coverage of the traditional practices of the rites
makes that there is on the one hand no questioning of human rights
phenomena (for example, the violation of children’s or women’s
rights, sexual violence, paedophilia), the exposure to public health
risks (i.e., HIV and AIDS risks of surgical activities such as
circumcision; obstetric fistula due to early pregnancy legitimated by
early marriage); and on the other hand the public authority itself
comes into play in the rites (the Education sector harmonizing
schedules for the performance of the rites with the traditional
authorities, and the Health sector carrying out circumcision of the

231
initiatees on the argument of a safe surgical intervention). This
happens due to the logic of the relation established with the
traditional power which, from a certain point in time, was a
legitimation recourse for State power. This is how this chapter sought
to analyse the functions, organisation and changes of the rites, as
reorganisation and reproduction institutions of an order of the
organisation of power between individuals of the same social system
and in the clash between this system and the macrosystem of the
modern State.

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Chapter IV - Initiation Rites and the
Construction of the Masculine and
Feminine
In this chapter we will seek to analyse three sets of questions, which
elucidate the role and functions of the rites in the construction of
identity, previously presented through an analysis “of the discourse
as social practice leading to the construction and attribution of
meaning to the experience and the social actors by means of the
interactional stances occupied by them in the use of language”
(Lopes, 2010: 288). This will allow us to understand the context in
which the discourse is produced, to which needs it responds, which
processes produce the transformation and adaptation/adjustment,
expressed in how girls and boys recognise themselves as subjects of
rights.
The first set of problems has to do with the relation between school
and family and with the appropriations girls and boys make of the
available resources, reformulating identifications, developing
strategies and negotiating values and practices. We also intend to
analyse how the conflicts between these socialization goals are
produced as well as “solved”, at school and in the family, and the
differentiation of the means used in both spaces. This means seeking
to understand the continuities and discontinuities between family
and school education, taking into account the cohabitation of the
cultural heritage with elements that, deriving from modernity,
destabilise the dispositions embodied in the family. This situation
reveals itself in the first place in how all parties involved in this
education perceive the conflicts, use them to occupy spaces of power
and to renew legitimacies, and in the second place in the inclusion or
not of socialization processes and mechanisms that contribute to the
cohabitation and mainstreaming integration of convergences in the
construction of differentiating qualities. For this reason, in this first

233
point we will also confront the discourses and practices of female and
male teachers and of girl and boy students with the proposed syllabus
model, so as to obtain evidence for the correlation between the
intention of the formal education system and the contents of family
action in the constitution of principles constraining school practices.
Another set of problems concerns the role of the rites as a factor of
cultural cohesion, i.e., how these instances of coming of age provide,
through the spaces in which they are conducted, the ritual duration,
the ceremonies and the means and mechanisms used (such as
dances, songs and plants), the qualities that constitute the new
status, in a process in which the girls and boys internalize the
representations and practices that characterise an adult. The rite
prescribes behaviours and includes them harmoniously in a new
order, which protects individuals “from the splits and discontinuities
present in society” (Meira, 2009: 188). Through interaction the
individual positions her/himself in relation to the group, shows how
she/he embodies the normative and resorts to it, learning to
recognise authority. In this process of recognition there is
cooperation (insofar as she/he accepts the authority) and there is
also conflict, when she/he because of the knowledge she/he
embodies in other spaces, is taken to processes of demarcation from
the group (Meira, 2009).
From this point of view, it is also our intention to understand how
different contexts give differentiated meanings to the representations
and practices and how these meanings converge or not on the same
model of domination. In other words, what interests us is to analyse
how elements that are apparently exogenous to the rites, such as
democracy and the mechanisms of citizen participation and of access
to rights are, in addition to the social, cultural and economic
specificities of the ethnolinguistic groups, the resources used to resist
and negotiate new positions in the power structure, imposing the
recognition of the youths, namely as subjects of rights. In the same
way, the exposure of the girls and boys to differentiated spaces and
lifestyles encourages reflection about the existence of multiple
masculinities and femininities that, having to do with cultural and
ethnolinguistic contexts, may indicate the capacity to change and to
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manipulate resources that guide the socially available dispositions
and that may be collateral to both sexes. This question brings us also
to the attention that should be paid to the changes to which the
rituals have been subjected, not only from the point of view of the
formalization of the means used, but also and mainly how the relative
changes, for example of the space used and the duration of the rites,
may cause internal disruption (undermining the original meanings).
In the third set of problems, we will study in depth how the rites seek
to shape gender identities and sexual identities (though
differentiated, they are linked), which “are always being constituted,
are instable and therefore liable to transformation” (Louro, 2007:
27). This means favouring an approach that, though seeking to
identify tendencies that confirm the existence of a common symbolic
universe, takes into account variability in the construction of gender
identities (and sexual identities) and the link between this identity
flexibility and the constraints imposed by a cultural model defining
hegemonic masculinities and femininities.
If, as Louro (2007) states, gender identities imply the recognition of
belonging to manhood or womanhood and the sexual identities take
us to the practice of sexuality, in this research it is important to
understand how the demarcation factors for the performance of the
rites and the spaces and contents of the teachings of sex life are
simultaneously producers and reproducers of a dominant social
order. As Foucault states, “the ritual defines the qualifications that
individuals who speak should have; it defines the gestures, the
behaviours, the circumstances and the entire set of signs that should
accompany the ritual; and finally, the ritual establishes the supposed
or imposed efficacy of the words, their effect on those to whom they
are spoken, the limits of their constraining value” (Foucault, 1971:
10).
Gender ideology as a system of beliefs produces and reproduces
mechanisms legitimating inequalities, operating and communicating
through cohesive and permanent institutions, hierarchies and
positions that strengthen the model of domination, even in situations

235
in which it seems to have been shaken, as for example the sharing of
domestic tasks.
When we talk about gender identities, the nucleus of our analysis is
the marks causing the body to incarnate the norms and conventions
leading to the historically constrained representation of manhood
and womanhood. Resorting to Foucault (1976), in modernity
coercion makes way for the incitement of the youth to seek
compliance with the normative femininity and masculinity, so that
when they move, they “execute” performances in agreement with the
spaces in which they are located. What we in the first place intend to
know is if and how the rites organize patterns that standardise the
construction of the individual (constituting references that can be
recognized by others). And in the second place we intend to know
which strategies of adjustment and resistance may shake the socially
and culturally to be expected mandate, calling into question the
stability of the gender order. It is in this sense that the sexualized
body, i.e., the knowledge about sexuality that refer to it and the
powers that structure the practices, and how individuals recognise
themselves as subjects of this sexuality, are the pivot around which
we will analyse the construction of sexual identities.
Thus, in this way we intend to examine sexuality in a perspective
focused on gender relations (which provide the model of domination)
and on the individual appropriation of sexuality in differentiated
cultural and social contexts (Heilborn, 1999). It is in this perspective
that the question of power, i.e., social control of the body, is decisive
to understand the maintenance of the mechanisms of construction of
subordinated sexuality, being also capable of forming a threat to this
social order. We will seek to understand how through the
differentiated but not autonomous forms, female and male sexuality
is constructed and how they are marked by mechanisms based on a
relation of domination, subject to change. As Loyola (1999) states, it
is the non-fixation of sexuality in a particular model, but its variation
in the course of the history of individuals and societies, which founds
the always urgent question of cultural mobility and the questioning of
the preservation of the order.

236
1. Identities, family and the school

Concerning the link between family and school socialization, and

considering the analysis of the initiation rites and their role in
shaping juvenile identities, we took into account some questions that
should be understood as being related: the first one concerns the
construction of juvenile identities and the change processes
developed around the circulation, adjustment and adoption of new
elements in combination with old (and previous) mechanisms
allowing distinction but also accordance with the collective(s). Going
about in different spaces, individuals are in transit and “when
individuals move, they transform themselves” (Louro, 2010:204).
This means that through the embodiment of new dispositions
acquired through the interaction with other spaces, girls and boys,
while constituting themselves as subjects, recognise themselves as
belonging to a group. These processes, marked by fluidity and
transitoriness, simultaneously characterised by identification and de-
identification, explain how social and cultural norms are acquired
and transformed by the youths in new ways of recognition, subject to
change and flow. Juvenile identities are thus understood as varied
and contradictory: confronted with multiple sources of information,
adolescents and youths are in constant mobility, appropriating and
expropriating, identifying and non-identifying themselves.
Another question has to do with the link between spaces of
socialization, particularly the family and the school, which while
“presenting” themselves with complementary aims, are guided by
differentiating types of organisation which may call into question the
expected social coherence. The bonds of conviviality, the hierarchies
based on new models of knowledge construction (and on the
recognition of their legitimacy as an established truth), the social
relations that are developed at school as a space of constraint and a
space of freedom (sensed and experienced as such), expose the girl
and boy students to a changeable set of resources and opportunities
that express, often ambiguously, the combination, but also the
confrontation, between family socialization (brought about by
imitation and made explicit in silences, taboos, power relations and

237
functions, producing automatisms that function as an expression of
the social norm) and school socialization, which is brought about as a
process defining itself simultaneously as a space of complementarity
but mainly as a space which, with its own routines and rules, re-
develops new mechanisms of normative control. As it is not possible
to consider either the family or the school outside of the social,
cultural and political contexts which produce differentiated
“regulations”, we seek to take into account on the one hand the
principles that distinguish theoretically family socialization and
school socialization and on the other hand the differentiations and
affinities that derive from the contextual specificities and that make it
difficult to standardize specific forms of linking the two. For this
reason, the tendencies found in the processes of primary and
secondary socialization have to be seen as subject to change,
produced both at the endogenous level of instances of socialization
and at the exogenous level, such as, in the case of Mozambique, the
influence of the civil war on population mobility, the economic
precariousness of people living in rural environments, and the
reconstitution of practices intending to restore cultural cohesion
(broken or replaced during many years, whether by the imposition of
a nation “without culture”, or by social destabilization).
Finally, we think that it is important to mention how, in the family
and at school, gender identities are constructed through the sexual
division of labour and the effect that school “egalitarianism”,
expressed in the syllabuses, may or may not have on a rupture with
the markers of gender inequality. This problem is obviously a key
question in this research, not only because in the course of the
various chapters we seek to understand how the rites express,
through multiple mechanisms, representations and practices that
impose the construction of social power relations as “natural” and
legitimate them, but also how the school and other public bodies that
produce norms, conflict, or on the contrary establish implicit or
explicit agreements, with a cultural model that seeks to preserve
gender discrimination.
By targeting the 12 to 18-year age group and by considering, as
mentioned in previous chapters, the unity and diversity that
238
characterise this stage of life intermediating the transition to
adulthood (Pais, 1990), we operate simultaneously with the concept
of youth but also with the concept of adolescence. As Rena states, the
latter is the identity in crisis which “contains big risks and great
possibilities” (Rena, 2006:34). This choice has to do with two
situations: the first one is due to the fact that in most spatial units
studied the initiation ritual starts between the age of 10 and 12, which
leads us, though in the course of this study we seek to identify the
differences between puberty and youth (where the choices, ruptures
and appropriations are more visible), to resort, though with
precautions, to the term juvenile identity.95 The second situation has
to do with the distinction made by Van Gennep between social
puberty and physical puberty, considering the “margin” phase which
mediates the aggregation as a “suspension of social life” (1977:103)
and which can cover a 10 to 18- year age group.
In the analysis of the construction of identities through the discourse
of girls and boys, the preliminary question, and which makes the
establishment of tendencies that standardize the processes and
mechanisms acquired by the initiated youths from the teachings in
the family and at school particularly difficult, is in the first place the
identification of how these teachings are conditioned due to the fact
that the children have experienced the process of ritualization.
Although the embodiment and disembodiment of the ritual contents
are treated below, here we will seek to understand, through the
discourses of girls and boys, which dominant mechanisms produced
in each one of the spaces are used to give themselves meaning and
how this happens. This also means that we will resort to the factors
that, having to do with the differences between urban and rural
environments and also between ethnolinguistic groups which, more
or less exposed to the public discourse of rights and to the
information conveyed by various sources, enable the youths to accede
to resources that break with, are in agreement with or on the contrary
combine different types of normativity.

95 The criterion to characterise youth was adopted by the General Assembly of the
United Nations, in Resolutions 40714 of 1985 and 50781 of 1995, with the
definition of the 15 to 24-year age group.
239
It is thus important to understand how young people learn to
recognise themselves as adults and to disassociate themselves not
only from (not initiated) other youths but also from adults with
whom they confront themselves/dialogue and how these distinctions
may be indelibly marked by the symbolic capital and by how the
hierarchical positions are defined (Enne, 2010). This means to
identify the mechanisms used by the youths in the negotiation
between the individual and the collective in the relation between
myself and the other (this myself and the other marked by fluidity, by
resistance and by alliances), considering that an individual identity
only makes sense through the relation with the other. We will thus
also seek to analyse the mechanisms of identification with the
collective, by opposition and similarity to other collective identities
(of gender, religion and ethnicity).
Regarding the way in which girls and boys represent the teachings in
the family and at school and their practices, we observe, as
demonstrated in previous studies (Osório and Silva, 2008), that
about 50% of the youths point out that there are considerable
differences between the education received at home and at school,
emphasizing the importance of the family as personality building
agent (“don’t steal, be the boss”, Vasco 2) and of the school for
providing competences allowing access to work. What we on the
other hand and in apparent contradiction observe is that the
narratives about the non-discrimination of girls at school (in terms of
demands and in social relations) mix the naturalization of the sexual
division of labour at home with the equal rights transmitted at
school, resulting in the assimilation of elements from one space and
the other, apparently without leading to conflicts. In other words, at
school and in the family the children behave themselves in
agreement with the expectations of each one of the spaces,
conforming themselves or resisting within the normative framework
imposed on them.
In a line of opposition to the school and to the mechanisms of family
socialization, revealing some familiarity with the discourse of rights,
about 20% of the interviewed youths denounced punishments at
school, such as “carrying 25 gallons of water and opening latrines”
240
and “punishments and work at home”, as a boy in Mecúfi told us
(Vasco 16). This is particularly interesting because while these
students have been subject to initiation rites where the mechanisms
to attain adulthood are applied with a lot of suffering (by part of the
youth not perceived however as violence but as necessary for the
transition of status), they are capable of rejecting explicitly different
forms of training. As we will analyse below, this may be a system of
opposition that not only presupposes resistance and contestation of
the cultural heritage, but also the embodiment of elements of
individuation expressed in differentiated forms of belonging and
recognition.
Another group of youths belonging to a third tendency and making
up about 30% of the interviewees (10% girls and 20% boys) oppose a
discourse which, stating the conflicts between family and school
expectations, attach value to access to school, as may be observed in
these remarks:
“Here at school I benefit from many different things,
conversing with colleagues, studying, practising certain
things, but at home I leave my notebooks. At home my uncle
took me to the workshop to work, when my uncle told me to
stop “cramming” and become a bus collector, I refused and
when he took me to the workshop he said, one thing you have
to lose, either you work or you study, so I said I will work and
study” (Vasco 1).
This discourse is corroborated by many other students, aged 12 to 14,
with big expectations with respect to school, seeking to reconcile,
though often without success, work with schooling. It is observed
that the youths develop strategies of negotiation with the families in
order to be able to attend school, and even in urban areas about 20%
of the boys informed that they divide the week into two parts: they go
to school for three days and the other days they go fishing or perform
other activities to support the family. It is curious that the ministerial
definition that skipping classes does not constitute a factor of failing
and the order of semi-automatic and automatic transition until grade
7 (at which the performance targets are important for the assessment

241
of the teachers’ performance) has favoured an extremely harmful
situation for students who may be kept out of school by their families
with impunity and not impeding their transition to the next grade.96
As we will analyse in the course of this study, it is interesting that,
contrary to girls, the justification for school abandonment and the
difficulties that are presented by boys to skip classes have
fundamentally to do with work, while girls, though also mentioning
poverty of the family, never emphasize the need for work (outside the
domestic scope) to support the survival of the family, stating that
they stay at home to help their mother and prepare themselves for
marriage. The following remarks of a school director (referring to a
meeting with a guardian) in Mecúfi District is representative:
“Because marrying (...) should be to sustain (...) a household.
I am already old, I can’t manage (...). So the child goes from
there thinking that marriage is more important than the
school because I will have my home with my property. (…)
Because there are parents who even say I have studied but it
didn’t give me anything. (...) I have my brother, he has
studied, but didn’t get anything, now, what benefit does the
school give you?” (Achirafo 3).
However, despite the difficulties of girl and boy students to have
access to school, they have a visible interest in “learning a
profession”, which only an educational institution can give them.
This situation allows us to think that, even when levels of
complementarity between the family and the school are identified, or
when girl and boy students give value to family teachings, there
begins to appear opposition that goes beyond the relation between
generations, and that reveals a structure of identity change,
expressed in the embodiment of new values and expectations.

96 Promotion is automatic within each cycle and semi-automatic between cycles, in

this case implying that retention in the 3rd cycle is done exceptionally “in cases in
which the teacher, the school director and the parents/guardians reach a
consensus” (MEC, INDE, Basic Education Teaching Plan, Maputo, 2003), which
does not impede the setting of new examinations for excluded students (as external
students) and access to professional courses.
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Contrary to juvenile narratives, from an analysis of the discourses of
key informants with respect to the link between the space of primary
socialization, which is the family, and the school (which in the case of
our study can be assumed as secondary socialization), we observe
assertively the permanence of a set of phenomena that highlight the
differences between how the aims and strategies of school education
are perceived (and also their specific modes of distributing time and
occupying space, of reorganizing relations between pairs, of
hierarchizing agents, of transmitting knowledge and competences)
and their implications for the prevalence of values transmitted within
the family, which can be understood both as complementary to
school socialization and as discordant and maladjusted (Darmon,
2006). In the case of our target group, ritualized children attending
grade 7, we observe three situations in all ethnolinguistic groups
studied: the first one, more visible in urban areas and in more
educated social groups, in which families state the usefulness of
school attendance, seeking to integrate and mainstream the
knowledge and values acquired in the two spaces.
The second situation in which families, though with a positive
expectation in relation to the school, even as a supplement to the
absence of opportunities and as a “correction” of the colonial
injustice which limited their access to school knowledge, resort
frequently to the poor quality of education as an argument to give
value to knowledge acquired at home, emphasizing the work
experience the children are having, whether in domestic activities or
in seasonal activities (such as harvesting, fishing or doing “odd jobs”)
that cover the family budget. Thus it happens that for an important
number of families, the work done by a son is more relevant than
school attendance, as a member of staff of the District Directorate of
Education in Cheringoma told us:
“In our families here in Cheringoma there are many children
whose families take away their rights. At any moment a father
may tell his son that today he cannot go to school, you have to
go harvesting. This has been frequent. What happens then?
The teacher sends a notification to call the father, but the
father doesn’t show up, he doesn’t care” (Daniel 6).
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Finally, we found a third situation, clearly observed in rural areas and
in families in very critical living conditions, in which the school is
perceived as a place for the production of dispositions contrary to the
values received at home, thus constituting a “danger” for the
transmission of the cultural heritage, which can be interpreted as the
rejection of the family norm, as the “teaching” of having a choice, as
the possibility of the denial of the (future) fulfilment of the material
obligations of the children towards the parents. When one of our civil
society interviewees states that “an educated son is venom for the
father” (Daniel 2), this means that fear and mistrust with respect to
the role of the school reveals the discontinuity between family and
school expressed in the absence of the parents from meetings called
by the teachers, which becomes particularly serious with the
occurrence of multiple absences of students, school abandonment
and, in the case of girls, forced unions of children with adults.
It was also interesting to observe that the “nearer” to tradition and
the “defence of culture” (informants such as masters, matrons and a
few leaders) the stronger the declarations (because, as we saw in
previous chapter, spaces of legitimation are negotiated) that the
school constitutes itself as a constraint, particularly in a context that
is intended to be democratic, in which children’s rights are
obstructing what is socially considered the exercise of authority, as is
revealed by these remarks of a master in Mugeba, Mocuba District:
“There is nothing, they say that this is democracy. Democracy,
each one does what he wants. And then everybody says this
here isn’t all right, that’s it. Ah…that chief isn’t doing a good
job, now it is this, then it is that. But how can they allow this?
Even in the colonial days, each father had a ruler, I attended
there, this Sílvio gang, they had children there, they had a
ruler, but they taught the children. When they see that you
have an escudo97 they ask you, where did you get it from?
Well, they understand immediately that this child opened the
purse and stole this money, he would get a good hiding. From
there the child would be very afraid that stealing is bad. It is

97 Escudo was the unit of currency used in the colonial period.

244
 just like that, all this happened at school, they would ask you
what work did you do? Why did you not do this? Either this or
that, they would give a good hiding, then the child would be
steadfast” (Zuber 1).
The same kind of attitude was observed in some women’s
organisations within the political parties which, in addition to
denouncing the “rebelliousness” of the girls expressed in the way of
dressing, in the non-fulfilment of “family orders” (“they go naked, we
would like to teach them to follow the example of their mothers but
they don’t comply at all”), also accuse the soaps of “teaching to have
sex” and the school of “teaching about the human body, which is a
problem when they go to the rites and don’t listen” (Amélia 2).
The differences between bodies of socialization, such as the school
and the family, are organized in and with conflict (in the discourse of
many female and male informants), insofar as the school, through its
“mechanisms and practices, constitutes school identities” expressed
not only in the legitimacy of what is taught, but also of what is
rejected or accepted (Louro, 2007:61). As a matron of Makonde
origin in Pemba informed us:
“Today there are big differences and there are difficulties.
Today the children have a very wrong idea, for example, the
parents want to educate their children in a good way, when
they have a subject to transmit to the children or because a
child did something wrong, he doesn’t respect his father, nor
his mother, nor his brothers, when the parents lay hold of the
child in order to give him advice the answer is: for you, this
time has passed already. (…) Nowadays counsels between
parents and children are difficult because the little ones think
they already know everything, because they see all the
demonstrations at school and on television” (Arminda 1).
In an even more obvious way a Makonde master, also in Pemba
Town, accuses the school of having replaced the parents by new
values and attitudes that call into question family authority:

245
 “There is a difference, between then and now, because when
all children go to school, and you arrive home and start telling
your child, I want to do this with you as in the past, then the
child comes and refuses and says, dad I am dealing with the
school. He then leaves you and disappears” (Armindo 1).
In the same way, school education about the body constitutes an
element of contestation, considering that it breaks (at least
apparently) with all the teachings conveyed during the rites. This
situation is all the more interesting to be observed as, mainly since
2004 (with the introduction of the new Basic Education syllabus),
one tries to approach the teachings and values embodied at school
with the cultural practices of the community, reducing the risks
represented by the acquisition of new knowledge and practices. As we
will analyse below, the intended annulment of the confrontation
between tradition and modernity through the introduction of cross-
cutting themes in the different areas of education, as is the case of the
Local Syllabus and the Moral and Civic Education Syllabus, do not
achieve the intended results, not only because two or more teaching
models are in conflict, but also, and mainly, because the youths pick
up the knowledge and abilities, with resistance/conformation/
adaptation, calling into question through the practices developed in
the different spaces, the expectable normatives. This means that the
inclusion of new ways of complementing school and community may
in fact stimulate the capacity of the girls and boys to make their own
choices, to negotiate and to represent themselves in each one of the
spaces, negotiating what in each space is considered “true” and
“good”.
This situation in which the school and the family assert themselves as
complementary, but in fact fight for the legitimacy of the values and
attitudes that are being embodied in the education of adolescents and
youths, should also be seen in the context of a disciplinary power
contrasting the “modern” normative of which the school is vehicle,
with a cultural heritage based on the preservation of hierarchized
power relations on the basis of age and sex.

246
However, in urban environments there is an ambiguity in the
discourse of informants who, being very close to bodies that, seeking
to act directly or indirectly on the rites, shift and link the masters’
and matrons’ legitimacy to the State authority. I.e., they seek to
combine in an artificial way the teachings conveyed at school and
those transmitted during the rites, as is shown by these remarks of a
matron:
“With respect to the State or the school, there is a lot of
collaboration. When matrons want to perform rites they know
that now the school is the centre. (…) We always present our
intentions to the leaders, nobody conducts rites without
communicating it to the head of the Administrative Post and
the Urban District secretary” (Arminda 1).
It seems to us that this situation is due to a series of factors that have
to do with strategies of mutual recognition, in an attempt to stabilize,
harmonize and adapt a certain idea of cultural mobility to the marks
of modernity expressed in the dominant discourses, in legislation and
in the public policies of the modern State. The ideology based on
national unity, which is constituted through equal rights and the
non-identification with specificities that may eventually impede
access to spaces of power, results in that in an urban context the
preservation of the “local” is not extended.98
However, the more removed from the areas of influence of the State,
the more the discourses show forms of resistance of these actors to
the changes introduced by modernity, seeking to skirt the influence
of the school, of the spaces of conviviality, and of the contamination
of the youths having access to and using information received by a
large variety of sources. Therefore, irrespective of ethnolinguistic
groups, the attempts of a cultural preservation of tradition are on the
one hand more effective, but on the other hand sometimes also more
controlled by the political power. In all spatial units, particularly in
rural areas, it is evident that the strategies of negotiation and

98 However, in certain circumstances we observe that it are exactly these specificities

that constitute intentional strategies of differentiation for the production of a
countervailing local power.
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conformation between formal and family education (including here
the initiation rites) causes a confrontation of not easily reconcilable
values and attitudes. It is for example the case of the appeal for the
participation and the hesitations of the already initiated girl and boy
students in many schools and the non-application (as accepted
norm) of corporal punishment. While the school breaks with the
itinerary of continuity in the socialization of the children, the families
resort to bodies that eventually may restore the traditional order,
such as the churches and the initiation rites. As has been analysed in
the previous chapter, the religious institutions seek to co-opt the
preservation of tradition, for example by the introduction of
ceremonies conferring moral value to the cultural practices.
We also consider it important to identify how, in the construction of
identities, the members of a group share norms and values defining
them as a group in relation to another, where there are also shared
norms that derive from the same social order (gender hierarchies).
On the other hand, as Vala argues, “knowledge and emotions are
object of evaluative judgements, which means that the knowledge
and emotions constructed within groups are not only descriptive but
also evaluative, i.e., they mobilize attitudes” (Vala, 1997:11). For our
study this meant to identify if and how the identity “opposition” has
to do with gender features, i.e., the boys learn to identify themselves
as not being children and not being women. Unlike women, men
have to prove continuously that they are men, because overtures to
the female disqualifies them. I.e., identification means non-
identification by exclusion in relation to other groups, but also by
conflict in relation to their own collective.
With respect to the construction of gender inequality, Louro (2010)
states that the simple indication of what is a boy or a girl presupposes
an organised course with rules and interdictions, continuously
reiterated by various institutions, such as the family and the school,
that are in agreement with the socially existing discrimination and, as
we will mention below, with socially recognized models of
masculinity and femininity. This means that, though the processes
and mechanisms of school socialization presuppose gender equality,
there are difficulties inherent in the teaching-learning process, as is
248
the case of the constraints inherent in the social representations of
many interviewed teachers, who continue to let themselves be guided
by the dominant cultural model.
Social gender relations are determined by inequality, both from a
material point of view (sexual division of labour) and from a symbolic
point of view (positions in the hierarchies and inherent statuses). The
impossibility to accede to resources, such as to keep studying and the
fact of the social and family context being unfavourable, renders girls
more incapable to escape from the domination they are subjected to.
On the contrary, young boys naturalize the difference through the
division of labour in the family and even through the distribution of
activities in the public space, symbolizing greater autonomy with
respect to the decision-making power regarding their body, as is
demonstrated by their sexual initiative and by the use of condoms,
which results precisely from the capacity to use the resources that
have been placed at their disposal. This means that, while the same
information about rights is transmitted to boys and girls and while
they are exposed to the same resources, it became clear in the
research that the capacity of access and practice is determined by the
female subordinate condition.
A situation that was widely demonstrated is the naturalization of
female discrimination reflected in a simpler and more concrete way
in the sexual division of labour, which is in most cases considered as
being fair, not only regarding the inequality in sharing tasks, but also
the classification and hierarchization of these tasks. It is interesting
to observe that only work requiring physical strength (such as the
building of annexes to the family house, carried out after the
ritualization) is considered a male attribute and valued as such. Tasks
such as carrying firewood, transporting water (often covering long
distances) are not considered as requiring strength, i.e., the
description of the work of girls is strongly dissociated from what are
considered “qualities”.
In the discourse of many girls, though there is dissatisfaction with the
differences between the discourse of equality at school and the
performance of household chores, in the first place some

249
conformation with gender roles is observed (a discourse that is often
accompanied by a non-discordant differentiation between family
education and school education functions) and in the second place
with a concession to the gender normative, as becomes evident in
these remarks:
“Because I said, mum I am working all the time. I don’t want
to, mum, I am tired, I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I am
missing classes, but now I understand that one day they will
take me to a man, and I will not be able to do anything. So
now I understand, as my mother tells me, a girl should work,
and she doesn’t know anything, not even how to cook, only to
sit down, then the man will become nervous and will take you
to your mother’s house and he will leave you” (Vânia 1).
In cases in which girls live with their father and a stepmother, there
is a clear accumulation of differentiation between the two sexes
which for example manifests itself in a refusal to buy school supplies
and clothes. The feeling of unequal access to resources, whether
material or symbolic (even when the controversy does not imply
conflict, as we saw in the remarks above) starts to be felt at school, in
the work done in the school by organisations, in the acquisition of
teaching contents (which we will deal with below) elucidating
fairness and equal rights, and mainly through the mobility of the girls
and boys. Some girls refer directly to the equality lived at school and
the dissemination of rights as motivation for the construction of a
new perception about the discrimination lived at home. It is this
inequality, according to several of the interviewed girl students,
which makes them to want to break with this status, by going to bars,
using clothes considered “inappropriate” and by having early sex. It
is interesting to observe that this apparent rupture with the norm
does not appear to contradict the model of domination, expressed in
the use of the girls’ bodies, neither does it change the elements that
constrain the cultural normative.
It is curious, and contrary to the results of other studies (Osório and
Silva, 2008), that there are few accusations of sexual harassment, be
it because the measures adopted by the education sector are having

250
effect or because there are previous experiences of accusations of
harassment that reverted the blame from the teacher to the girl
student, giving excessive publicity and leaving hanging in the air a
suspicion of complicity of the girl student in the harassment.99
Anyhow, it seems that the dissemination of rights among students
carried out at school, but also by the media and by civil society
organisations acting in the field, restricts the violent use of the girl
students’ bodies. However, we think that the fact that we have
observed a reduction of the visibility of the violation of girls’ rights in
school environments does not necessarily mean its inexistence and
may also be a sign of a certain corporatism among teachers.
Finally and resuming the link between family and school, it is
observed that the uneasiness felt between the school and the families
is also expressed in the discourse of teachers who often find it
difficult to work in contexts in which the youths are exposed to
influences that determine their adherence to lifestyles that are
incompatible with the school organisation. I.e., the purposes of the
school socialization enter into conflict with the mechanisms
embodied by the youth in other spaces of socialization, such as
together viewing pornographic films that, according to the teachers,
construct violent personalities, marked not only by power exerted on
women, but also determining the legitimation of confrontation as a
form of conflict resolution (and also of conflict construction). On the
other hand, some female informants stated very clearly that many
people recognise that the children are victims of a culture that
continues to assert itself as a decisive element of Mozambicanness, as
was said by a female official in a provincial directorate of education:
“Thus, as things are, girls are always dependent and we all know that
we are making a mistake in favour of a certain culture” (Ana 7).

99 It should be noted however that the harassment is possibly camouflaged by the

information we have been receiving in the course of the research, that “marriage”
of a girl student with a teacher or a payment to the victims’ families has enabled
the silencing of these cases of sexual assault. The families having been
compensated, the harassment is no longer socially punished, with the complicity of
the police and the conflict resolution bodies existing in the communities.
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The tensions between socialization at school and socialization in the
family are neither simple nor linear. In the narratives of female and
male teachers we come across conflicts that are related to the fact
that girls after their menstruation are prohibited to talk to their
colleagues, as a female teacher in Guara-Guara, Búzi District said: “a
father found his daughter talking to a male colleague about this and
then he said to the girl: from now on you will not enter my house”
(Dilma 11). The same interviewee expressed the opinion that this
parental attitude is due to an idea of control representing the girl’s
body as an object: “other people are saying: no, my daughter cannot
go to school, study for a long time, after that she will have forgotten
what we taught her in the family and will not accept to marry” (Dilma
11).
In this discourse it is common that accusations persist that the school
must not interfere with family education, because it deprives the
parents of their power to control their children, as was stated by a
teacher, when referring to a dialogue he had with a guardian: “this
child you have there is your responsibility, I have no means to sustain
this child”. These ambiguities revealing a complex cohabitation,
produced in one sense or another as a recourse legitimating the
practices of social actors, get even worse when the politicization of
the school space is presented as a justification for mistrust towards
the school.
Finally, the problem of the conflict about the discourse of children’s
rights was amply mentioned by the teachers, with three main
positions: on the one hand, a majority stated that it is difficult for
students to distinguish between rights and obligations, which is for
example expressed in these remarks of a child: “I have the right to
work in the machamba” (Deolinda 4), revealing difficulties in
differentiating between rights and obligations, expressed in
perceptions produced by the situation of dependence of the families
in which the children live. This continuously conveyed idea produces
extreme vulnerability of the children in recognizing themselves as
subjects of rights.

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A second position, complementary to the first one, is the absolute
incompatibility of the involvement of parents in the discussion about
children’s rights. This position is revealed in the absence of families
when asked to come to the school, as a teacher in Macomia told us:
“the parents don’t collaborate with the school, for example, in a
meeting to disclose the results, if 10 parents appear for a thousand
students, it’s a lot” (Álvaro 4). And in the case of dropouts, when the
parents are called, they say: “the children are mine, we treat them as
we want to (Antónia 2). This situation becomes worse when
sometimes even the community leaders don’t recognise the parents’
obligation to send the children to school.
And, finally, a third position which teachers frequently consider
indiscipline on the part of the youths when they for example refuse to
perform extracurricular activities, such as weeding, fetching water
and cleaning latrines. This means that there is an appropriation by
the students of the discourse of rights, which contrasts with the
dominant idea at school, i.e., with a frame of reference modelled on a
culture of obedience. The resistance of girl and boy students, testing
the power that legitimates the norm, may also reveal a contestation
which may have to do with the transitoriness and fluidity inherent in
the construction of juvenile identities (in which a return to
conformation with the norm is always possible), as well as with the
affirmation of ruptures with the power structure that hierarchizes
rights on the basis of status, sex and age.
Thus, we think to have demonstrated that the processes and
mechanisms linking family and school socialization are
simultaneously marked by continuity and discontinuity, mediated by
differentiating logics based on aims that, presenting themselves as
complementary, are at the same time discordant, brought about by
various sources of legitimation. In the interstices between them new
identity mechanisms are asserting themselves and which, subverting,
transgressing and putting into action resources, stimulate
individuation (Ortner, 2007).

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1.1. School: organisation, curriculum and links

Though it was not an objective of this study to analyse the school as a

space of socialization, taking into account its action in the
construction of identities, as our research advanced the need became
clear to treat, though briefly, questions that, being apparently
marginal to the study object, could be important for the assessment
of their role.
The organisation of the curriculum, started in 2004 in Basic
Education,100 on the one hand introduces and on the other hand
clarifies a set of subjects and activities aimed at providing knowledge
and contents, namely about community life, local history and values
and the values of citizenship which, being capable of constituting
focuses of conflict with the families, enable the girl and boy students
to acquire new behaviours, namely access to and the exercise of
rights.101 We will only highlight, in the 3rd cycle (grade 6 and 7)
syllabuses, the inclusion of the subject of Moral and Civic Education,
the Local Curriculum as a cross-cutting activity of all subjects
occupying 20% of school hours102 and also Abilities for Life. The
objectives of the Local Curriculum are the introduction of new
knowledge and practices that characterise the specific nature of the
spaces of which the school is part and the involvement of both the
direct beneficiaries (teachers and students) and all those who living
in the community (community authorities and families) may
contribute to raise the levels of social inclusion of the girl and boy

100 Basic Education comprises two levels, the first one with two cycles (grade 1, 2 and
3 form the 1st cycle, and grade 4 and 5 the 2nd cycle) and the second one with one
cycle (grade 6 and 7).
101 Although Basic Education introduces innovations, such as the teaching cycles and

the integrated approach, we will only mention themes that are more directly
related to the study object.
102 Moral and Civic Education only appears as a subject in the 3rd cycle; in the 1st and

2nd cycle it is included as a cross-cutting theme.

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students, namely contact with traditional values and knowledge
through six thematic areas.103
Taking into account that our objective is to identify the aims and
concept of local cultural practices at the 3rd level of Basic Education,
we will only refer to two themes (Local Culture, History and
Economy and Education of Values). We have established that in both
themes the intention is to reconcile specific cultural features through,
for example, the teaching of traditional songs and games, of myths
and rites practised in the community, with the introduction of value
systems such as equality and equity between boys and girls and
human rights. Confronting the educational instructions and
practices, two types of problems become evident in the application of
the Local Curriculum: the first one concerns the involvement of the
communities, whether through the families or through the traditional
authorities, in the development of contents. While it may for example
be relatively peaceful to collect and include information (though in
the research we observed poor parent and community participation
in school life) about musical instruments and traditional games, it is
more difficult to reconcile the mechanisms of family education and
the principles defending children’s rights. This situation becomes
evident by the persistence of the conflict enunciated by the teachers
between the two spaces of socialization, namely when children are
removed from school, for working and/or for early “marriage” and
when the female and male teachers in general ascribe an important
role to the initiation rites for the construction of qualities that
conform to the cultural normative. This may reveal the fact that
teachers do not question rituals that are discriminatory and
excluding rights, eroding the Local Curriculum of its underlying
philosophy. Due to the legitimacy given to school knowledge it may
even strengthen structural mechanisms of the maintenance of a
clearly conservative social order. A second problem has to do with the
pedagogical and didactic means determined for the
construction/appropriation/transmission of contents. If we take into

103The thematic areas of the Local Curriculum are Local Culture, History and
Economy; Education of Values; the Environment; Agriculture and Animal
Husbandry; Health and Nutrition; and Crafts.
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account the absence of resources, the very large classes and teacher
training, we observe that the participation and development of
abilities on the part of girls and boys is often limited to a mechanical
and bureaucratic process. Some of the main objectives defined in the
Local Curriculum, such as the question of the cross-disciplinary
nature of knowledge and the performance of activities that may go
beyond school hours and that form the basis of an integrated
education system, may for the reasons given not be achieved.
With regard to the subject of Moral and Civic Education taught in
grade 6 and 7, the objectives focus on “respect for moral, civic,
patriotic and spiritual values” (MEC, INDE, Basic Education
Curriculum Plan, 2003), developing contents that seek on the one
hand to offer information about a variety of themes, from human
rights to the principles enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic
and mechanisms of citizen participation to the transmission of norms
that discipline the relations of conviviality in the family, at school and
in society. One of the more interesting enunciated aspects,
particularly in the grade 7 programme and manual, has to do with the
identification of the signs of puberty and adolescence, with the
recognition of the difference and with equal rights. Structured with
short texts and simple activities, the manuals of the Moral and Civic
Education subject stimulate the participation of the girl and boy
students and the development of positions. We note however the
absence of thoughts about, for example, gender equality and about
cultural practices harmful to human rights. As there is no reference
to myths (which are on the contrary considered to be implicit in
ethics), no discussion about the power structure that shapes the
female subordinate condition and develops the construction of
gender identities, no discussion about access to and the practice of
sexuality (a preferred theme in talks among adolescents and youths),
the intention appears to have been an attempt to combine general
information about rights with the permanence of a power structure
that hierarchizes sex-based rights. On the other hand, as became
clear during fieldwork, the information transmitted about the
changes produced in puberty are not embodied by the girl and boy
students, in the sense that these biological changes, being natural,

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should be perceived through the construction of qualities that
differentiate girls and boys in an unequal way.104 It would be
interesting to introduce themes in the Moral and Civic Education
manuals that lead the girl and boy students to thoughts about the
construction of gender identities, namely the sexual division of
labour and the initiation rites, which stimulate and legitimate the
violence of forced unions of children. In fact, and as stated by various
authors with respect to school manuals produced in many countries,
these are ruled by what is socially acceptable and intend to discipline
values and behaviours according to the dominant standards (Alferes,
2002).
The third curriculum component directly related to the research is
the Abilities for Life syllabus, an activity cutting across all subjects
and comprising a Basic Package consisting of a set of educational
materials, aiming at an education directly related to HIV and AIDS
themes. So far, about a million Primary Education students (of EP1
and EP2) have carried out activities with the Basic Package. One of
the more relevant aspects of this action is the possibility and stimulus
for the preparation of materials that take into account the local
realities, in coordination with the Direct Support to Schools (ADE)
programme (which enables the financing of actions aiming at the
fight against HIV and AIDS) and the relation with the School
Management programme the objective of which is to increase the
training capacity and to improve the management of the activities.
When analysing the Abilities for Life syllabus, the first question that
arises is the defence of an integrated vision of a set of values allowing
to transform the traditional norms that exclude children from sexual
rights. Supporting this activity and from an analysis of the

104 The Teacher´s Guide for 3rd cycle Moral and Civic Education is an important
teaching tool, aiming at remedying shortcomings in knowledge about Human
Rights and Democracy, while it offers a set of themes and methodological
proposals to be introduced in the various subjects. Although the Guide does not
give priority to the gender approach, as is clear by the absence of references to
women’s human rights and by a tentative reference to “gender sensitivity”, this
document does mention the conflict between what is stipulated in the legislation
and forced unions of children, proposing a strategy of overtures between the school
and the community.
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Mozambican reality, the education sector has prepared a Guide for
Sexual Education Parameters in Basic Education (2002) with an
integrated vision philosophy, in which it is stated that sexual rights
are conditioned by family norms and the gender standard, proposing
“a model of intervention that may touch upon these three bases so as
to change the current equation” (2002: 4). Disapproving of harmful
cultural practices that restrict access to and the exercise of children’s
rights, the document mentions the contradictions between discourses
that defend monogamy and practise polygamy, between the defence
of the permanence of girls at school, while “there is a series of
initiation rites promoting the start of sex life even before the period
of adolescence, both for boys and for girls” (2002: 4,5). This
document addresses clearly the need to articulate sexual health
issues with sexual education, aimed at allowing the youth of both
sexes to exercise the right of choice, rejecting the moralizing
perspective depriving the youth of being subject of rights. Although a
set of values is indicated in the description of the Abilities for Life,
pointing out responsibility in decision-making, it appears to us that
with respect to grade 7 the affirmation that “self-esteem has to do
with tradition, socio-economic and cultural aspects” (2002: 33)
(without clarifying the need to reflect about how these aspects may
contradict the exercise of rights by girls and boys) leads, when
harmonizing the different normatives, to restrictions that negate
access to and the use of information for a change of values and
behaviours, also resulting in sexual education with a treatment of
rights being relegated to second place. This may be one of the factors
explaining that, when questioned about what was intended and what
was transmitted, almost all teachers responded that the objective of
this strategy was fundamentally to provide information about health,
particularly hygiene and HIV and AIDS, adding that the philosophy
guiding this curriculum component in these classes aims at teaching
to recognise the various forms of contamination and the means of
prevention, with emphasis on abstinence. Without the relations that
deprive girls of decision-making power in the practice of sexuality
being questioned, many female and male teachers expressed a
positive view of initiation rites, seeing them as part of an
unquestionable and imperative tradition in the transmission of
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African values to the youth. It appears that we can conclude that
sexual education and even some guidance for its application, are
controlled, as we established from the above-mentioned documents,
by the dominant standard.
Internally and though in an unequal way in the various provinces and
schools, there has been a concern to create gender units and school
clubs at Basic Education level. Their objective is to broaden the scope
of the instruction to the acquisition of other aspects allowing the girls
and boys to discuss subjects of their interest and perform activities
that may set the norm for their behaviour. However, the question
that arises is that, in addition to the discourse of equality (which does
not take into account the structure of the hierarchies that form the
basis of inequality), the activities that are performed reproduce the
social roles and functions of women and men. Thus, for example,
sexual and reproductive health is seen in a moralizing and medical
perspective, in which the discourse of HIV and AIDS emphasizes
abstinence and sometimes the use of condoms, without questioning
the decision-making power male. In other words, as it is information
directed to both sexes, the fact that the gender power structure
increases the impossibility of girls to take a decision regarding
abstinence is not discussed. On the other hand, the existence should
be noted of contradictions between acceptance of and conformity
with the rites (which stimulate sexual initiation) on the part of the
State, which issues at the same time an entire discourse of
discouraging an early start of sex life.
The same situation occurs with the focus given to cooking and
needlework activities which unintentionally strengthen the gender
standards.105 On the other hand, the representation of girl and boy
students about the function of the cross-cutting areas does not
contradict the gender distinctions and inequalities, as a boy student
in Inhaminga summarizes (when referring to Moral and Civic
Education):

105It is curious, and perhaps due to the fact that in rural areas tailoring is clearly a
men’s profession (exercised in a shelter and in public view), that some boys
register enthusiastically for this activity.
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 “When you leave this place and go home, when you come
home the girls are used to lay hold of the plates, clean the
plates, sweep the house and you, men, are used to get a hoe,
weed behind your houses, help your father, or you are used to
just walk on the road when you are leaving school, you are
coming home, you come across a grandfather, you see,
carrying 20 litres in his hand, he doesn’t manage, you help
him, you leave it in his house” (Luís 5).
This means that, despite the implicit aims of the curricula, and the
intentionality to stimulate new attitudes, what becomes clear is the
strengthening of the sexual division of labour, establishing an
essentialist vision of the construction of the roles.
The School Councils106, which could play an important role in the
defence of children’s rights107 and in the mediation with families and
community leaders, have in most cases a very limited role, to a large
extent due to the lack of availability of their members, and sometimes
to wrong perceptions about the way of solving the problems of girl
and boy students, as is the case of pregnancy, which implies the
transfer of the girl students to evening classes, in most cases resulting
in school abandonment. There are however exceptions and there are
cases of a concerted action of the Chairman of the School Council, the
School Board and the Gender Unit in trying to identify the partners
of the pregnant girl and hold them responsible, doing also
remarkable work with the communities and their leaders. Although
more rarely, there is also an effort, though in a tentative way, given

106 Being the highest body of the school, the School Council comprises the
Headmaster of the school, representatives of the teachers, representatives of the
administrative staff, representatives of the parents or guardians, representatives of
the community and representatives of the students. The School Council aims at
stimulating the participation of all the parties involved in the teaching-learning
process and bringing the communities nearer to the school.
107 Although the concept of rights and their exercise may be co-opted culturally and

politically, serving to constrain them to logics of domination, in this study, as

mentioned in Chapters 1 and 2, rights are considered to be those that are enshrined
in the legislation and in the conventions ratified by Mozambique and that are
based on the idea that all human beings are subjects of rights, irrespective of their
living space and conditions.
260
the weight of cultural practices and the absence of knowledge about
the legal mechanisms, to act on early marriages, with the intention to
impede their realization or, what happens in most cases,
“convincing” the “husbands” to allow the girls to continue their
schooling.108
However, due to various factors, among which possibly the
professional training of the teachers, the persistence of social
representations in agreement with the social gender normative, the
fact that the teachers live in the communities (sharing daily life) and
the resistance of community authorities, their field of action is
particularly limited, which also leads to a situation in which forced
unions of adults with children are treated (and perceived) as a private
matter. It is in this sense that some of the interviewed women
teachers, faced with the ineffectiveness of their action, show their
frustration in a double sense. On the one hand they state that “the
girls go for the scene, go to bars, get pregnant and stop studying”, as
a female teacher in Beira City told us. On the other hand “the families
themselves urge the girls after the rites to find a husband or a man
who provides food and this makes them abandon school” (Ana 4). A
female leader of a gender unit in a school in Mecúfi stated in this
respect:
“I can say that poverty also contributes, because in a family
the parents have nothing, now their child, the girl has already
grown up, has to get someone. This someone may be a
teacher, a fisherman, they gain something, and that man in
that family has to sustain the girl’s family, and what does the
family tell the girl? [They say that] it is preferable to stop
studying and start taking care of her husband” (Ana 9).
While there is on the part of the female and male teachers a
disapproval of parents who remove girls from the school to “marry”,
there is simultaneously also a kind of conformation with a reality on
which they are unable to act, and with which they sometimes appear

108We were informed that this proactive attitude of both female and male teachers
has in part to do with the school performance targets defined by the Education
Directorate, given that it counts for the teachers’ performance evaluation.
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(by religious influence and cultural heritage) to be in agreement. This
situation manifests itself frequently in the discourse of teachers when
they justify the dichotomist separation between socialization at
school (“the school should only teach” told us a teacher in Beira City)
and socialization at home, suggesting the creation of other spaces of
education such as the churches. Though the dropout phenomenon is
more pronounced for girls, it should be pointed out that boys are
often also forced to stop studying, in a gender order that urges them
to “organise a family”, serving a mandate learned and strengthened
by the ritual teachings. Although the teachers and the school boards
are somehow held responsible for the permanence of enrolled girl
and boy students, it happens that, whether for reasons of the
population’s nomadism, or because their action in the communities
is limited (because they depend on the recognition of the legitimacy
of education to intervene), or because there is, as said above, a
common understanding that children are not subjects of rights, in
most cases concerted attitudes are only adopted when there are
accusations or when there is publicity on the part of civil society
organisations.
When the question arises of the compatibility between initiation rites
and school education, the majority of the interviewed female and
male teachers considers in general that both are part of the identity
construction process, attributing importance to them for the
construction of adulthood. I.e., they are the more valued when the
ineffectiveness of the mechanisms of primary socialization in the
children’s education is mentioned: “the rites are teaching well,
respect for obedience to the man and his family and how to organize
a house to be on good terms”, a woman teacher in Beira City
(Deolinda 10) told-us. Although we will resume this theme below, it
was interesting to observe that while there is an appreciation of the
role of the rites, many teachers and school board members are
categorical when they state that these cultural practices condition the
continuation of the girls at school, limiting their participation and
performance, as a female informant of a civil society organisation in
Quelimane told us: “after the rites many children cease to participate

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at school, have respect, are afraid, she knows she has to marry”
(Zubaida 9).
The question of the link between the school and other institutions
such as Social Action, the Office for the Attendance of Women and
Children Victims of Domestic Violence and the Adolescent and Youth
Friendly Service (SAAJ) depends more on the leaders who are
heading the sectors than on the existing mechanisms and routines.
The result of this is that we rarely found multisector plans that
involve joint work, including information interchange, between the
various institutions. The reasons given have to do with the lack of
resources and with the specificities of each sector’s activities. In this
scope, one of the questions that surprised us particularly was the fact
that the Social Action sector focuses its work on needy children, so on
the supply of school materials and clothes, and does not involve itself
in cases of school abandonment, forced unions of children with
adults and sexual violence and/or in supporting girl students who get
pregnant.109 The same can be said with respect to the Offices for the
Attendance of Women and Child that function in police stations, to
which cases of violation of the law, such as sexual harassment and
forced unions of girl students with a resulting dropout, are rarely
sent. There are few occasions on which talks are given in schools with
the involvement of various sectors and, as we were told, the lack of
coordination influences the low efficacy of these actions.
With regard to local civil society organisations which support the
schools, they do this in the context of programmes that have more to
do with donor expectations than with real needs and local realities.
On the other hand, many of these actions are performed as a
compromise, which means that, for not being locally sustainable,
they end up not having any effect. It is the case of study grants for girl
students living in boarding schools, who are in a situation that they
have to abandon school when the grants end. It also happens with the
food that is provided to the school for a certain period of time,
producing dissatisfaction with respect to the expectations raised,

109Contrary to the situation in urban areas, the Health and Women and Social
Action services in the districts are organised in the same directorate.
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when, for donor strategy reasons, the food supply activity comes to
an end.
It seems to us that, though requiring a certain level of planning, it
would be very useful if the strategic actions were defined so as to
make them sustainable at medium-term. For example, the grants
would be awarded until the completion of a level of education and
not for one or two years. There are however activities that are driven
by civil society and that have proved to be very useful, as is the case
of the placing of complaints boxes in schools, which do not require
large amounts of money and which are sustainable in future.
There is an expressed wish in the education sector to introduce
changes that produce effects with the inclusion of new elements that,
acquired by the youths, can produce changes in the construction of
identities that are better prepared for the exercise of citizenship.
Included in this field is the performance of curriculum activities
traversing all subjects and the creation of school clubs that enhance
the participation of the youths and contribute directly or indirectly to
the creation of expectations with respect to the future. It is no
coincidence that, as already mentioned, many girl and boy students
make great sacrifices to attend educational establishments, even
when they have to oppose family interests. In this study we could
observe that a large number of female and male teachers, often in
unfavourable conditions, perform with great effort activities aimed at
attracting students to the school. Not limiting themselves to the
performance of teaching activities, these teachers are somehow
contributing to the projection of a positive image of work, of
citizenship and of rights, even confronting very adverse situations,
among which accusations of being responsible for the poor quality of
education, which as we could observe is fundamentally due to the
evaluation mechanisms, such as automatic transitions, the
consequence of which is a devaluation of education, contributing to a
negative image of the school on the part of the communities.
Contrary to what is thought, the “performance” of the children and
the way they move up is very much questioned by the families,
offering them an argument to remove their daughters and sons from
school or to keep them (without many expectations) because they
264
don’t have the resources allowing them to provide better formal
education. Thus, the conflicts between family and school education
are not only aggravated because there are ruptures in the
socialization, but also because the school does not respond to the
expectations to confer competences and knowledge that can be put at
the service of the communities.
Finally, a question which appears fundamental to us is the need for
clarification and cohesion in teacher training and in curriculum
organisation. With schooling levels that often do not go beyond grade
7 and two more years of teacher training, or at best grade 10, it is
extremely difficult for the teachers to have the necessary
competences for teaching, whether in terms of scientific knowledge
or in terms of pedagogical and didactic preparation. The teaching
programmes are demanding, requiring a preparation that allows the
participation of the students, mainly adolescents and youths, whose
curiosity is not satisfied with the repetition of received information.
Another problem has to do with the lack of internal coherence of the
instructions that contribute to the cross-cutting nature of knowledge
and to the integration into the community. As we had the
opportunity to analyse, alongside a curriculum line that emphasizes
access to and the exercise of rights and that promotes equality and
citizen participation, there is an entire school guide that, valuing
cultural practices such as initiation rites and procedures in which
respect for older people is mixed up with obedience and
authoritarianism, places the teachers in an uncomfortable position,
which is reflected in the absence of firm and coherent positions
regarding their role as educators.

2. Rituals: space, duration and ceremonies

The analysis of the rites and their efficacy in the construction of

identities must in the first place take into account how a rupture is
apparently produced and how the social order is questioned, while
the re-establishment of this order is simultaneously sought. Linking
pragmatism with systems of signification, for example learning about
hygiene regarding menstruation, refers to a concrete element and to

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a set of meanings represented by fecundity, as negotiated/imposed
and socially controlled power. Through gestures and songs one
intends to communicate an order, as is for example shown by the
invocation of ancestors, constituting an element of cohesion and
reunion with the community. Thus, as described in the previous
chapter, the (more or less well defined) phases that characterise the
rites aim at attributing a new nature to the individual, bestowing
her/him with rights and obligations and transforming her/him also
into a person and also in an object of continuous monitoring.
Taking into account that the rites conform identities, and as
mentioned in Chapter I, Meira (2009) defends the rites as having the
function of the standardization of behaviours and values with the
purpose of strengthening group belonging. The preservation of the
rites as a decisive form of cultural cohesion manifests itself in many
discourses of informants who play an important role in the
transmission of the cultural heritage, as is the case of religious
leaders, who present themselves to the communities as having been
bestowed a truth resulting from their intermediation with the sacred.
The preservation of values and of cultural dispositions is combined
with religious discourses, namely those that being proud of the
cultural order seek to justify the maintenance of hierarchies and
social roles, as is shown by these remarks of a church leader:
“Experience, what we have heard from the elderly since
childhood, we know that the initiation rites are not a modern
thing. On the contrary, it is a much older thing than we find
now, so that what is important is that this is a social rite that
is embodied in people’s lives, mainly the Africans, it is
something that has always been done, it is not a sporadic
thing because it is a thing that is part of human life as an
African, which may in no way be absent. Outside of this if you
don’t pass through them you are outside of society, you don’t
belong to the current society, the African society. Relating this
to Christian life, we would say that it is a baptism for an
African to enter social life, to enter the tradition of the family,
and I think that even our grandparents, the population, even
our parents, do this strictly, with all honour, in spite of the
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 fact that for those who receive it, it atrophies a bit. But, when
it comes down to it, there is a very profound message that any
young person, any one in life, in an African family, in a
traditional family, can in no way escape” (Ziro 4).
The objective of this comparison between religious rites, such as
baptism, and initiation rituals is, because of the meaning of
community inclusion to which both refer, stating belonging and
consecration (of the neophyte and the initiatee), to eliminate
disturbing innovation. Death and the possibility to participate in
funeral ceremonies, forbidden for non-initiates, also means to
classify him as someone who, not being able of resort to ancestor
sprits, survives at the cost of other members of the community to
which he cannot belong (Van Gennep, 1997).110
The ceremonies that “comprise” the ritual preserve the cultural
heritage, through the preservation of conventions that normalize
adulthood, while they are at the same time legitimated by the
acceptance and conformation of the initiated girls and boys,
performatively expressed in their relation to others, whether by
distinction in relation to the non-initiates or by overtures to their
pairs. In this sense, the performance reveals knowledge learned in
the rites in agreement with the cultural normative. I.e., through
codes the performance expresses and communicates, produces
realities and subjects, calling together self-implication and
participation, which allow cohesion and determine the ritual efficacy
(Terrin, 2004). It is in this context that some of the interviewees
informed us that families which do not send their daughters to the
rites have to move to another district, because it is a shame and a
hazard for the child and for the family, running the risk of being
pointed to as the cause of disasters or deaths in the community.

110This myth may in part explain the assassination and destruction of property of
someone who became rich in the community. Although these cases, occurring with
some frequency in the northern region of the country when natural disasters
coincide with extreme poverty, may have to do with the identification of the “richer
person” with the foreigner who came to destroy the community. The same can be
observed in relation to the figure of a viente (one who comes from outside) who
may hold a certain threat and disturbance.
267
The rituals that separate boys from their mothers serve to construct a
hegemonic identity, i.e., a masculinity structured by sexuality and by
opposition in relation to the female. The gender identities are
constituted in the rites through the ceremonies and the sacred
objects associated with power. Sexual violence, learned in the male
rites that guide towards inclusion into adult life, has a mark of
gender. The boys learn that girls are objects of the consumption of
“food”. Even oral penetration has this domination as structure,
transforming what is allowed to penetrate, in the female, with a sense
comprising subjects and objects, attributing meanings that should be
understood in a gender order.
The question today, and which we will further elaborate on below, is
to understand how the embodiment by the youth of the
performatively revealed values and behaviours transmitted in the
rites conflicts with lifestyles established in the spaces where they go
around, producing fragmentations that constitute a rupture (or
obtain new not all-encompassing meanings) with the ritual
teachings. In other words, how this can, or cannot, be represented
and experienced without conflicting with the ritual functions. This
means to understand if the ritual experience, when being transposed
to daily life where it is confronted with other forms of knowing and
being, is (and how it is) absorbed or rejected, determining subversion
and/or the reconstruction of juvenile identities, developing new
representations, values and practices that change hierarchies and
influence, or at least set in motion, differentiated regulations in the
social, political and cultural structure. In the case of our study, it
became clear that girls and boys, mainly in urban environments,
move from what they had learned to be in the rites to other spaces
mediated by other elements, where new performances are required
for the recognition of the self and the other, and where they are
confronted with discourses that inculcate into them new behaviours,
values and attitudes. For example to have a condom with them
which, being socially and politically accepted, constitutes a break
with the idea of the “deposit” of semen as a mark of masculinity.
There is thus something like a disconnection between worlds in
which transpositions, shifts and transits occur, affording subversions.

268
We observed changes occurring in the performance of the initiation
rites, taking into account their spaces and duration, the ceremonies
and the activated mechanisms and also the perceptions, mainly of the
directly involved parties, as is the case of the matrons and masters
and the girls and boys, highlighting the differences between contexts
and ethnolinguistic groups. For a better understanding of the reader
the presentation will be made taking into account the similarities and
differences between the various ethnolinguistic groups, with the
urban and rural spaces as variables.
Attention is also drawn to the constraints found in Zambézia
Province where we were confronted with difficulties in the
correspondence between the spatial units and the preferred
ethnolinguistic groups for the analysis, with respect to the Chuabos,
who either don’t perform rites or perform them including themselves
in the Makhuwa Lomué group. This situation was particularly
obvious in Quelimane Town, the provincial capital of Zambézia. On
the other hand, we observed the existence here of very critical
positions on the part of boys with respect to the ritual teachings, in
opposition to the teachings at school, as for example becomes clear in
these remarks:
“I would like to say that in the community, i.e., that method of
initiation rites done there in the bush, they normally use them
to teach the individual rather mythical criteria to limit this
individual so that he will not have clear, specific thoughts. It
is only to instil fear. So, I say that here at school, of late, we
are already capable to see that now we take stock that they
were using those things which limited us and science is
already laying claim, it opens up our mentality” (Julião 2).
In some interviews the existence of differentiated representations
about sexuality became clear, as is the frequently mentioned case
that “the sexual organ does not get spoiled” when one has very early
sexual intercourse or when one sleeps with a woman who had an
abortion, which does not imply a penalization for the non-fulfilment
of the ritual teachings.

269
With regard to the ritual space, Terrin states that “the space is not
only understood as the place and the condition to perform the rite,
but is inclusive of a rite in itself” (2004:201). It is in this sense that
the space is a sacred space where the separation is brought about and
where learning is produced and the order is congregated and
recomposed (and stabilized), strengthening the performative and
pragmatic level as fundamental components of the ritual experience.
The space is thus the marker between the separation and the margin,
forbidden for non-initiates, where the rupture with childhood is
celebrated: the initiatee no longer belongs to childhood but is not yet
an adult. It is possibly in this context that the margin can be
associated, as D´Allondans states, “to death, to invisibility and to
bisexuality” (2002:47)111 and also, as Turner (1974) says, to the
suspension of social structures.
As the space is a meeting place, a place for the preparation for
inclusion into the community and for communication with the
sacred, the rituals spaces, mainly in the male initiation rites, were
conceived as permanent places, with specific characteristics,
unviolated from generation to generation. For this reason, if today
the sacred and secret character of the ritual spaces is sought to be
preserved, because the construction of a new identity occurs in them,
we observed, mainly in urban areas (especially in Quelimane and
Beira), a displacement of the symbolic value the ritual spaces had.
The same can be said, and in a more marked way, of the female
initiation rites, where an increasingly pronounced
“informalization”112 tendency appears. The question of the spaces
should be linked with the duration of the rites: while in the past the
male rites could be performed for a period of six months to one year,
and the female rites for a period of eight to twelve weeks, today, due

111 In this sense bisexuality, situating the initiatee between childhood and adulthood
“would make him asexual, preserving his own sex, enjoying the prerogatives of the
other, therefore it is common to assume travestite roles thus producing a process
of differentiation between men and women” (2002:47).
112 When we talk about informalization, it does not mean the absence of the

educational components implicit in the aims of the rites of passage, but the
appearance of innumerable specificities that do not allow the identification of
tendencies.
270
to the influence of a series of factors, including school attendance and
the monetization of the rites, they don’t occupy more than two
months for boys and two weeks for girls, with the possibility, in the
case of girls, to be reduced to three days. Anyhow, the importance
attached to the male rituals in terms of duration and space may have
to do with two factors. The first one is the fact that there is a clear
male mandate for the domination and governance of things and
bodies; the second factor may be related to the early preparation of
girls for the construction of a subordinated female identity, an
example of which is the lengthening of the labia minora, started
between five and eight years.
Regarding the rites conducted in an urban environment (Pemba
Town) by the Makhuwa ethnolinguistic group, we observed that the
strong monetization of the rites is determined by the costs incurred
by their performance, namely when there is an intention to
“contract” masters and matrons who have a higher status in the
community: “nowadays things are expensive, a bag of rice costs 600
or 700 thousand, so for you to send your child to the rite, you have to
organize money for 3 to 5 years, while formerly it was enough to have
dried cassava, a bit of sorghum” (Arminda 10). This means that the
rites end up displaying the status of the families, legitimating the
power they already exert in the communities. As we saw in the
previous chapter, the strategies of power, the objective of which may
be having access to and control over material resources, are
“relegitimated” by the fulfilment of cultural practices, as is the case of
the rites.
With regard to the space where the rites are conducted there are
notable differences with the past, particularly with respect to girls.
We were able to observe this situation both in the Makhuwa
community living in Maputo, and in that of Pemba, where a matron
informed us that “the girls stay in a big yard, but there are many
differences because formerly it was in the house of the queen, now it
is everybody for herself” (Arminda 2). This relocation of the spaces
which shows a certain informality (equally observed among the
Makhuwa community in Mecúfi), is also expressed in the duration of
the rites which are much shorter (though this also depends on the
271
money the families can make available) and where the information is
more concentrated and object of a narrative that expresses a certain
discomfort with the current situation, as is made evident by these
remarks of a matron in Pemba.
“Nowadays they perform them in the yard, because we notice
that if we do it here, we are losing precious time, we are
educating the children, but they do not adhere and therefore
in order not to abandon simply our tradition of the rites, we
propose a duration of three days and finished” (Arminda 10).
Corroborating this information, several interviewees of the
Makhuwa community stated that after the rites the girls are more
undisciplined, without the families interfering. This situation shows
how the rites are transforming themselves in an urban environment,
in an instance that “wanders” between the preservation of culture
and a consciousness of its inadaptation. At the same time, it is
becoming clear that the revitalization of the rites in towns and in
medium-class families has also to do with the preservation of a status
which, contrary to what happened in the first 15 years after national
independence with another political regime and another ideology,
appears today as a resource expressing itself in access to patron-
client networks.113 The discourse of a Mozambican identity appears
thus closely related to the fulfilment of cultural practices opportunely
used for the segregation of the other. In the same way, the
surveillance carried out by the populations, mainly in inland areas
with a more land-bound population, as in Macomia, requires that
even people (public servants and youths) who state how the rites
caused them suffering, are forced to have their daughters and sons
ritualized, under penalty of being disrespected in the community,
and of their children and mainly their daughters not being able to
marry. In this sense, though the rites are coercive, people are proud
of belonging to the community. What ascribes cohesion to the rites is
the conjugation of a series of factors in which the feeling of being

113This situation shows the mechanisms of adjustment of the rites to urban life,
whether by the nuclearization of the families or by monetization or greater
individualization of social action.
272
protected includes a large variety of aspects such as health,
reproduction and shared signs of recognition, even in an
environment in which modernity is being embodied as a value and
parameter of socioeconomic, political and cultural organisation, and
of social subjects and identities.
On the other hand, though there were divergences in the discourses
of Makhuwa and Makonde matrons, it was frequently mentioned
that in the past an aggregation ceremony would culminate in the
formalization of an engagement, i.e., the rites were a form of
preparation for marriage. Today, due to the fact that girls and boys
start the rites earlier, because of the influence of the school and
intervention of the State, the period between initiation and marriage
is longer, with new ceremonies at the time of wedding. However, we
could observe that among the elites of the Muslim community
engagement and the commitment to marry follow almost
immediately after the initiation of the youths. The rites either occur
at ages that don’t follow the standard (between 10 and 13 years) or
they are simplified, being renewed with new teachings at the time of
marriage. However, this information is contradicted by some
religious Islamic leaders in Alto Molocué, who state that girls are
only counselled by ladies in the mosques, without receiving the
teachings about sexuality that are transmitted to Makhuwa girls,
with only the advice being licit in this respect. The justification for
the use of the veil (“girls are more vulnerable to sunlight”, Ziro 5) has
to do directly with control over the female body and with the absence
of any possibility of choice with respect to their future, conferring to
the parents the responsibility to find a husband: “parents should find
men to marry their daughters, from an age of 12 to 15” (Ziro 5). It is
interesting to observe that when civil society organisations refer to
early marriages as practices that are harmful to children’s rights, they
are uncomfortable to denounce the legitimacy these practices have on
the part of some religions, as if children’s rights should be
understood, explained and relativized in an institutional context, of
which the churches and mosques are part.
With regard to Makhuwa boys, we observed in Pemba as well as in
Mecúfi, though the duration of the rites is 30 days, that the spaces
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are formally maintained. Though they may not correspond to those
envisaged for the performance of the rites, as happened in the past,
they are, contrary to what happens with girls, more protected from
the view of outsiders, mainly women, who are subject to punishments
if, by any chance, they pass near the places where the rites are being
performed, as a master informed us: “if a woman passes there we
grab her, take her to the chief and she will have to pay a fine”
(Armindo 2).114 We should also emphasize the surprise character of
the rites, having the quarter head a mediation role in the
communication and in assembling the youths whom the families
want and may send to the rites. The discourse of this young man is
paradigmatic as to the importance of the rites for a change of status:
“My father once said, you are already grown up, they shaved
my head, then I went with other boys to a place in the bush
and started to sing songs, I stayed there for two months. In
the first few weeks I was afraid, they blindfolded me and the
old man cut my penis, but later on I began to like it, there
were many things, people covered with cords and banana
leaves and fire in their hands. We were afraid, but then we
discovered among ourselves that they were men who had put
these things deliberately, we had already been to school, we
had seen many things and therefore we discovered it at once,
we also learned about the sexual organ of women and how we
should do it. When I left I felt that I was already grown up”
(Vasco 1).
The same narrative was collected among the Makhuwa Lomwé in
Quelimane:
“The cut my penis, after that they took us to a place which we
ourselves prepared, we learned how to build the palisades
where we would stay, we made material for hunting, stories
about the ancestors, you also learn how to treat a woman and

114On the WLSA website (www.wlsa.org.mz) a case is described that was reported in
the media in 2012 as to the collective sexual abuse of a woman who apparently was
walking near a place where male initiation rites were being performed. This case
was presented, in the words of an informant, in the previous chapter.
274
 get to know things that the women learn there in the rites”
(Julião 3).
This kind of information was also provided by Makhuwa Lomwé boy
students in Gurué District, who emphasize the learning through
counsels of what it means to be an adult, the work they are doing and
mainly the aspects that should be observed when they marry, namely
the sustenance of the family and the demands they should be able to
make due to the fact of being men. Being stripped of everything, the
rupture with the past, the fear of death and of loss are perfectly
described in the words of a boy in Alto Molocué:
“They lined us up in order to be cut, circumcised, I was the
last one, the one in front of me fled, they grabbed him
forcibly, at that moment I was no longer a person, I was not
myself, I started to shout, to call my mother, I didn’t know
they were selling me, and all the time I was crying” (Julião
10).
Masters and godfathers give more details about the ceremonies,
identifying what they consider more important in the teachings:
“A cock is killed and the boy should eat the neck, which means
that the sex will be hard, will be very strong, the blood of the
circumcision should fall into a muyeepe (a rolled up leaf), the
penis is washed and everything will be buried in the
munumuche (a hidden place only known by the godfather).
The godfather gives advice about how to ask a woman, puts a
coin on the plates and explains the signs to ask for sexual
intercourse. We can see that a boy has already learned, when
the godfather says vagina and the initiatee has to spit each
time he hears this word, to spit means ejaculation. The
punishments, often the parents themselves are saying my son
is undisciplined, teach him please. We, the godfathers, we do
everything, the master only has the job to “immunize” the
space in order that everything turns out all right. At the end I
give oteca which is traditional beer, I will get a medicine
(ecoma) and let the boys drink it, this is to strengthen the fact

275
 of really being a man. At the end the camp is burned down,
because everything is secret” (Francisco 6).
The appearance of the fantastic in the discourses of godfathers and
the reference to animals are important elements for the construction
of manly courage which will allow the man under construction to
protect the family he will produce. Fear, for example when they are
punished,115 has a decisive function in the negation of human quality
to the initiatee, while the fact of overcoming fear means that he is
ready to change status. The importance of the rites for shaping the
male and his sexual apparatus is conferred through the already
above-mentioned situation: “when a girl or a woman appears nearby,
you may even hit her, and those old men may even have sex with her”
(Vasco 3).
We should also point out that circumcision carried out in health units
or by nurses called up for this purpose is not as common as is stated
by some masters. Even in urban areas, after circumcision the masters
have to mark the body of the children, which is also occurring in
inland areas, where circumcision is done by the master, using the
same knife and using traditional cicatrisation methods, as a boy in
Mecúfi told us: “they put sand and cloths in the wound and they put
your legs in a wooden tool, called nipice which looks like an eight, to
avoid injuries” (Vasco 5).116
After the initiation rites, the Makhuwa girls in Cabo Delgado and in
Zambézia among the Makhuwas Lomwé, the aggregation ceremony
constitutes an exhibition that the community has received more
young girls, ready for social reproduction. With regard to boys, this
ceremony is preceded by a ritual in which the boys are covered by
cloths that are removed by the mothers to check if their sons are
alive:

115 As an example a boy narrated: “to put a bamboo between the legs and do as if it
were a motorcycle, stay in the sun with a raised leg. When you cry they bring a cup
and then they force you to drink these tears” (Vasco 3).
116 In the Chuwabo ethnolinguistic group circumcision is only recently practiced, as a

way to prevent HIV and AIDS. There is however information that boys of the
Chuabo group are since a long time initiated in Makhuwa rites in which the
practice of circumcision is compulsory.
276
 “After applying anaesthesia, because as there is no good care
the wound sometimes infects and the boy dies and they don’t
inform the parents that their son has already died, even the
survivors healed the wound when they leave the place, before
putting new clothes they have a kind of mat and they are
covered. They stay there covered, they line up, each individual
pays money to see his son being uncovered. When in the end
he sees that his son is not there, he already knows that things
went wrong with my son” (Zita 1).
The aim of this possibility of death, which rarely occurs, is the
symbolic display of the worthiness to gain a new status which follows
all the trials overcome. Contrary to girls, who return to the house of
their parents expecting the arrival of a man who will take them, these
male initiates have conquered the right to live outside their house,
building their own dependences, to be fed and taken care of by the
women of the family. In the same way, though the boy is prepared to
have a woman, which means to build a house and sustain his family,
and is trained to this end, there is in male initiation rites special
attention to the trials identified with courage and authority. For this
reason, in addition to those mentioned in the previous chapter, the
rite shapes a system of power in agreement with the restored social
order, i.e., they restore, reorganize and reorder the cultural and social
model. Here we find one of the elements which makes the
performance of initiation rites effective and indispensable, insofar as,
though subject to actions that may constrain them momentarily, they
are guarantors of the maintenance of a power which goes beyond the
traditional domain and takes advantage of it, by the use of symbolic
resources, for the preservation and imposition of a social and
political order that finds in culture one of its forms of legitimation.
Thus, through the disorder experienced in the margin phase of the
rites, in which the permitted transgression aims at the re-
establishment of the social order, a relation is established between
the individual, expressed in how each individual endures the trials
(of courage, facing suffering) and the collective of brotherhood, of
sharing values, being instituted as a condition of sociability
(Damatta, 2000).
277
The means used are marks that society introduces into the bodies of
individuals rendering them into a non-person in whom the suffering,
the cold and physical pain serve to create bonds with the group, i.e.,
the elements of relative autonomy of the initiatees are
complementary and exist as such.
It is in this sense that the insults mean identification with the peer
and non-identification with the “other”, in which not bathing and
feeling cold are part of a perspective of sacrifice, of pain and of
violence to merit entering into another status. As Rivière states “the
rite is at the same time product, tool, vehicle and symbol” (1996:46),
as we can see in this song referring to the male sexual organ, sang by
Makhuwa Lomwé girls: “it doesn’t bite, hold it, your mother did the
same, she liked it, maybe she laughed, and you were a child, now you
are already grown up, hold it, it doesn’t bite, hold it” (Júlia 4).
Regarding the Makhuwa ceremonies performed in Pemba, in the
female initiation rites the discourses did not reveal a tendency, while
the ceremonies that appear as unifying are the exposure of the
othuna on the first day of the ritual, teachings about the value of
respect and service to older people, teachings about male superiority,
namely through the way in which men should be taken care of. In
these teachings their behaviour in sexual intercourse assumes a
prominent place. The virginity test, which we will further elaborate
on below, is only rarely carried out. In many cases there must be
agreement of the family, which is evidence of interference of the
parents in how and even by what means their daughters and sons are
to be educated. The same occurs with shaving the head, which
symbolically marks the separation with the world that is left behind,
but is not always practised in towns.
Religious differences, mainly those concerning Christians and
Muslims, already dealt with to a great extent in the previous chapter,
were also observed in the kind of information given about sexuality
(more controlled teachings among Islamised populations) and in the
importance of participation in funeral ceremonies for Muslims.
Although the conflicts between religious currents in the Islam are
reflected in the interpretation of the Koran, we were unable to

278
establish the transposition of these divergences to the initiation
rites.117 It became clear that, adopting different strategies (for
example, as already mentioned, the co-option by Christianity of the
aggregation ceremonies), the Christian and Muslim religions and the
new religious sects do not question the structure of the rites neither
the means embodying them.118 However, we note that interviewed
Muslim women born in Pebane and living in Quelimane informed us
that there is a strong component of education about sexuality from
an age of 12 years, followed by marriage: “in this way the child
already has a man, and the man says, I want this daughter of yours,
and the godmother taught with her boss how to have sex, and said,
don’t bring shame upon me” (Fernanda 1). Many male and female
informants, when referring to the female initiation rites, insist that
the contents are focused on teachings about how to serve their man
sexually, in the performance of “marriages” soon after the rites and in
school abandonment, arguing that the Muslim religion, mainly in the
coastal areas, conditions and controls the body of the youths, mainly
the girls’ bodies, in an exacerbated way, without taking into account
the measures proposed by the Government for their permanence at a
public or private school (but with the official syllabus of the Republic
of Mozambique).
The rites conducted in rural areas are marked by the unexpected way
in which the girl initiatees were taken away from their family, as we

117 However, in Mecúfi we were told that the current called Africa Muslim is more
conservative, adopting a more rigid position with respect to the interpretation of
the Koran. The obligation to use the veil, control over the body of girls, namely
regarding their virginity, their possibility to feel and seek pleasure, the disapproval
of female adultery and the resulting exclusion from the religious community, are
examples confirmed by some of the women interviewees, who mentioned the
condemnation of the rites on the part of this religious current. The same question
exists with respect to male rites which should, according to the Africa Muslim, be
limited to circumcision. As this religious current is a distributor of a lot of goods to
the community, investing in mosques, madrassas and grants for youths, the
problem consists of identifying the strategies developed in the communities to
combine, without losing the advantages produced by belonging to this group, the
different forms of identification.
118 It was sometimes observed that the theology of inculturation of the Catholic

Church reproduces elements of the initiation rites in the education of believers.

279
can establish from a focus group interview of initiated Makhuwa
girls in Metuge, Balama and Chiure:
“It’s like this: we went to my grandmother’s house, we started
to draw water, I had no idea, then I said there are a few people
outside, then I entered the house and felt embarrassed. My
aunt said as you didn’t pay attention to me, you can go, these
people took hold of me and my aunt said you like to insult,
you like to insult, I started to cry, mother I have never
insulted you here, where did you see me, you like to insult,
you like to insult, they took me and said you are already
grown up” (Gilberta 1).
The fear revealed by this girl faced with the accusation of
disobedience and the “punishment” of not being able to stay in the
family environment is in agreement with the secret character of the
rites and with the preparation for the separation from her condition.
The coercive aspect of this action will unfold in an order which, while
removing the girls from their world, imposes a new order on them,
apparently discordant with their previous life. Shaving the head,
covering the body with musiro,119 repeating and memorizing dances
and songs, performing exercises with clay sticks (representing the
male sexual organ), the imitation of sexual intercourse, eating a lot
(to become beautiful), the permanent surveillance of the godmothers
and occasionally of the teachers/matrons, are part of this
paraphernalia of means whose aims, without being explained, are
training the body and the mind for the fulfilment of roles taken as the
only possible ones. Thus, the transgression experienced in the rites
concentrates a socially regulated disorder, because it mediates the
culturally expectable behaviours, expressed in the aggregation
ceremonies when the girls covered with musiro, with their new
clothes, earrings and other ornaments, expose themselves before a
celebrating community, recognizing them as members, of whom the

119 Musiro is a stick from which a powder is extracted that, grinded, serves to
massage the girls’ bodies: “the child keeps the musiro all the time of the rites, on
the day in which she will have a bath, she will become white and will be fine, the
body will be smooth” (Antónia 4).
280
fulfilment of what they have learned is expected and who are
watched. In general, particularly in Zambézia and Alto Molocué, the
initiation rites of Makhuwa Lomwé girls follow the same structure as
was observed in Mecúfi, with a very strong component of sexual
teachings, with indications that forced unions of children are more
frequent.120 We noticed in the same way, and in other spatial units,
that Makhuwa informants working in women party organisations
have a discourse of deploring the shortening of the rites and the
consequences for the construction of the female identity:
“Formerly for girls it was 30 days, while boys would stay for
six months without seeing their parents, being educated there
and would leave fully educated. But not today, as the boys stay
at school, those seven-day holidays, you can imagine, he has
to leave the rites early because he has to go to school, he
comes back confused, and continues with lack of respect.
Then a girl also says that her friend only stays for two days,
so, when she is in her own house, she has forgotten
everything. At daybreak, she didn’t even sit down or so, at
daybreak, she puts a mat, her man comes, sits down, there is
nothing, there is no respect and she doesn’t even say that her
man enters just like that. It dawns, the woman stays in bed,
the first one to get out of bed should be the woman to heat up
water so that her man can take a bath” (Zaida 4).
It is also interesting to note that differentiated interpretations are
given to some ceremonies what may be understood both as a lack of
understanding of what is transmitted, and as a reinvention which
seeks to be in agreement with new social realities, mainly with the
discourses that stimulate the refusal of domestic violence and give

120During the interviews conducted it was not possible to elaborate further on this
question. Meanwhile, it became clear that there are forced unions of children,
conveyed forcefully by the interviewees of both sexes. However, no evidence was
produced if this situation is only due to the rites or if religion also contributes to
early marriages. If we take into account that teaching girls about sexuality is
condemned, at least formally, by the more radical current of Islam, and as we had
established through the interviews conducted in Mecúfi District that sexuality is a
key component of ritual teachings, as in other regions of Makhuwa dominance, it
becomes more difficult to find exact explanations for this situation.
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women the possibility to have new partners. It is the case, for
example, of the ritual that consists of placing a stone on top of three
other stones in which each one of them represents a man, which
according to the majority of the informants serves “to explain that
each man has his own way to live and girls should know this to learn
that they should respect their husband and obey everything he
wants” (Amélia 2); however for other interviewees it means the
possibility of a woman to “resort to another men, when her husband
does not fulfil his obligations” (Amélia 4).
With regard to Mecúfi, where we also worked with Makhuwa girls
and boys, there was clearly greater clarification of the ritual
ceremonies and of the meanings transmitted by them:
“I was 12, on the first day the family of my mother took me,
then they put me in a yard, undressed me completely, put
musiro. Then a few old women arrived and started a give
advice and looked at my othuna, performed a ceremony with
a medicine, a plant they put in a hole in the earth, the plant
remained upright, meaning that I am virgin. If I were not a
virgin they would insult me as well as my mother. I was
always alone for five days. During this time they taught me to
sing and dance and hit me when I didn’t know the songs and
dances, and these songs said that I shall not speak ill of my
man, neither of my mother nor of my father. In the last three
days I went to the bush and there it was worse, there were
three more girls there and the woman counsellor rolled up a
capulana and showed how the male sexual organ is and how I
should put it inside and also showed me a pan on top of three
stones, each stone was a different man and they said that I
cannot swap my man, he could hit me. They taught me how I
should clean the male sexual organ, we sang a lot, we insulted
the male organ, but I cannot talk about that, they gave me
another name, on the final day, when I left, they gave me new
clothes and I liked it a lot” (Vânia 4).
Once again it is interesting to observe that most of the advice for
adulthood are about sexual behaviour and is given through songs and

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dances such as the dance of the sieve (mahunho), showing and
exercising with instruments that represent the penis, as this matron
in Alto Molocué told us: “you take a stick to teach how you do it, how
you introduce it in the vagina and before that the girl should open her
legs and make movements with her othuna, then the man goes on top
of her and when he has reached his climax, she starts to clean things
up” (Zita 5).
In the same way, several informants told us that the rites are still
performed in school time, leading to a repetition of exams or to
automatic or semi-automatic transition, or even to school
abandonment as happens frequently in the majority of the districts of
Zambézia, of Makhuwa Lomwé influence:
“Soon after the rites, or even when you are still there, the
family fixes a marriage with a man and the child cannot
refuse, because she would be considered disobedient and
would be discriminated in the community. In the rites she
learns everything about how to treat her man and gets
another name, which makes it very difficult for the school to
be able to identify her. With boys it is different, they learn all
these things but are not obliged to have sexual intercourse
and stop studying. It also happens that when a girl becomes
pregnant, a man turns up immediately saying if it is a girl, it is
his, he would give money to her family and when she was
grown up she would be given to this man as his wife” (Zaida
2).
In Gurué we were informed that the families publicise it when their
girls are menstruated:
“They leave their house and go singing around the village,
saying we already have a grown-up woman and then a man
appears and, if he has money, they give him their daughter
because they think that their daughter is already grown-up,
there are girls who cry. But there is a lot of pressure, the
parents tell her she must marry, because they say that, if their
daughters are getting older, they don’t want any more” (Zaida
2).

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The satiation of the teachings about sexuality in female rites, which
we will elaborate on below, shows the importance of control over
reproduction, with emphasis on the mechanisms developed in the
construction of a domesticated and subordinated female body, while
they are also in agreement with strategies for maintaining the
husband’s fidelity, as a matron in Mugeba informed us:
“Thus, the first thing a woman should be prepared for is that
her husband may run away. Well, she has her own way, she
picks up grains where he was seated and keeps them. Then,
when he wants to start fussing about leaving her, she uses
those grains he had left, uses those grains, buries them in her
house, he comes and sits down with his wife” (Zita 7).
The punishments (hitting, sleeping on the floor, standing still with
crossed arms, or with a foot in the air) that are part of the daily life of
the youths and are often applied with the justification of not having
learned the songs and dances, are in fact mechanisms that both
ensure that the girls have been well taught and can therefore “receive
a man”, and confer respect and legitimacy to the godmothers and
matrons who guide and control the acquisition of the teachings.
Punishments are sometimes inflicted without an apparent
justification, creating in the girls and boys a permanent feeling of
impotence and fear. Although the punishments appear in the
discourse of girls and boys as suffering and not as violence, because
there is a representation of sharing in which all participate: those
who suffer and those who inflict suffering. However, we observed
that for many girls and boys a feeling of violence and revolt arises,
possibly due to that is learned in other spaces such as the school. This
may be one of the reasons that the age of the female and male
initiatees is increasingly precocious: the younger and the less
contaminated by adherence to other identities, the easier it is to
shape attitudes and values.
Regarding the rituals of passage of Makonde boys in Pemba Town, as
happens with the Makhuwa ethnolinguistic group, they were also
subjected to change. An example of this is the absence of the
preparation of the entire community for the start of the ceremonies.

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I.e., in the past there was a sense of participation of the collective in
the selection of the initiatees, which is now replaced by a direct
intervention of the families. On the other hand, as in the past the
rites had a duration of a year, according to some Makonde masters
the children were educated in a more consistent way for entering
adult life. Today, with the existence of the school and the
concentration of information (the masters state that the rites are
performed during one to three months), the symbolic character of
many ceremonies loses part of its meaning, justifying the
lamentations heard that “today there is no respect”.
One of the central questions raised by the informants is the
representation of the rites as separation from the mother, i.e., the
construction of the male identity starts with a break with the past
without return. This past means opposition to the qualities
represented by the mother figure, while the entry into the sacred
space determines a break with and the death of the previous life. This
space is previously prepared with ceremonies that ward off evil
spirits, witch doctors and animals, such as snakes and lions. Before
their entry into the space, the children’s heads are shaved and a
ceremony is performed in which chickens are killed and their blood is
smeared on the body of the boys. The chickens should fall with their
belly up (symbolizing that the boy will have a woman). The contrary
(if, for example, they fall on their side) may mean that the rites will
go wrong.
Among Makondes, more than among Makhuwas, a strong collective
sense of defence of the community was observed. For this reason the
ceremonies contain particularly violent trials and teachings, as is
evident from the reference to deaths that may occur during the rites.
In the same way the secrecy and the constant reference that, even
when marrying to people of another ethnolinguistic group, their
children are Makondes and will do the Makonde rites, constitute a
demonstration of the group’s need to withdraw into itself, avoiding
contamination and the loss of cultural references. This situation does
not have to do with the patrilineal system, but with the specificities of
the patriarchal culture assumed by the Makonde group. However,
also among this group the influence of modernity is felt, mainly
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regarding the fact of practising circumcision (previously there was
only a slight cut in the foreskin), which shows some efficacy of the
health sector strategies for the prevention of HIV and AIDS, while it
is also possible to demonstrate (though not as significant as in other
groups) interaction with “outside” populations.
The surprise character (systematically mentioned by the girls and
boys) preceding the rites and which we found among Makhuwas,
also exists among Makondes, as these remarks of a boy makes clear:
“My uncle told me let’s go here in the bush and cut those
bamboos. When I arrived they called me, took hold of my
arms, here the feet, and cut the cock. After that we went to the
bush and entered a house. They have a house there, where we
lived. Yes, they shaved our head and we had a rope around
our neck, I don’t know for what purpose. We sang songs that
we must respect our mother, not enter our mother’s room, the
rest I have forgotten already” (Vasco 2).
As in the other groups in urban environments, this forgetfulness
concerns less fear of what may happen and more the protection of the
secrets which symbolically means loyalty and community with the
belonging group.
The description of the rites by the Makonde boys of Macomia District
is very similar to what exists in the provincial capital, with the
exception of the duration (between six months and one year) and the
fact that the masters (nalongoswavalume) perform the circumcision
themselves, sometimes using the same knife for all boys. In the rural
or semi-rural areas one also resorts, soon after the circumcision, to
animal names to name the boys, such as rabbit or namajuela
(centipede). The punishments are also more violent: “sometimes we
urinated in bed and did we stay for two days without eating or we ate
xima with ash and after that we had the punishment of putting the
bamboos between our legs” (Vasco 8). The same student states that
they were taught how they should have sexual intercourse: “there was
a plant, a kind of small cake which when cut looked like a vagina and
we put our penis in it to learn, they also talked about some plants,
without showing them, to avoid getting tired when having sex”.

286
Another boy added: “there were songs saying that we should forget
our mothers, also songs to insult girls,121 the vagina deserves that rice
is sown in it and who are sowing are men with a dick” (Vasco 11).
Regarding the question about what would happen if a woman passed
near the site they said: “we caught a girl who was passing by with her
husband, we sent the husband away and stayed with her, all of us put
our seed in her, there were 19 of us who did this”. The violence
demonstrated by these remarks, which is a mechanism used in all
groups we studied, associating women (initiated or not) with
transgression not only of the secret (since they didn’t enter the space
where the rituals were being performed) but of the danger of
contamination with the past, as these remarks of a Makhuwa Lomwé
boy in Alto Molocué shows: “a woman cannot even approach that
place, when she arrives there she is dead, a woman who comes there
is dead” (Julião 8).
In the same district the punishments and humiliations are described
in a very harsh and explicit way as these remarks show: “they mixed
xima with mud, or they shitted and we had to clean their arse with
our hand” (Julião 8). But all this violence is described by many boys
as a way to demonstrate that in order to transit to the status of
adulthood, they had to be subjected to trials which confer them the
right to be adults: the harshness of the punishments and the
humiliation thus symbolize the necessary stripping for the re-
establishment of the order. However, there are other boys who reject
the rites completely, as expressed in these remarks of a boy in Alto
Molocué:
“Everything was very ugly, they took the knickers (nakapa)
that a woman has used for three days without washing, it is
squeezed onto sweet potato leaves and we have to eat it. I
didn’t discover the purpose of that, if they would tell me even
today that I would get some money, I would not go there, we
learn a lot of things in general culture, those things have no

121In the Makonde songs about the sexual organ, that of women is called enonha and
that of men is called inlomo.
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 function whatsoever, you can’t apply it anywhere, it is
different from the school where you learn and can apply
things” (Julião 10).
The difference between Makhuwas and Makondes in urban
environments resides in the fact that virginity is a key condition to be
accepted for the Makonde rites, and girls are subjected to proofs
(“the godmother puts a finger to verify it a girl is a virgin or not”,
Arminda 3) while today menstruation does not determine initiation.
This situation has to do with the following, as a matron told us:
“In ancient times there was this rule: a girl was submitted to
the rites after her first menstruation because in those days the
children were calm, were obedient, were sympathetic, they
had few frivolities but they had to wait for the menstrual
cycle. After that they took the children to the rites. But now,
nowadays, what we see is that the children are very, but very
disobedient, they no longer obey those rules we already had in
our Makonde tradition. Today, even 11-year-olds already
know how to have sexual intercourse with boys, they are
already no longer afraid of boys, they have no fear
whatsoever, they behave just like that. So, to avoid them
becoming pregnant before having been submitted to certain
ceremonies, there was this need to submit the children from
11 to 12 years before their first menstruation, because if a girl
became pregnant before the rites, she can no longer perform
the rites” (Arminda 3).
As among the Makhuwas, the Makonde female rituals are conducted
in a yard or inside a house and may be done individually, without the
symbolism that allows the complementarity that can only be reached
in a collective experience. However, the secrecy in the description of
the ceremonies is greater than in other groups, because once again,
the Makondes, due to their history, namely the isolation of their area

288
of origin,122 constituted themselves as a cohesive group, in which the
secret is a condition for their survival.
The teachings of the Makonde female initiation rites are similar to
those that are transmitted to the Makhuwa girls and the aggregation
ceremony also means that they are ready (andicula). When
questioned, the Makonde matrons state with a lot of ambiguity that
there is another stage which prepares for marriage. However, it
didn’t become very clear what this means, as is expressed by these
remarks:
“When you come out of the initiation rites, there already
appears someone interested, a man, a boy who can already
choose that girl to marry her. This is already another phase
but in the initiation rites they don’t mention the question of
marriage” (Arminda 3).
This situation may suggest that, due to the proximity of the State
authorities in urban environments (all matrons state having
Government credentials),123 the teachings about sexuality are kept
hidden, with the result that marriage is considered the decisive stage
for the construction of sexual identities. This situation contradicts
other information that characterises the preparation for marriage as
a deepening of the teachings in the rites of passage, with some new
elements, such as the position of the bed and the exposure of blood
after sexual intercourse. In rural areas, it is clear how the rites shape
sexual identities, through the discourses of education officials and of
women teachers who are less interested in keeping secrets, as is
evident in this discourse:
“They talk like this: you have already grown up, you are
already an adult, when you leave this place, if a man comes,

122The history of colonization, mainly during the period of slavery, explains how the
Makonde “isolation” was being constructed, as well as the stereotypes that
continue until today.
123 The link with the State, represented by the quarter secretary or by the

administrative post head, is particularly emphasized by the Makonde informants,

who conduct the rites after having been accredited, involving representatives of the
Government and of the Frelimo party (and in the case of girls, the Mozambican
Women’s’ Association - OMM), in the search for spaces to organize the rituals.
289
 you cannot refuse, you just have to accept that man. And
inside the house they even tell you what you have to do inside
the house with that man, yes, from there that child is
convinced and instead of telling her about schooling she
already has in her head what they were talking about there in
the bush. (…) The important role there in the initiation rite is
just to marry, the girl already knows that she has grown up
and the only thing she has to do is to marry” (Ana 11).
In the same way, a person working in the education sector stated that
learning about sexuality is comprehensive:
“The Makondes also use sexual instruments to demonstrate
the sexual act, the care of the husband, for example, in how to
clean the penis, with a little towel that should always be kept
next to the bed, and also learn to imitate sexual intercourse”
(Ana 12).
Characterizing the Makonde female rites, a female health agent in
Macomia described her own experience:
“I did not like the rites while I was there because they gave a
lot of punishments. I have a friend who ran away from the
rites. On the first day we went to a small stream and after that
they put me in a house where they shaved my head
completely, they taught me how to respect the elderly, how to
take care of the house, how to take care of my husband, with a
clay instrument. We slept during the day and at night we
danced and sang, we became very anxious and we cried, they
hit us just like that, we were only dressed in a loin-cloth, all of
us on a mat on the floor, they rubbed us every day with
musiro, they put oil on the forehead and if it drops then it’s all
right. I don’t remember many things, they also said that if you
talk to your mother or your father you will die, if you become
pregnant and a boy is born the entire family of your father will
die, if it is a girl then your mother will die” (Ana 13).
A member of the Women’s League of a party in Macomia adds:

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 “I know they teach everything, I saw a niece of mine, they
dressed a woman as a man and another one played the role of
the woman and they even lied down with a clay stick and
explained that it should be done like this and they even teach
how to hold his shirt, so that he will be at ease” (Amélia 7).
In the case of the Makhuwa and Makonde girls the explicit teachings
about sex life and the transgression phenomena take place in the last
few days, often moving to a more reserved space. It is here, as if
culminating and synthetizing the ritual teachings, that the
transgression takes place (and at the same time the construction of
sexual identity) through abusive songs about the male organ, the
exercise with instruments imitating the penis, the more eroticized
dances:
“They showed us the sizes a penis can have and told us not to
be afraid of men, we danced and sang to imitate, they said,
this is the man’s dick, showing it, and this is the vagina of a
woman, both made of clay, they tied that thing to a belt and
said, you there, today I will fuck you” (Antónia 4).
The ritual ceremonies and the mechanisms developed in the different
ethnolinguistic groups correspond, as was identified in the previous
chapter, to the symbolic death expressed in childhood and to the
repeated reconstruction of acts that reach the objective of shaping
values and attitudes converging to the inclusion into the community,
while they individualize the girl and boy initiates as subjects, whose
status is in agreement with the cultural order. It is in this sense that
Turner (1974) states that in the ceremonies that are conducted in the
margin phase there is already a reoriented action constituting itself
as the first form of aggregation.
Thus, the break with the social order which the ritual ceremonies
appear to reveal, are part of an apparent disorder to which the rites
respond with a new social reordering. In fact, the intensity and the
concentration of the experiences lived by the girls and boys through
the combination of the sacred and the profane, fulfil the function of
reasserting a social cohesion of which the initiation rites represent
the main dimension. When the matrons and masters and other key

291
informants insist emphatically on the need to preserve this cultural
instance, it is not only because strategies of power are at stake here
through the preservation of the cultural model, but also because the
rites constitute an affirmation of identification with the community
and with the group, and an answer to the threat produced by the
contact with modernity, as a Makonde matron said: “not being
ritualized is a shame for the family, there will be no marriage”
(Arminda 20). In other words, it is clear, despite all influence
modernity may have, that the ritualization continues to constitute a
key element for social recognition.
Though in the discourse of the justification for the performance of
the rites an appeal is made to the need for the preservation of culture,
which may be called African, in some groups we observed the
designation as Mozambican (in the discourse of the elites) or clearly
ethnic in the poorer groups, while among these it is observed that the
ethnic identity affirmation is brought about by opposition to other
groups. This became very clear in the inter-ethnic rivalries, mainly
between Makhuwas and Makondes, in which the latter are accused
of promoting a certain sexual promiscuity, with girls being submitted
to rites and starting sex life much earlier, with a longer duration
(about one month) than among the Makhuwas. It can thus be
inferred that the Makondes are stricter with respect to tradition and
thus more respecting their culture, more barred from contamination
by modernity. This means that using one argument or the other, the
Makhuwas convey a “civilizational” superiority, expressed in the
capacity of adjustment and reinvention, to which the discourses of
the Makondes bring forward that, on the contrary (though without
having been confirmed in the research), the Makhuwas in the
performance of their rituals prompt the exercise of a
“deprogrammed” sexuality hardly to be controlled by the families.
On the other hand, there is always a duality in the justification of the
rites that, with the exceptions of a few informants who refuse or who
accept (“we are following what our ancestors said”, Antónia 1, female
Makonde teacher) the rites completely, the majority breaks with
everything contained in the ritual education. I.e., they separate in
their discourse what they consider being positive aspects, such as
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respect and the notions of hygiene, from what they characterise as
negative, which consists of the teachings about sexuality and their
transmission. As a Makonde matron stated, “that the girls are ready
for a man, they even teach that menstruation is a disease that is
cured by contact with a penis” (Amélia 4). But this artificiality in the
demarcation of what is good and what is bad, which results from the
struggle opposing a certain idea of modernity and culture, removing
from the latter the boys’ and girls’ identity elements, of which the
teaching of sexuality is a key component, must not be perceived as an
adjustment or adaptation of the rites, but only as an attempt to
manage the tensions produced by the meeting of several “truths” in
conflict. On the other hand, the ritual participation, with everything
what this implies for the coherent embodiment of values and
practices in a process of cultural identification, with reflexes
determined in and by their sociability, makes sense in a whole which
segregates those who did not experience it and unites those who did
participate in it. There are rights which only the experience of the
rites allows, as is expressed in these remarks of a female interviewee
in Mecúfi: “when one does not go to the initiation rites one is
humiliated, you are a nobody, a child, much as you may be an adult
woman, if you didn’t go to the rites you will come to no good, you will
be shamed” (Ana 9).
In the analysis of the contents of the ceremonies in all ethnolinguistic
groups, it is clear that the girls and boys by having access to a varied
source of information, though questioning and confronting the myths
acquired through for example the exercise of sexuality, resort to them
whenever their status is threatened.
The discourses of the female and male interviewees revealed that the
rites are performed through actions that find their legitimacy in the
myths as a field of the sacred and therefore unquestionable. This
question takes us to the secret that should be preserved by the
initiated girls and boys and whose revelation contains a loss of power
(in this case for the masters and matrons was well as for the initiated
girls and boys as guardians of the acquired knowledge), desecrating
the ritual, limiting it to cathartic, transgressing and playful moments,
such as those that are practised today in other realities and, which
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Pais (2009) expressed well when he analysed the parties of boys in
the north of Portugal or when Peirano (2003) refers to the Brazilian
carnival as a rite. I.e., and contrary to what mainly happens in the
rural areas where we did our fieldwork, without implications for the
resumption of daily life and for the embodiment of values and
behaviours in the context of modernity.
Invited to a questioning and to making choices with respect to the
diversity of lifestyles, values and practices to which they are exposed
on a daily basis, many girls and boys, while having no faith in the
myths and the symbology offered to them (for example, that the
revelation of what happens in the rites may lead to the death of the
mother is today no longer accepted), reject the way in which the
ritual education punishes them. Oddly enough, these same youths
refer to the rites as important, because they define their place and
status, functioning as elements that “secure” them as individuals and
as members of the community. The teachings of signs that express
the acts of daily life, from greeting, eating or requesting/refusing
sexual intercourse constitute for the youth of both sexes a form of
mutual recognition and of sharing a body of symbology that
functions as cooperation and complementarity, guarantor of social
stability.
What is interesting is that even among those women and men who
say they wouldn’t want to repeat the ritual experience, there is visible
pride related to the change of status, but also to the feeling of
belonging to the community and to the solidary sharing of the
experience lived there with the pairs.
The cohesion reached in the rites expresses the relation, as Damatta
(2000) states, between solitarily lived individualization and
cooperation with the group, and also contains moments of shared
entertainment they have available for sociability, whether through
the creation of lasting bonds of brotherhood or through acts that
reveal the spontaneity of how each girl and boy acquires the
normative that is imposed on them. The games and the playful
observations are thus part of the routines that constitute the rites,
transforming them in effective instruments of socialization.

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Although the Sena and Ndau rituals have a structure that is similar
to what we have described with respect to the above-treated
ethnolinguistic groups, there are differences which for example
express themselves in the recent introduction of circumcision which
ceases to have the symbolic value we found among the Makhuwas
and which may constitute a factor of de-dramatization of the ritual
that the “mutilation” of the penis contains. On the other hand, the
fact that the Ndaus are the result of a mixture of several peoples
originating from the south paradoxically allowed them to constitute
themselves as an homogeneous group, with the same beliefs and
rituals in the interior and on the coast, despite some variations
existing in the north of Sofala, where the presence of Arabs was
particularly important. In the same way, according to an informant,
the always present element of identification of the Ndaus is the
existence of a single God (mwari or mwarere) who mediates through
the ancestors the relation with the populations and who was an
important resource with respect to the attempts of cultural
destruction made by the colonial administration, the Catholic church
and the socialist system.124
According to Daniel 5, the Ndau male rites are based on myths that
seek metaphorically to transmit the values of the group in activities
such as construction or fishing and in the exercise of sexuality
through teachings and the use of various plants for boosting sexual
strength. Ejaculation (kubara) on the body of women is not only a
proof of virility and fecundity, but essentially a symbol of life,
guarantor of the reproduction of the community.
In the same way, in the rural areas of Ndau predominance, such as
Búzi, while circumcision is left to the discretion of the families (for
some traditional leaders circumcision is held in contempt as “a
Muslim thing”), though there is an effort of the education and health
sectors to introduce it, the “sexualisation” of the male rites is, as

124 To this situation we add the fact that the Ndau ethnolinguistic group claims the
first forms of organised resistance to colonialism, as well as to have been the cradle
of the guerrilla movement that opposed the regime which, sending the cultural
practices into clandestineness, strengthened the unity of the communities with
respect to the various attempts of disintegration.
295
established in the discourses of the interviewees, mediated by a series
of instruments that aim at ensuring the sexual performance of the
initiates, as is the case, for example, of the exercises to increase the
size of the penis (“you have a tree – mutatarata - with a hole in
which you introduce your penis and it will grow”, Luís 2) and the use
of plants to extend sexual intercourse.125 Contrary to what happens
with female rites, the space where the male initiation ceremonies are
conducted is away from the community, according to the discourse of
an initiated boy in Búzi Town:
“They took me to the bush and started to test and put a root in
a bottle (mutarara). I drank it until getting a hard-on, I
ejaculated (…) and they said that I must not play with the
daughter but with women of my age, they taught me to build a
bathroom, a poultry house, many things, they taught me that
girls have matinji, if she doesn’t, you will send her back and
say pangira mwana wene (she is here to be educated), I
learned to see if she has matinji by the way she walks” (Luís
2).
This interview expresses two important elements in the education of
boys: the first one is the question of the sacralisation of the space,
which more than a secluded space is a place that shall not be violated,
it is a space of death of the past and of life, a space in which
transgression makes place for the recomposed order. In the second
place, the boys learn to recognise the components of the sexual
knowledge of the initiated girls, not only about their behaviour, but
also what she must use for the lengthening of the vaginal lips (bat
wings burned with oil - xitonji or muroro, or burning mfuta – fruit
pit of a plant - with oil), how she must move her hips (muhunu),
where she should place the beads, all this knowledge constituting
control over the body of women, thus constructing the desirable and
socially identifiable corporality. Although this point is further
elaborated on below, it is clear that if girls also learn to identify the
signs of the initiated boys, the knowledge is used to serve better, to

125In addition to the ejaculation test, there is a test that consists of giving the boy a
raw egg, in case he vomits he will not be able to have children.
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correspond better to their expectations. Though this apparent male
passivity, with respect to the seduction of the woman is evident in the
male discourses, giving the idea that the woman has the power to
control her own sexuality, we will seek to demonstrate here how, in
fact, this proactivity of women exists in a context of gender
domination.
The Ndau female rites, even in inland areas such as in Guara-Guara
in Búzi District, are not collective and are performed during one week
in a room of the house where the girls live. The ceremonies
demarcating the entry into the rites after menstruation and the
lengthening of the labia minora are more formalized and seen as
more important by some of our interviewees. When referring to the
rites, the Ndau girls mention the learning of songs and dances, and
the placing of beads, as one girl said, “so that he can get hold of you
and when a man asks you, you cannot refuse” (Luísa 3). When the
rites are performed individually, the time is used to pull matinji: “if
you don’t have it, he says you are musopo” (which means a fish
without scales) and will give you back to your mother, saying that this
daughter of yours isn’t ready” (Luísa 3).
Contrary to other regions, we found female informants who link the
first menstruation directly with the start of the rites, as is evident
from these remarks of a Ndau female teacher in Guara-Guara:
“I had my first period, then I informed the oldest person.
Right at that moment this oldest person left me in a house,
and said that I could not cross any road while I was in that
condition, was having my period. After that they got some
medicine, a plant, removed its ribbon (mororo), tied it around
my waist and taught me how to preserve those cloths, how to
take care of the cloths and how to use them after the end of
my first period. Then they told me to take away that ribbon
they had put around my waist, in order to tie it to a tree but it
must be a tree that produces fruits. So it stays there, nobody is
allowed to see you when you tie that thing, you have to do it at
a quiet moment, tie it there, then it will rot, nobody will touch
it anymore, so that when you become pregnant it will go well.

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 When this phase has passed, after your period, they look to
see if you are virgin, this is when the phase has come in which
you are taught how to play with a man, it is the phase when
they think it is just like that, but always say that before
reaching your age you must not let a man approach you, here
we are teaching you this as an instruction you should have as
a woman. I stayed for one month in the hut where my
grandmother slept, so they taught me to make those
movements when you are in bed with your husband, how to
be with him in your bedroom, then they explained the
mahunho dance, I don’t know how that pin dance” is called
(Deolinda 2).126
What we observe regarding the Ndau female rites is that there is a
tendency that allows to differentiate the capital town and the
communities living in the interior (Guara-Guara) where the rites are
more formalized. It is also clear that the instruction mechanisms are
maintained, including the representation of virginity and the use of
plants that dry the vagina, or that increase the sexual potency of the
boys.
On the other hand, there were female interviewees in Búzi Town who
mentioned the existence of profound differences between the urban
environment (capital town) and the rural environment, namely with
respect to the lengthening of the vaginal lips and the participation in
the rites, which the research did not establish with respect to this
spatial unit: there is indeed an attempt to distinguish between the
“civilized” and the “rural”. This discourse appears as an argument to
justify the positive action of the State sectors and the political parties
with the traditional leaders, which does not mean that there may not
exist a simplification of the ceremonies in some families originating
from other regions of the country who move to the capital town and
live there, mixing with the local population. There are however
differences between the past and the present, some of them produced

126In the “pin” dance the girl lies on the ground without touching the pin, which may
be a small sharp-pointed stick, and moves her hips. It is a dance that teaches the
movements girls should make during sexual intercourse.
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by inter-ethnic unions, by the increase of school attendance and by
closer contact with urban lifestyles. These changes are reflected in
the way of greeting and in the kind of intergenerational relations and
the sharing of household chores between men and women. As a
female representative of a local civil society organisation told us:
“Formerly, when they returned from the machamba, the
woman would carry the bowl, get his and her hoe while he
would take the radio. Having arrived home he would say, go
and fetch water, light a cigarette, make light. Now one already
observes that the man chops up firewood together with the
woman, there is more support” (Dilma 6).
In the Sena tradition the female rites are preceded by dances
(manyalala) in which the girls are naked showing their matinji,
which is considered the first phase of the rites. As in the other groups
we have studied, in these rites they receive advice and learn through
dances (nyongolo) how to “serve their husband sexually, through
signs recognizable by both” (Dilma 8). The tattoos on the hips, the
legs and the face (nyenyezi), which were part of the sexual education,
are still being made only in interior regions. However, as is the case
among the Makhuwas, the use of beads, for both representing a
source of seduction, is maintained. The colours of the beads send
signs of interdiction (red beads hanging on the bed means that the
woman is menstruating and cannot have sexual intercourse) or
permission for sexual intercourse. In the past the ceremonies were
conducted in the bush with a duration of one month. According to
some female interviewees, the rituals were a very painful process, not
only due to the physical pain caused by the blades and needles with
which the tattoos were made, but because all ceremonies were
extremely violent:
“They force you to do things, make those movements in which
one of you lays down and you have to go on top of her as if
you were a sieve, as if you were a bend, now just imagine a
very fat aunt who is performing the role of a man on top of
you, those movements as if you were a sieve, you have to bear

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 it and you don’t even know for what purpose, so many girls
are asking: why am I suffering?” (Dilma 8).
The punishments were also extremely violent, for example while
tattoos are made the girls are not allowed to cry, because they are
threatened that they may die or cause the death of someone:
symbolically this resignation represents the suffering that may be in
store for them and that should be endured in silence.
What is observed today in urban environments in Sofala is a big
simplification of the spaces, the rites, and the ceremonies, especially
the advice given by the godmothers (mpango in Sena and mupango
in Ndau) after the first menstruation and before marriage. An
interesting fact transmitted by a few informants of civil society is
that, mainly in some rural areas, the initiation rites have often lost
part of their function of cultural cohesion and have transformed
themselves into demands on the part of men who emphasize
knowledge about sex as a condition for marriage. It happens
frequently that families indebted to a man (who does not necessarily
belong to the community) are obliged to send the girls prematurely to
the rites, with the objective of being able to pay rapidly the
accumulated debts. This being the case, the rites appear as a power
strategy structuring social relations in a gender order marked by the
subordination of women.127 This means that the construction of a
body disciplined by mechanisms ensuring male satisfaction begins to
appear in some discourses, less as an element of cultural cohesion
than as an imposition aimed at the sexual and matrimonial
satisfaction of the other. There is a relocation of the tradition to
modern individualization, in a process of adjustment and renewal.
In rural areas the male initiation rites among the Senas are,
according to some scholars (Braço, 2008), marked by phases
corresponding clearly to the separation, such as when the children
move to a secret place where ceremonies are performed aimed at the

127In the pilot study conducted in Matutuíne District, Maputo Province, where rites
are not practised, we observed the existence of many forced unions, as a result of
the indebtedness of the families to men working in South Africa, whose bargaining
chip was the adolescent or pre-adolescent girl.
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transmission of male qualities through resistance and courage trials,
construct competences such as hunting and the construction of a
house, and knowledge relative to sexuality. As the author told us “the
rite is essentially an authorization that you can produce children and
live in a family, while the sexual organ is represented as the symbol of
life”. For Braço, the dimension of the sacred appears in the names
that are given to the boys and that mean the symbolic death and the
separation from childhood and from the mother. On the other hand,
the fact that the rites are no longer being performed during
harvesting time and with a shorter duration implies a reduction of
the intensity of the experiences lived.
However, mainly among Sena masters and matrons, there are
contradictory discourses with respect to what Braço (2008) stated
about a certain immobility of the rites, i.e., for many informants, the
changes existing in the social fabric, due to the material and symbolic
hybridization with other cultures and spaces, leads to not merely
informal changes in people’s belonging and in the construction of an
identity governed by new rules and norms characterised by mobility.
The discourse of lamentations about the changes concerns a set of
ritual practices that range from the birth ceremonies and
interdictions imposed on the couple, to the initiation rites and finally
to the funeral ceremonies. In our view, while school attendance
influences unbelief in the myths, this may not only lead to the
construction of new myths, but also to their destruction: “formerly
boys did not have early sexual intercourse because otherwise their
sexual organ would be damaged” (Dipac 1). For this reason, when the
inclusion of initiation rituals in the Local Curriculum, as is proposed
by the instructions of the MEC and by some informants, is
implemented it should, as already mentioned in the previous section,
have a critical approach, explaining, discussing and including the
cultural practices in the specific historical contexts, emphasizing the
changes, the evolution and the existing disruption, not as a
phenomenon to be retrieved and imposed, but as part of a process
characterised by mobility and change.
On the other hand, among the Sena group in Beira City it was
interesting to observe that the initiation of boys is very short (two
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days), that it is performed in a secret place and is only directed by
relatives (the father and grandfather). In general, the rites are not
performed in a group and the ceremonies consist of advice about sex,
about the behaviour of a good woman. Simultaneously, fishing and
agricultural activities are carried out. As a Sena boy told us:
“I didn’t do circumcision, I stayed with my father and
grandfather without eating for two days and there I received
counsels, I know what an adult man should do, which parts of
a chicken he should eat, which differences exist between a
man and a woman in sexual intercourse, and there were no
punishments. When I returned they bought clothes and there
was a party” (Luís 1).
To the question about which differences he felt after having been to
the rites, he responded: “now I am an adult”. What is interesting in
these remarks is that, in addition to the fact that initiation does not
contain elements of sharing with pairs, being completely devoid of
the magical and sacred component, the boy considers himself an
adult, due to the new knowledge acquired and not in terms of
identification with a group. In other words, the rites, still being a
symbolic moment of passage of status, do not interfere with the boys’
representations and practices, hence they are approaching a lot what
happens with the so-called profane rites.
Regarding the Sena and Ndau female rituals, there is, as in other
ethnolinguistic groups, a decrease from 30 (which could go up to six
months) to 7 days. It is noted that in Beira, as was also evident in
Quelimane, initiation rites are sporadic, with normally a weekend
being reserved for the transmission of advice about care of the body
and the teaching of songs and dances aimed at shaping qualities,
namely about household chores and sexuality. However, the
lengthening of the labia minora continues to be common practice
among the interviewed girls in Beira City, not only because it is what
may be expected by the men (mainly if they are native of these
regions) with whom they relate, but also as a strategy of seduction
and as a form of recognition of the sexual identity of the girls of the
centre and north of the country.

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Referring to the past, a matron in Beira informed us about the
importance of virginity among the Senas for participating in the
ritual: “all 30 days we came to the house and we said to the girl to put
her head down and her feet up and we would see if it was white and
with a very little hole, then she was a virgin, then we would put flour
on her head and take her to the house of her mother” (Dirce 1). If the
girl was not a virgin she could do the ritual after the performance of a
series of ceremonies and the payment of money.
Among the Sena group in the rural areas there is, as is the case
among the Ndaus, no single tendency concerning the space and the
duration of the rites (zitsanapiyana, tsanba). Though the space is
situated in a restricted place (in the case of boys), the duration varies
between two days and one month and the ceremonies are directed by
members of the family. Circumcision is also not always practised and
the margin stage starts with the ingestion of a drink made of plants,
followed by teachings about masculinity, mainly with respect to
relations with others, the observation of female attributes and the
role each individual should play within the family. The drinking of
plants, of which the ngozololo is the best known and serves to
increase sexual potency, being a demonstration of virility, confers a
symbolic character to male domination, legitimating it.128 The status
of being an adult, which in daily life is expressed in the sharing of
activities and talks with other men, transforming him, as happens
with the others, into a “guardian” of secrets and guarantor of the
reproduction of the community, reaches its highest level in the
aggregation ceremonies:
“When we arrived there the old man blindfolded me with a
cloth, so that I could not even see my father; that person who
wants to see my face gave some money, gave it to my
grandfather to see my face, after that my father killed three
goats, bought more rice and threw a party there at home (with
the chief, the secretary of the area and neighbours), he came
and explained to me: you will stay out for two months, not

128The masters also mentioned plants that can be taken to stimulate women, as is
the case of mwanamanza, nkundu and xibhangala.
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 playing with women, stay at home, go to school only, return,
not playing with women, let two months go by, after that you
go and play with women” (Luís 5).
It is interesting to observe that, contrary to girls whom are taught
that sexual initiation should be done in the context of marriage, there
is a representation which naturalizes sexual intercourse of the boys
outside the framework of marriage, which means that the
construction of male and female sexual identities should be
understood in the framework of gender identities and hierarchies.
Among the Sena girls in Inhaminga the tendency continues to reduce
the time dedicated to the rites (about three days), as well as to
perform them individually and without the paraphernalia of
instruments such as drums, as is for example common among the
Makhuwas and the Makondes. We should recognise, as said above,
that this situation possibly reveals specific forms of identification
with the group: the absence of knowledge sharing, such as about the
lengthening of the labia minora, games, songs and dances,
punishments and disapprovals, which are important forms of
socialization and sociability, certainly determines less formality of
the rites, prompting more easily a rupture with the teachings learned.
However, depending on the families and the weight tradition has in
the group or in the community in which the family lives, the rites
have a longer duration (two weeks), can be organised within the
school period and even be performed individually, they can have the
participation of neighbours and other friends who have already been
initiated. During this time the female adolescents, as was said by a
Sena girl, are subject to the following ceremonies:
“First a few people came, they put my head down to see if I
was a virgin, because if not I wouldn’t enter, after that we
learned to dance naked, we received advice that, when you are
in your own house, you have to respect the relatives of your
husband. (…) For two weeks I didn’t bath, I left everything
out, and each garment she used she had to take a thread,
burned it, and put the ash on my tongue and on my back in
order that I have no more problems in future” (Luísa 6).

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The function of the punishments expressed in insults and not
understood by the girls is to constrain their future behaviour,
emphasizing the quality of obedience, of acceptance and of not
questioning. It was clear for us that many of the teachings are kept
secret, by fear or by embarrassment.129
As happens with other ethnolinguistic groups, the Sena matrons and
masters lament the ineffectiveness of their teachings, mainly
concerning “respect” relative to the two sexes and the absence of
virginity and the existence of “disorganized relations” in the case of
girls. It is interesting to observe that the tests of masculinity and
femininity follow a gender order, in which virginity means ignorance
about sex and is a virtue, while for boys knowledge about the practice
of sex is a condition of masculinity, as a Sena master in Inhaminga,
Cheringoma District, said: “he masturbates, has a bowl of water or a
small stream, if the seed goes down, he will have a family. (…) It is an
explanation that the family of the girl whom you will marry will
receive, while the girl is also inspected to see if she is a virgin” (Dipac
3).
According to interviewed Sena matrons, there are changes:
“For example, in the past the girls would remain more than
one month naked while receiving counsels and dancing the
masasetu, to learn how to play with her husband, how to
serve him (with their matinji the man gets excited), we also
put our head down and we looked if the little hole was closed”
(Dirce 5).
Continuing her comparison with the past, the same Sena matron
stated that: “formerly girls were controlled, their father would
prohibit them from watching movies, from going to school, they

129 Once again we point out that what we intended with the research was to
understand the meaning the girls and boys gave, through their discourses, to the
counsels susceptible of being communicated and how the women and men
represented themselves. The ethnographic description, as already mentioned in
the previous chapter, was only used insofar as it may, or not, confirm our work
hypotheses.
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couldn’t go to school. (…) The problem of the school is not what they
teach, it is the environment” (Dirce 5).
Through a few religious denominations the older matrons and
women seek to safeguard the cultural order, designing strategies
about how to educate daughters, including how important the
lengthening of the labia minora is, and care of the husband. This co-
option of cultural practices by some religions or religious sects
concerns, as said above, the attempt to increase/consolidate their
influence in the community, but has also to do, as the interviews of
religious leaders expressed, with the conviction that women and men
are essentially different and by naturalizing the difference inequality
is also constructed. It is interesting that only women are subjected to
a kind of coercion which brings them to meet weekly in the church
and to agree about the ways and means of reproduction of an order
which pacifies conflicts, through the preservation of their
subordinated roles and functions.
There are also some religious denominations that seek to control the
rites through the organisation of meetings of girls and boys
(separated by sex and by age groups) with a duration of two weeks, in
which it is taught how they should behave: “the girls should learn to
greet, to kneel and the boys should learn to understand the signs,
such as ejaculation, and should seek advice at that time” (Ernesto 3).
The same informant stated that the church seeks to revive the
tradition through tales and myths about the Sena group, presenting
songs and dances, giving advice about the need to preserve the body.
This means that other sanctified practices are superimposed on or
adjusting themselves to cultural practices, by the space in which they
are conducted and by the agents organizing them.
We were able to observe a general tendency in the structure of the
phases of the rites, as is established by various authors (Braço, 2008,
Medeiros,1982), in which separation, margin and aggregation persist
as moments determining the coming of age, while the various
ethnolinguistic groups give a similar meaning to each one of the
stages. We noticed however the existence of changes that have to do
with several orders of problems, such as the historical contexts that

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go back to the colonial past and to the religious influence (which the
research touches only superficially), with the “clandestinization” to
which cultural practices that questioned the political and cultural
exclusiveness of the regime installed after national independence
were relegated, with the civil war and with the displacement of
populations, which led on the one hand to resistance of local
communities and on the other hand to cultural crossbreeding (as for
example shown in the interviews conducted with people belonging to
the Chuwabo group in Mocuba who informed that they practice
Makhuwa Lomwé rites), expressed in the embodiment of cultural
practices, not always in an homogeneous way. This means that the
interaction between populations (as is the case found in Sofala and
Zambézia provinces) produced a differentiation reflected in how the
embodiment of values is brought about and in the meaning given to
them.
We should also consider that, though there are notable differences
between the provincial capitals of Cabo Delgado, Zambézia and
Sofala and between districts that are more exposed to contact with
modernity, such as Mocuba and Búzi, we were able to demonstrate
that the contamination with public discourses about health,
education and human rights have affected the organisation and
contents of the initiation rites. We should however point out once
again that with respect to the north of the country, particularly in
Cabo Delgado (even in the provincial capital), the ethnolinguistic
groups that are object of this research seek to preserve in a more
explicit way the spatial organisation, the duration and the contents of
the ceremonies, which does not happen so clearly in, for example,
Sofala.
Taking into account the space, the duration, the ritual ceremonies
and the aggregation, we should point out that with respect to the
protection of the space, which is the element guaranteeing, by its
sacred character, that the rites are accomplished, it became clear that
regarding the male initiation rites, with the exception of Quelimane
and Beira, their inviolability and the performance of practices
considered central in the construction of adulthood, are
systematically sought to be preserved, though the duration has been
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shortened and some ceremonies simplified, which may, as an
opposite sign, also contain differentiated forms of experiencing and
projecting the rites to daily life.
We were however also able to establish that the similarities in the
construction of an adult identity by the rites are confronted with new
realities that question the attempts to immobilize the cultural bodies,
as is the case of the intervention of the health sector in circumcision
(even the inclusion of circumcision in cultures which did not practice
it, as is the case of the Senas and the Ndaus), the change of the time
of the ritual (which has a sense that goes beyond the material
meaning given to it), the influence of education (not only by what is
taught, but particularly by the new rehierarchizations and
normatives) and the circulation of the youths (even in rural areas)
through other spaces, in which new information and new lifestyles
are superimposed.
On the other hand, and this situation is more evident in the initiation
rites of girls, the fact that the rites are frequently performed
individually in a space not far away from home, makes us believe not
only in the relative importance of the male rites in relation to the
female ones, but also in the existence of changes produced by the
concentration of the ceremonies and by the non-sharing of the
ceremonial, which gave sense to sociability. Although this theme will
be resumed in the following section, for us it was particularly
relevant to understand how the solitary cantonment of the girls
(though accompanied by godmothers, counsellors and more rarely
matrons) produced elements of belonging to the group of pairs and to
the collectivity.
Finally, as elaborated on in the previous chapter, we observed a
hardening of the positions of the traditional leaders, matrons and
masters, who seek to produce, in the interstices of State power, new
spaces and new elements of legitimacy. This is not only to negotiate
strategies for reaching a consensus about “traditional” norms but to
use these norms to impose, through the promotion of local cultures
(even if these constitute openly a rupture with the law and the State
policies), a certain idea of Mozambicanness which, while being of

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interest for the political power (to maintain itself), functions as a
kind of “threat” currently expressed in the control and ambiguity of
the political discourse.

3. Gender identities and sexual identities: agreements

and resistance

The analysis of gender identities has been object of debate insofar as

it produces more knowledge about the power structure that organizes
inequality. Although it is not our intention to refer to the related
theoretical questions, it is important to clarify the choices made in
the research. In the first place, while we do not yet consider gender as
an imploding concept as suggested by Bonder (1998), we think that it
is necessary, and this research has clearly demonstrated it, not to fix
it only to a construction of the mechanisms that guide the model of
inequality, but to relate it to dynamics that, acting on the social
order, may both be threatening and strengthening it. This means
that, even when we are facing signs of a preservation of the gender
order, we should understand the forms of resistance or of adjustment
that produce tensions and ambiguities, affecting the way in which the
gender relations, as constituents of power relations, manifest
themselves (not always in a coherent way) at the level of discourses
and practices. For this reason, as happens with social identities,
gender identities should be understood taking into account the
historical contexts in which they are produced, and also and mainly
how the processes of interaction and individuation are reconstituted.
In other words, we intended not only to draw on the analysis of
cultural bodies that model juvenile identities, but also on how these
identities are constructed in their movement and complexity,
compromising or not these cultural bodies through discourses that
may express conformation or/and conflicts with transmitted values,
as well as with the strategies used for the recognition of the self and
the other or, as mentioned above, of the other in oneself.
It is in this sense that it is difficult to dissociate gender identities
from sexual identities, because if the former take us to an
understanding of power and inequality, sexual identities are the

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nucleus that allows us to understand how, through control over the
body, the mechanisms that constrain the practice of sexuality
manifest and reproduce, or rupture themselves. While gender
identities identify themselves with manhood and womanhood, sexual
identities take us to how we think and live sexuality. This being the
case, gender, as Louro argues, concerns the construction of
representations and social practices, i.e., identities are constructed
from gender relations, which means that “gender, like ethnicity or
nationality, creates the identity of an individual, for example” (Louro,
2007:25). Therefore, as the link between gender and sexuality is
evident, it is necessary to understand that they refer to distinct
realities and to processes and mechanisms that, though interrelated,
are constructed differently. This means that in the course of the
history of societies and individuals, gender and sexuality are subject
to changes, recompositions and ruptures, which in the analysis
obliges us to avoid the temptation, while considering the dynamics
that intervene in the structure of the relations of domination, to “fix”
cultural contexts.
Sexuality, regarding its representations and its exercise, should be
understood in its relation to social, cultural and political contexts,
and also on the basis of how the experiences of individuals are linked
to normative patterns (Alferes, 2002). These normative patterns can
be legal mechanisms, as the author mentions, but can also be
supported, as is the case of Mozambique, by culturally legitimated
practices, the pivot of which are the forms of family socialization
based on representations and practices clarified in the statuses
conferred to each one of its members and on the hierarchies that
organize the distribution of power.
Sexual identities should be recognized, as Foucault (1976) argues,
from the production of discourses about sex, of regulatory norms
that, legitimately accepted, are considered to be producers of truth.
The norms are embodied, are reiterated, but are also contested.
Sexuality, according to Foucault, should be analysed through the
knowledge and norms that are produced about it and through the
powers that structure its representations and practices.

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The concept of sexuality used in this research concerns both the
discourse of sex and sex life and the actions that programme the
practice of sexuality (and its possibility or interdiction) in contexts in
which there are variables that place female sexuality and male
sexuality at different levels. Referring to female sexuality, Heilborn
(1999) shows how it is profoundly marked by an organisation of
power, “in which the control of the norms of this knowledge is
attributed to the man” (1999:45), simultaneously revealing however
the changes that may occur, namely, the transition to another status,
due to pregnancy or marriage.
In the rites we observe that sexuality is learned/transmitted through
an authoritarian pedagogy shaping the initiatees of both sexes as
non-subjects, from where the recognizable values and signs of
adulthood are recreated and inculcated, in a binomial in which
women and men interact, on the basis of a structure that reiterates
domination. This is expressed in how male sexuality and female
sexuality are constructed: while male sexuality does not have the
same marker character, because the social evaluation made of it is
based on the sexual freedom (which is also a constraint) to
demonstrate the virility of the man (which is the hard core of the
elements of masculinity), for girls femininity is constructed around
the repression of their sexuality. Sexuality with its prescriptions and
interdictions, as well as its possibilities of expression, is
simultaneously a subject of culture, or rather, a mechanism through
which culture orders the representations and actions of individuals.
As sexuality is pivotal for an understanding of the gender order
(constrained to modes and models), it is at the same time a threat to
the order, as is the case of girls who, though ritualized and subject to
an identity “modelling”, break with the social norms, using or not
what they have learned in the rites.
The construction of masculinities and femininities runs through the
various themes treated in this chapter, taking into account our
intention to identify the constituent elements of the gender identities
conveyed during the ritual process, the meanings given to them and
the mechanisms of subjectivation. The conventions about manhood
and womanhood are thus based on practices and subject to change
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and negotiation. For Connell (1995),130 as quoted by Esteban,
“physical practices are interactive and reflexive insofar as they
contain social relations and symbolisms” (2004:62). To this extent,
“gender practices are reflexive-cultural practices that always appear
in interaction; practices that are neither internal nor individual, but
conform the social world” (2004: 58).
It is in this framework that the hegemonic masculinities express
themselves through power and control mechanisms that constitute
them as dominant, organised by a heterosexual normative,131 which,
for Butler (1990), constitutes itself in a heteronormative matrix. The
violence that is exerted on boys during the rites contributes to the
hegemony of a model of masculinity the object of which is the
subordination of women, through the demonstration of not being a
woman (requiring a continuous manifestation of being a man and
being approved by other men). The hegemonic masculinity is
structural for the organisation of social relations and as Bonino says
“has a powerful normative force” (2004:2).
In the wake of Connell, Vale de Almeida (2000) characterises
hegemonic masculinity as normalized by heteronormativity,
expressed in discourses and practices and also in the occupation of
spaces, in the use of resources and in how the self and the others are
evaluated. As is evident in the initiation rites becoming a man
consists of overcoming trials that involve effort, courage, enduring
pain, competence to sustain a family, so that they will be recognized
by themselves and by other men as non-women. For example, in the
separation phase, the boys not only distance themselves from
childhood but also from the mother who shapes, as a female, what
they should not be: thus manhood constructs itself in opposition to
womanhood, while womanhood is constructed as a complement
subjected to manhood (Kimmel, 1997).

130 Connell (1995). Bodies, masculinities. Oxford/Cambridge: Polity Press.

131 We should however make it clear that the “marginal” masculinities find
alternative forms to shape masculinities, whether by the reproduction of the model
of domination that structures the gender order or by the production of other forms
of affirmation of masculinity.
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Masculinity, as Connel (2005) and Kaufman (1989) argue, should
thus be understood in the sociocultural context which constructs and
normalizes a model of hegemonic masculinity with a mandate that
organizes its roles on the basis of an unquestionable model of
domination. This model finds expression in the opposition of male
qualities to female qualities, in the increasing expansion of the
discourse of human rights and in the contributions of the feminist
movement to the deconstruction of a subordinate condition which
grants men the power to control women.
As Kaufman (1989) and Giddens (1995) state, the contexts, namely
women’s access to education and the changes occurring in the
political and legal field, have produced changes in the standards of
masculinity and femininity that change values and norms, acting on
the hegemony of a model of masculinity.
In the contexts of modernity, and observed by us during the research
(mainly in Quelimane and Beira), there is as a result of the discourses
of rights and the actions of civil society organisations and of State
sectors, particularly education, some visibility of the conflict that
opposes various models of masculinity, subject to threats and
recomposition, including new references and new ways of thinking. It
was interesting to establish how these new elements embody new
social identities, presenting themselves as dominant or in a
fragmented form (in discourses about qualities and also in the
reasoning about female sexual initiatives). However, it became clear
that the initiation rites seek to transmit an essentialist idea of
masculinity, in which boys have to prove continuously that they are
men, sharing experiences and producing discourses, in a tenacious
quest for acceptance by their pairs. As we will have the opportunity to
analyse, the confrontation of positions observed in the interviews,
revealing the existence of different forms of appropriation of the
elements learned, is subliminally hidden when defining the
attribution of power in the relation between men and women.
Currently, female and male researchers of masculinity (as for
example Bonino, 2004) set male powers openly expressed and
exercised on a social and cultural basis (pure and simple patriarchal

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power) against the micropowers acting in a subtle way, but not less
dominant, on women. In this situation are the acceptance of school
attendance by girls, simultaneously conditioning the behaviour of
girls regarding the way they dress, present themselves and visit
inappropriate places, such as the “barracas” (drinking tents),
exculpating both their parents who remove them from school (due to
their “misbehaviour”) and their boyfriends or partners to whom they
give the right to invade the school area in a public demonstration of
control.
From this point of view the mechanisms contained in the initiation
rituals will be analysed allowing us to point out how the differences
in the construction of the social identities of boys and of girls are
produced, how these differences constitute themselves in male and
female qualities, and the meanings that are given by the youths to the
values and practices experienced in the initiation rites. It is our
intention to identify if and how this embodiment is produced and
which strategies are used to transgress, accept or negotiate the
mechanisms of identity “formatting”, producing ruptures, conflicts
and/or conformation with the culturally expectable roles. The
demarcation factors of the rites, the dimensions of the ritual
teachings, with special attention to sexuality and the signs of
permanence or change in how the appropriations by girls and boys is
brought about, constitute the object of this subchapter. While before
we were concerned to emphasize the “behaviour” of the
ethnolinguistic groups with respect to the ritual stages, it is our
intention, without disregarding the specificities found, to seek to
establish tendencies and to highlight the importance of singularities
that allow to clarify the role of the initiation rites in the construction
of gender identities, emphasizing how the changes in the
mechanisms that constitute and organize the habitus point or not to
changes at the level of identity construction.

3.1. Demarcation factors of the ritual initiation

The markers determining participation in the initiation rituals,

apparently adapted to biological factors, bring about the

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establishment in the bodies of mechanisms that will differentiate the
values and behaviours conferred to each one of the sexes.
Circumcision and menstruation, supported by a huge emotional load,
constitute the mortar of the ritual process, in which new dispositions
are being constructed in a regulated disorder, directed at
conformation with the dominant order.
The differences in the various regions studied between the meanings
given to menstruation are expressed in the existence of longer and
more detailed ceremonies, with greater or lesser public exposure of
the menstruated girl. Mainly among the Muslims on the coast
(Mecúfi), the girls sometimes receive also counsels about taboos and
care of the menstruated body, while waiting until marriage to initiate
them about sex life.132 However, in all spatial units covered by the
study, menstruation remains the same nucleus of female
identification: the menstruated body, object of fear and threat, the
interdictions (which may vary between different areas but with the
same symbolism) and the start of the preparation for entry into the
initiation rites. It was also established that, as menstruation
represents a sign of change of the physiological functioning (contrary
to what happens with circumcision, which less and less corresponds
to physical puberty) symbolizing fertility, it seems to us that it is
useful to take into account that the first menstruation (being
considered by the majority of the authors a moment of rupture with
childhood) assumes, as we will analyse subsequently, the quality of a
continuity that starts with the lengthening of the vaginal lips and
with the early growth of the breasts.
Contrary to this, there are notable differences in the circumcision in
the different ethnolinguistic groups studied. The first one is that
traditionally it was not practiced among Senas and Ndaus. The
second one is the greater importance given to it among the
Makhuwas, mainly those living on the coast, for reasons related to
the Muslim religion. This fact leads to tensions instigated by the

132We were however also informed that, in clearly Islamic contexts, soon after the
teachings received about menstruation wedding ceremonies are held, thus forming
a continuum between the girls’ menstruation, ritual teachings and unions.
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intervention of the health sector which, through the school and
community leaders, has sought to carry out circumcision in the
health units. This situation which can give rise to conflicts has not
been completely solved in the north of Mozambique, where one has
opted for having nurses travelling to the community, or to insist with
the families and masters to use sterilized blades. On the other hand,
among the Makondes, the majority of whom Christian, where
tradition only imposed the incision of part of the foreskin, the
guidelines of the health sector have caused some discomfort among
communities, mainly because the removal of the foreskin (“tearing by
hand”, as some informants reported) was (and still is in some
discourses) an instrument of demarcation, by defamation and
insults, from the rival group.
As was shown in the previous section, circumcision is preceded by
shaving the head of the children and by a ceremonial that may cause,
due to the shock it brings about, an intense suffering for the children
and youths, mainly in rural areas, where the masters accompanied by
godfathers identified by the clothes they wear and by the instruments
they have, line up the children, blindfold them, pull and cut the
foreskin, using a series of plants with which they seek to avert
witchcraft and speed up the process of cicatrisation. As mentioned
above, circumcision has a huge symbolic character, mainly among
the Muslim Makhuwas, represented by the small incisions made by
the masters (even in the case of those who were circumcised in
hospital), while only after these ceremonies the boys are ready to
withdraw to the place where the ritual process will take place.
Although circumcision is only a decisive moment in the separation
from childhood, its effects continue during the entire ritual process,
not only because of the more or less prolonged duration of the cure
but mainly because it shows the boy that he has a new body, and a
preponderant place in the construction of the new status is reserved
to this body, represented by the exposure of the glans, as if the
biological function had transformed itself by the mutilation into a
cultural phenomenon which recognises in the exposed penis the
nucleus of masculinity. It is no coincidence that the boys narrate the
frivolities done after cicatrisation, the object of which being pride of

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the virile power represented by the removal of the foreskin that
covered it. Circumcision symbolizes inclusion, aggregating the boys
who did it, giving them the right to sharing and belonging, to the
identification of knowledge and attitudes recognized by their pairs
and by the girls belonging to the same ethnolinguistic group. I.e.,
circumcision is an expression of the cultural cohesion of the
community, identifying it and distinguishing it from other groups.
For this reason, from the circumcision and during the entire process
of the ritual, the parents and godfathers of the children shall not have
sexual intercourse, as a form of protection of the son who is outside
the world, who is preparing himself to “traverse” a course that
transforms him from a non-person into a person. The interruption of
sexual intercourse symbolizes the suspended life of the initiatee
during this period, as is characterised by Turner (1974).
The non-performance of circumcision (in the Northern Region) is
object of mockery and exclusion, for example when the boys are
bathing in the river. I.e., the non-circumcised boy represents a threat
and a challenge to the social and cultural norms, because he is not yet
a person. In our fieldwork, it became clear that boys who returned to
the community, after many years of separation, had to submit
themselves to circumcision, under penalty of having to leave for
another place. This fact shows that circumcision is a condition for
ritualization, i.e., it is the physical and symbolic marker of male
identity, allowing boys to be welcomed to the sacred space and be
returned to the community as adults.
Mainly in the north of the country, circumcision is thus for boys the
point in time marking their entry into the rites, which may or may
not be related to the appearance of the first signs of puberty.
However, and this was often mentioned in Cabo Delgado (but also in
other regions and in other ethnolinguistic groups), there is currently
a decrease of the age of the children taken to the initiation rites,
which has to do with the fact that school learning (and not only that)
constitutes a source of information that may interfere with the
construction of the system of beliefs transmitted in the rites. For
many of the interviewees, when the youths enter into the rites they
are a tabula rasa on which the elements that will organize and direct
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their inclusion into the community will be established. Well then, the
removal of their daughters and sons from possible contamination by
other lifestyles, including relations of conviviality with their pairs,
when the families intend to decrease the risks of possible resistance,
considering the age of the initiated children (9 to 10 years), may be
contributing to the ineffectiveness of the rites or to culturally not
expectable reappropriations. We observe this with the departure of
the youths to other places, in which by the absorption of new identity
elements they move away from their place of origin, they withdraw
from their family, which effectively ceases being a mechanism of
social security. When, as already mentioned, the informants tell us
that the assertion that “an educated son is poison for the father”
(Dimas 2) is common, or when they insistently say that boys today do
not fulfil their obligation of taking care of their parents, or also when
they tell us about cases of suicide due to abandonment, we are facing
facts that, while perhaps not yet representing a tendency, indicate
changes that threaten the dispositions constructed in the ritual
process.
The majority of the interviewed boys did circumcision very early
(particularly in Cabo Delgado and Zambézia) and in general all of
them agree that it should be carried out (because it represents a
rupture with childhood) and a large majority also thinks that the rites
should be performed between 10 and 13 years because: “while a
person is young he can understand something about respect and
other things, when he is grown up he doesn’t understand anything”
(Vasco 3). As stated above, this opinion, which is also repeated by the
masters, shows that if the boys enter later into the rites, it will
according to the informants be more difficult for them to embody the
various dimensions of the teachings.
Among the Senas and Ndaus, mainly in Cheringoma and Búzi
districts, Sofala Province, in the Central Region of the country,
circumcision has only in the two last decades started to be
introduced, in the framework of the fight against HIV and AIDS.
Being hygiene the argument used for the performance of
circumcision, the markers for the initiation rites are determined by
the parents’ observation of the behaviour of their children, such as
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the change of their voice, the hardening of their sexual organ
(tokotatumbuka),133 wet dreams and ejaculation. For the masters this
means a limitation of their power, given that a practice was imposed
on the boys that may force a reshaping of the sexual teachings,
whether by the symbolic co-option of circumcision or by the little
importance given to it. Regarding the question of circumcision some
masters either are uninterested or reproduce the rhetoric of hygiene.
This means that boys participate in the rites, circumcised or not.
It is also interesting to note that, though many Sena and Ndau boys
have not been circumcised, the reasoning of hygiene, used by the
health sector in coordination with the school, has had effect, since
almost all interviewed boys said that they had been or will be
circumcised, adding to the information obtained the idea (somehow
one intends to legitimate the removal of the foreskin) that the
suffering caused constitutes another proof of their virility, as was said
by a Ndau boy: “a circumcised man feels a woman intimately” (Luís
6).
With regard to girls, in all ethnolinguistic groups menstruation
(though there are also cases that the appearance of breasts is
sufficient for the families to send their daughters to the rites) is the
factor of demarcation for their initiation, with the first menstruation
being, as Geldstein and Pantelides state (2003) a mandate for sexual
initiation. However, though in a smaller number than for boys,
information was also obtained that nowadays girls initiate the rites
earlier (however at a later age than boys, with some exceptions
observed in Macomia, where Makonde girls may not wait for their
menstruation), not only due to fear for the contamination by other
knowledge, but also because girls constitute an economic asset used
for the survival of the families, which may be called into question
when a girl is not a virgin or has already become pregnant at a certain
point in time.

133 Tokotatumbuka means corncob in Sena.

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The girl’s virginity has also to do with the payment of a matrimonial
compensation (lobolo), such as in the case of the Senas of Inhaminga,
as a female teacher said:
“If she is not a virgin the parents will lose that part of the soft
drinks, of the crates, so the godmothers teach how to put a
medicine that stays like a rock, so that the vagina closes again;
this plant is called ntombo wakubvalira and after that she
abstains one day from food and asks for forgiveness because
she did it ahead of the correct time and made her parents
lose” (Deolinda 20).
Virginity,134 while it has served as a weapon for the defence of ethnic
superiority, as happens among the Makondes and Makhuwas, has
been object of recomposition strategies, whether through ceremonies
performed in churches aimed at recreating a symbolic virginity (as
happens with the Nazareth Church in Sofala), or by the use of plants
that, drying the vagina, give the illusion of virginity. This is a
phenomenon allowing to establish how the rites, with respect to new
realities and contexts, while seeking to preserve its structure, are
giving up some of their functions. The remarks of the above-
mentioned informant constitutes a tendency regarding non-
conformism with the current reality, which does not allow control of
innocence, of what may and should be known, and of the power of
knowledge (that the youth today is allowed to have), which restricts
the formatting of juvenile identities. It is on the other hand also
interesting to observe that many of the parties directly involved in
the rites, such as matrons and masters, even with knowledge of the
current contexts and the plurality of information that the youth is
receiving, stage the information about menstruation in the same way,
transmitting fear and constructing symbolisms with respect to the
menstrual blood and to the secret and the care to have (not only with
personal hygiene) in their relations with others. It is in this context of

134In addition to other methods used to prove virginity, there are examples of the
use of a plant which is placed in a hole in the ground “and when she tries to take it
out it starts to break, saying she isn’t a virgin, and the child’s mother gets
demoralized and everybody starts to laugh” (Antónia 3).
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prohibitions and permissions (not being respected may result in
death and disease) that the myths are constituted whose function, as
Héritier states, is to legitimate and give sense to the “established
social order” (1989:17), i.e., to ensure male domination.
As the menstrual blood is dirty, it is simultaneously dangerous
because while it cannot be controlled it allows procreation (Détrez,
2003), simultaneously containing the unknown and the evil, as is
exemplified by these remarks of a Makhuwa Lomwé matron: “after
the end of your cycle, only five days afterwards, you are allowed to
have sex with your husband, otherwise he will get a hernia and will
get those big testicles” (Zita 1). For this reason, the counsels and the
series of rituals that accompany the first menstruation are structured
by fear on the part of the girls and by a series of recommendations
that have to do with control over the body and with the fact that
menstruation confers a power which, if exerted, can break the
mechanisms that regulate and discipline the body. The girls’ bodies
correspond through their tears and the godmothers by their
oppressive questioning to cultural codes that direct behaviours
“responding to social and cultural norms” (Détrez, 2002:79). In other
words, it is expected of the girls that they cry and of the godmothers
and matrons that they shout and punish.
Thus, a social fact is constructed over the biological fact and, as
Checa (2003) argues, the gender identities are revealed by the
menstruated body, constructed from how its use is perceived:
“menstrual blood is dirty and as such represents the natural
explanation of the inferiority of women, while the display and also
the legitimation of domination is present in the female body” (Détrez,
2002:183).
The dirt and the danger of menstruation, because when not
controlled it constitutes a symbolic possibility of power, is explained
by whom transmits the counsels as a form of setting the norm for
hygiene, but mainly to regulate behaviours through interdictions,
whose function is to format female behaviour, through the myths that
are transmitted. In this regard a group of matrons in Quelimane said:
“we told the girl that the must really be afraid, have respect, when

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meeting older people walking slowly, otherwise your modess135 may
fall down, we are only threatening” (Zita 1).
The girls, even those who already knew somehow the functioning of
the human body, are afraid, because this is what is expected of them:
“I was very afraid, and kept silent, then I started to ask my
aunt, and she said you have already slept with an adult man, I
cried and denied it; then, my aunt, you may even die, and
then they put me in a house and talked about more things
(you are already grown up, you can’t play around just like
that)” (Vânia 1).
This form of dealing with menstruation is much less violent in urban
areas and in families that are more open to information, but the
mother of the child is rarely involved in the counsels that follow the
first menstruation, since this marks the rupture with childhood, and
the proximity of the mother may be perceived as a rejection of the
relevance of the situation, as a woman counsellor of the rites
informed us:
“From now on you cannot do like this, this is a disease. (…)
You first frighten the girl, her grandmother starts frightening
the girl, I just don’t know how you got this, I don’t know if you
slept with a man, I don’t know what happened, how you got
this disease. This disease is very dangerous, so you must hide
this, you must not leave it lying about, someone who does not
have this yet, you must not tell her, even not a friend, you
must not tell her” (Amélia 5).
The influence of the churches that mediate between tradition and
modernity, and the fact that the teachings about menstruation,
colliding with other teachings, do not attain the results expected by
the families, leads ministers and priests in some regions, such as in
Quelimane and Beira, to bless the menstruated girls on the occasion
of their first menstruation, sanctifying a biological phenomenon
which constitutes itself simultaneously as a commitment and a

135 “Modess” is a brand of a sanitary towel.

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sharing of experiences linked to beliefs and cohesion with the
community.
In some cases, such as in Búzi, a series of ceremonies is performed
during the first menstruation aimed at guaranteeing the fertility of
the girl, as was said by a female health agent:
“For example, when a girl has her first menstruation, they
usually take that cloth, but another cloth is cut of the mother’s
capulana, it is fastened and put in a tree, under a tree, then
she starts there to clap hands, to show that her daughter is
already a woman. They say that you have to take that rag and
give it to your grandmother, your grandmother prepares the
blood in a little pan and usually puts it in a cool place, may be
on the river bank, near a well, bury it there, for the fertility of
the woman to be always fresh. (…) They have to know that the
place is here, so that in the case of ceremonies if that woman
does not conceive, they will go there, start performing all
those ceremonies there” (Dilma 13).
However, it is interesting to establish that the fear shown, the
questioning to which they are subjected, the huge list of interdictions
in their relations with others and with daily life (for example, the
prohibition to cook or to put salt in the food), exerts on the girls, as
Bettelheim states, “an irresistible fascination (…) because they
believe that their menstruation gives them power over men”
(Bettelheim, 1971:31). It is this power arising from their condition of
being a woman which brings many interviewed girls to combine their
fear and timidity to talk about menstruation with pride revealing a
magic power they have and can use.
The body is thus a place where social representations are expressed
that are constructed as culturally legitimate. It is in this sense that
circumcision as well as genital mutilation, such as the lengthening of
the vaginal lips, are explained as cultural elements. However, as
Héritier states, these are not of the same order of magnitude because
while the effect of circumcision is “to give evidence of a kind of
permanent virility by the display of the gland” (Héritier, 2002:172),

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the effect of female genital mutilation is to constrain the woman to
sexual subordination, which is the key field of male domination.
While in all ethnolinguistic groups menstruation is a marker for
ritual initiation, it was however established that needy families have
sometimes economic difficulties that brings them to postpone the
inclusion of their daughters for one or two years. This situation
shows that the monetization of the rites is today a reality, part of the
market economy, with reflexes on the role and function of the rites.
In other words, contrary to the past when the amounts given (often
in the form of some food) had a merely symbolic value, because what
was decisive for the cultural cohesion of the community was that all
girls were subjected to the rites, what is observed today is that there
is not only an adjustment of the rites to new realities, but also that
the main parties involved have professionalized the rituals, which
have lost a large part of their symbolic load.136 This means that the
current survival of the rites has not only to do with safeguarding past
culture, but also with the maintenance of a power which is not only
expressed economically but also socially and politically. The
discourse of the preservation of culture is a recourse permanently
used by almost all interviewees of both sexes, having an effect of
exclusion on all those who did not do the rites, as a group of
Makonde women teachers in Pemba informed us:
“When you grow up and you are not ceremonized, you will not
have friendship with anybody, (…) also because you have no
education. (…) It is thus, tradition is tradition, it is at this
moment that you know that you shall not enter your father’s
room, neither stay with him in his bed, your father will get
inflamed, he will feel like a man, he will feel that this person is
a woman and there are even cases in which the father renders
his daughter pregnant” (Antónia 1).
There is in these remarks in the first place an idea that the rites
provide stability, with a normative defining the behavioural codes in

136This situation can somehow be seen as a resymbolization in a market logic,

maintaining its efficacy in a new frame of reference.
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the family and in the second place that the absence of this education
produces disorder, expressed in incest and justified by a rupture with
tradition. This means that the “disappearance” of the rites points for
most of the older informants, particularly masters and matrons but
also women teachers and Government officials (though for the latter
a sharp ambiguity is evident between the respect taught in the rites
and the respect constructed in other spaces) to a profound social
instability, affording that disorder is established within the group,
breaking with the order regulating the positions of each individual
and giving rise to the disgrace of the group and to social
degeneration.

3.2. The dimensions of ritual teachings

As was demonstrated in previous chapters, the key dimensions of the

initiation rites teachings are respect and sex life. We can even state
that the function of these two dimensions, constituting the ultimate
goal of the rites, is not only and fundamentally to transmit some
cultural specificity, but to guide the construction of social identities
that seek to reproduce the social, political and cultural order in
agreement with the preservation of a power structure organised by
mechanisms of control of the social subjects. In this sense, it would
perhaps be more effective and rigorous to call the initiation rites
cultural institutions where cultural practices are performed, rather
than to reduce this form of organisation of knowledge and attitudes
simply to peculiarities that can be presented as dispersed and
without the meaning contained in the rites.
Respect, which is the main component of the discourse of the female
and male interviewees, does not contain, as some utopia would have
us believe, tolerance, equal rights, respect for others, inclusion, but is
mainly a quality which segregates or aggregates, which ties or unties
the social actors to/from a certain order of values and practices. It
was very interesting to verify the almost total unanimity of the female
and male informants in removing the meaning of respect from the
system of beliefs, i.e., of an ideology clearly based on the distribution
and hierarchization of power. While it may mean everything and

325
nothing, respect must be socially and culturally contextualized,
deconstructed in each one of its components (taking into account the
meaning given to it) and again constructed as an idea, with which
one can operate.
The other dimension studied was the contents and the meanings
given by the girls and boys to the teachings about the body. It is
interesting to establish, particularly in the discourse of young girls,
that sexuality is perceived and lived on the basis of service to the
other, in a system which explains or implicitly removes access to and
the exercise of the right of choice. The permissions and interdictions,
that may appear phenomena of empowerment to more distracted
views, reveal in fact a power structure based on a gender order.

3.2.1. The question of respect

The teaching of respect is one of the main components of the

initiation rites and is intimately related to the inequality between
women and men, while its contents have clearly to do with the
cultural heritage and with how the social gender relations are
structured. The meaning that is given to respect, to obedience and
even to the way of looking at other people is a distinctive form
corresponding to cultural representations that attribute
differentiated rights and obligations to men and women: while men
learn to provide, to render pregnant and to protect their wife and
children, incorporating the transmitted values (and strengthened by
imitation), the obligations to serve and care are attributed to women.
As a Makonde master told us:
“The wife should wake up in the morning, leave her husband
in bed, go outside, fetch water, puts it in the bathroom, goes
inside again, talks to her husband, there is already water for
you, she then starts to wash the dishes, then when her
husband leaves the house, she stays to wash his dirty clothes”
(Armindo 1).
In this regard, a boy added: “the woman should be in the machamba
with her husband, after that she should search for firewood, find

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curry, give food to the children” (Vasco 7). And a good husband is
characterised as:
“A good man is one who doesn’t beat, a good man is able to
get money, who doesn’t finish it drinking, who also finds a
way to buy food for the family, to buy clothes for his wife, to
respect his wife, to respect his family, inclusive his wife’s
family” (Amélia 5).
There is a sexual division of labour not only corresponding to the
distribution of differentiated tasks, but also to the symbolism that is
given to the qualities of both sexes: to the man-provider corresponds
the woman who produces the conditions that ensure the male
mandate, i.e., the differences are hierarchized, as is evident in these
remarks of an official of a Gender Unit of the Education sector:
“A house is like a company, there is always a boss. This boss is
the father of our children, head of the household, even if
people talk about gender equality, we have to understand that
this equality does not mean that the husband is going to cook
or wash the napkins of the baby, it also does not mean that
the wife goes out at night and goes to the bar, as her husband
does, because her reputation will be affected” (Ana 12).
Rena explains how the “naturalization of the leadership of the family
can, through symbolic and pragmatic mechanisms, exert control over
the female body and reproductive life” (2006:39). An interesting
aspect of this notion of respect is the embodiment in some discourses
of notions such as “not beating the woman” and “helping the woman
on the machamba”, which are product of the influence of a certain
modern discourse already embodied in the practices of men and
women. However, and in the inland rural areas, beating and
punishing are practices legitimated by the non-fulfilment of
household chores.
The question of work and of providing, in view of juvenile
unemployment and the impossibility to keep studying, is today a
focus of major tensions: while the interviewed youths describe their
qualities, they show difficulties in exercising them. It is the situation

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lived by many boys, mainly in the Central Region of the country, who
refuse completely to live with their partner in a house that is owned
by her, or even whose salary is higher than his. This situation is
perceived as a reversal of socially legitimated values. In the rites, the
teachings about attributes assume proportions of great violence
which are distinctive marks vis-à-vis the non-initiates and vis-à-vis
girls and women.
What is clear in all spatial units, is that a pattern still continues to
exist which distinguishes attributes, corresponding to power
relations and being an object of conflict when behaviours do not
correspond to the patriarchal culture. This situation is visible in the
discourse of many masters and matrons who, particularly referring to
girls, deplore that the sexual division of labour, the respect due to the
husband (who is always the head of family) and the husband’s family,
the resignation and tolerance with domestic violence, are today
questioned by some of the girls who are charged with the burden of
family violence and destabilization. It is interesting to observe that
the accusation of boys and girls of breaking with male and female
attributes, are more vehemently expressed in the case of girls,
possibly because a new femininity constitutes a threat to the
preservation of the patriarchal culture. I.e., while the attributes
conferred by the rites to men can still be reconciled with the socially
legitimated model of domination, the changes introduced by
modernity, denaturalizing female submission, may constitute a risk
for the stability of the cultural model. In this resistance of girls to
obedience and resignation, the adoption of new ways of life, from
dressing to socializing with their circle of friends, we find perhaps the
explanation for the affirmation, so often expressed by our female and
male interviewees, that “formerly these things of violence did not
exist, there was a lot of respect, she would be silent, waiting and
afterwards could talk to her husband” (Zita 1).
Bonino (2004) refers to the categories which he calls utilitarian
micro-machismos, which are those who delegate to women the
responsibilities for the distribution of household chores. It is what we
found in the research, when teachers and authorities see the
domestic occupation of girls as natural, accepted and even claimed by
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them as their competence: “men should learn to cook in case there is
no woman at all to do it” (Dora 1). The provider character inherent in
male subjectivity organised in the “dominant hierarchical way”
(Bonino, 2004:177-180) is an element that appears in the discourses
of boys and as a result of the male mandate of superiority, and also as
a lamentation of this very mandate when, for example, interviewed
boys complained of the lack of male employment, without taking into
account that this lament largely followed the male claim of the
provision of the house. The construction of an essentialist
masculinity that is based on a reference to their competence for
power, for example through the sustenance of the house, slips
frequently into the activation of other mechanisms of domination
that justify the continuation of the exercise of power.
This means that women and men are not only under community
vigilance, but they also practise self-vigilance in the fulfilment of
their mandate, shaping the principles of a disciplinary society which
produces docile bodies in the sense given to it by Foucault (1984), as
these remarks illustrate well:
“A girl has to enter into the initiation rite in order to learn a
lot more about life. But I entered upon insistence because it
was not my free will. But after having entered into the
initiation rite I did not like it much, I liked it a bit because I
learned many things. I learned how I can respect my family, I
learned how to live with the elderly, I learned how to take care
of my own home” (Leocádia 3).
The differences between male and female attributes (showing how
gender is ritualized) is also observed in the meaning given to the
aggregation ceremonies which for girls mean to show their beauty, to
sing and dance cautiously, while boys distinguish the importance of
displaying their body, with their long trousers (symbolizing
manhood) and with the money given to them. There is a performative
demonstration in these ceremonies of the place which each boy and
each girl is allowed to occupy in the community.
There is a crisis of masculinity when traditionally male competences
are introduced in the construction of womanhood, hence answers

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such as the devaluation of school attendance, as if female conquests,
such as power, had been granted by men: “I have to be the head of
the family, because men are taller” (Vasco 2). This notion of
magnitude has to do with the power that is given to men and with the
representation of women as “incomplete” beings, naturally incapable
of taking their lives into their own hands. The position of many
teachers, particularly women teachers, clearly opposes this discourse.
They emphasize passionately the affirmation of equality, though this
equality often doesn’t question the power structure, i.e., there is no
divergence from the excluding normativity.
As already mentioned, in towns, and this situation was particularly
visible in Quelimane and in Beira, the rites are often performed by
the boys alone, accompanied by their parents and by an older person
(godfather)137 who, belonging or not to the family, is socially and
culturally respected. However, this informality does not prevent the
transmission of knowledge about masculinity and about the
expectations related to the behaviour of the partner, as is the case of
this Sena boy in Beira City:
“I was 13, I learned that a good woman is one who does not
return late when she goes to the market, who knows that the
neck and the legs of the chicken are for the man, who takes
care of her husband, who does not dress just like that” (Luís
1).
Regarding sexuality, these remarks also transmit the idea that boys
should take the sexual initiative, because “a girl who takes the
initiative is good-for-nothing”, also showing that who expresses these
words recognises the behaviour of an initiated girl. However, in the
discourse of this and of other urban boys, the fundamental relevance
of the rite is the assumption of the status of adulthood (of which the
aggregation party is the main occasion) which gives them belonging
to the group of older men, without being clear if and how this
teaching was embodied in their behaviour. Allusions to the fact that

137In the notion of respect the gender and generation components are linked in
shaping the hierarchical matrix.
330
town life is different from life in the bush “there they do a lot of
things” (clearly perceived in the question of children’s human rights
and in the rejection of domestic violence) are introduced in the
narrative, and may mean a wish to transmit the possession of
information, and also expressing a change of attitude with respect to
the gender power structure.
This kind of hybrid discourse reveals that juvenile identities are fluid
and complex, their permanence being subject to processes and
mechanisms of individuation and subjectivation, which may be
changed in the course of life by the contexts and by the possibilities
of choice in social identification and recognition. This means that
though the options for lifestyles, values and practices are conditioned
by a dominant order providing the limits of the identity “autonomy”,
they should rely on opportunities allowing the establishment of new
practices reflected in representations and in new ways of “being” in
social relations.
When questioned about the contents of the respect taught in the rites
many boys responded in a very controlled way, as these remarks of a
boy in Macomia shows:
“The master said that, after leaving the initiation rite, you are
already grown up, you are already of our age. Thus, you
should respect the elderly, neither steal nor go to the market,
nor sit among boys doing things. You should go and help the
elderly at home and go on doing your homework. And you are
also already grown up, now you are ready to face and
challenge any kind of woman irrespective of being old or a
girl. You may have sex with these people, you are already
prepared for that, you are already grown up” (Vasco 10).
Describing the attributes learned in the initiation rites, a girl in
Pemba stated: “they taught me to work well at home, to leave
everything clean, to obey my husband, to have patience when he is
angry” (Vânia 1) and another girl in Macomia added: “the husband
commands his wife, a woman has to keep silent when her husband
comes home angry, and he also says how many children he wants”
(Vânia 7).

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Regarding what it is to be a good man and a good woman, though in
all ethnolinguistic groups respect is described, which for women is
obedience and for men “to eat what she has prepared, not getting
angry, educating his wife”, there are however variations with respect
to the legitimacy of domestic violence, which is more acceptable
among some groups in the north of the country, possibly due to the
cohesive way in which the rites shape masculinity, in which male
power is organized as an established whole through the knowledge
that is transmitted and the trials to which they are subjected. For
some boys domestic violence consecrates the need to discipline the
woman, culminating the male mandate for domination. As we will
see in the following remarks, there is a perception that beating his
wife is an obligation justified by the non-fulfilment of her attributes,
being simultaneously an anticipation of the normality which
organizes in a stable way the relations between partners:
“The woman today does something here, and you immediately
tell her that you don’t like that thing. She continues to do it
and the day after she does the same thing. Damn, I don’t like
this what you are doing to me. After that they said they had to
go to the house of her brother, to go and talk, then if she does
it again, while she is being told by her brother, you just give
her a good hiding, but don’t get used to that” (Vasco 5).
However, and possibly due to the conjugation of various factors such
as school attendance, the discourse of rights and the dissemination of
legislation penalizing domestic violence, there is a narrative which,
while justifying violence (when there is no other way to solve the
problem), restricts it to what is considered to be absolutely outside
the norm. It is as if the violence exerted against women would
symbolically confer added value to the act – he beat her after having
exhausted all initiatives, he beat her in spite of being opposed to
violence, he beat her because he is a man and she was beaten because
she is a woman.
In gender relations we can establish how manhood and womanhood
are constructed through the practices. This means to understand the
effect of male domination through male organisation which

332
penetrates into all fields, as for example the exercise of violence
against women, justified by some initiated boys as resulting from the
ritual non-fulfilment on the part of girls. I.e., while the rites are
acquired as organisational mechanisms of adulthood, always
perceived and accomplished by the constitution of a family, the
transgressions threaten and question not only the mechanisms used
to conform the bodies, but are also factors that point to the
disintegration of hegemonic masculinity, as these remarks of a boy in
Quelimane clearly express:
“In those days a man would be explained that he had to be the
boss of the woman or in this case that the woman is inferior to
the man. Irrespective of the age of this man, this man was
considered a man within the family, because of the physical
preparation he had received in the rites. You would get
exhausted with all those tasks, you were told immediately that
your main target is the woman, i.e., all this training is for you
how you will be yourself in society, in this case how you will
respect your child, how you will deal with your wife. But the
main target they had here in this case was the woman. So, if a
person is physically prepared and the indicated target is the
woman, then when the woman had a deficiency, he would
return to that time of the training he had, the suffering he had
to endure, the kind of tree trunk he had to carry, how he did
it, then he would see, I was directly prepared for this woman.
So, it is where a man was taken to violence. A bloke stayed
there for two months isolated, carry tree trunks from here to
there, without sleeping at night, singing only to come and
educate this woman, if this woman does these things to me,
what kind of education? I would assault her, to a certain
extent they could explain that this woman is your wife, in this
and in that case, but their main essence was that a man must
give an education to his woman, he must explain what she
should and should not do, those things that would induce a
man to be an aggressive type” (Julião 2).
It is interesting that in this discourse, as in those of other boys, there
is a search for detachment from domestic violence, putting the
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narrative in the third person, while a certain empathy with the
aggressor manifests itself, which ends up transforming itself in a
guardian of the cultural normative. In this sense, these remarks of a
Sena boy in Inhaminga District are enlightening:
“For example, a husband comes home from work, his wife has
to serve food, give him water to wash his hands, water to
drink. Well, there are other women who, when their husband
comes home, indicate where the food is, it is there, it is there,
and she leaves, she goes out to the house of a friend, her man
doesn’t like it and gets annoyed. When she comes back, he
asks her, where have you been? And she doesn’t respond
properly” (Luís 6).
Concerning domestic violence, though in general rejected by many
boys and by most girls, even in urban areas there is an idea, as is the
case of this Ndau girl student in Beira City, that “when a woman is
beaten she should not complain, she should stay in her corner and
cry. If her husband has no reason, then she should complain” (Luisa
2). These remarks shows in a satisfactory way that information about
domestic violence is perceived by many men and women according to
the status of each one, i.e., the way in which the social roles are
constructed. This means that, though it is clear that beating is a
crime and there are rights prohibiting violence, it may be justified in
cases in which there is a violation of culturally constructed norms
accepted by the victims. On the other hand, knowledge about
children’s and women’s rights is often verbalized by boys and girls,
without however impeding the justification of the use of violence in
the framework of the naturalization of male superiority and of the
differentiation of the rights of men and women which, culminating in
the teachings of sex life, has also to do with the division of labour and
with the notion of respect. This is expressed in these remarks of a girl
in Inhaminga:
“In the rites they taught how to please a husband. While she is
at home she had to prepare food, would leave the food under
a cover and when her husband arrives she has no right to send
other food to her husband, to have other food to give him, she

334
 had to go out herself, get the curry and serve her husband so
that he can eat. From there after having finished the meals
she could talk to her husband again. How was your work
today, from when you left until now, if everything is alright or
not” (Luísa 6).
In the same way, though among boys there is also a perception of
shared rights at school, with respect to learning and equality between
women and men, violence against girls is justified, as is evident in
these remarks of a boy in Búzi Town:
“You have a reason to beat when those women leave, for
example, they leave the house, leave the children, leave at 6 in
the morning. If she were to leave, she should at least cook
before leaving, isn’t it? They leave at 6 and only return at
midnight, the husband asks where have you been? That’s not
your business, then he gets very rebellious: how come, not my
business? You are my wife, you have to tell me where you
were. The husband gets angry, starts beating her, and things
get nasty” (Luís 2).
This narrative is all the more curious as the boy gives an extreme
example, seeking by his exaggeration the consent of the listener. It is
also interesting that this same interviewee states that a man has no
reason to beat when:
“It happens that he goes out to drink, he returns home… ah,
you prepared his food and everything else. He finds his food
on the table, throws everything on the floor. I don’t know if
you didn’t like it, I don’t know what, then he starts to beat his
wife, I don’t know if it is because he is drunk or that he
doesn’t know what he is doing” (Luís 2).
In these remarks we find an understanding of domestic violence,
while in extreme situations one simultaneously seeks to obtain it
through the roles attributed to each one of the sexes.
The violence structuring the teachings of sexuality is expressed in a
magnificent way in this narrative:

335
 “If your husband beat you, he committed a crime, but you,
your heart, has not yet accepted this. (…) And you will do as if
you are not angry, neither will you show you got a hiding. You
will do the following, he already beat you in the morning or in
the afternoon or at 18 hours, at night you had a fight, it was a
big problem, so you fought. Then it was already late, you are
in bed, you should open your legs because a man is different
from a woman. That sperm of his, before it leaves him and
enters you is very painful, it cannot stay inside him, therefore
he has to get it out. And, instead of throwing it away, he has to
put it in the organism of a woman, he has to take his organ
and put it in her vagina. Then, in your turn, you take it and
when you take it you connect two bodies, two sexes. After the
frivolity, a few minutes, that thing comes out, it is wet and
after it has become wet, at that moment you have warm water
in the bowl under the bed. Then you wash first [the organ of
the man], you clean it with a rag, you have to buy a very light
towel, you can’t just fetch any capulana because it causes
wounds. First you have to take it out, do as if you are pealing a
banana, then you clean it and when you take water you start
to wash from the inside out, then it shrinks, leave it, don’t pay
any attention and go to sleep” (Zita 2).
The symbolic representations of the sexualized body of women
hierarchize and justify male domination, such as when they make
believe that resignation and obedience are inborn. From this point of
view, Héritier states “that their cultural way of conceiving the world
is dictated by the observation and the need to organize the nature of
things” (2002:247). The observation of the difference between the
sexes, in which the capacity of fecundity is the crucial point, has set
in motion a system of representations that hierarchizes and classifies,
from this observation, the distribution of power.
When we observe the question of polygamy and the position of the
interviewees we found two sets of discourses on the part of women:
the first one is interestingly produced by matrons and a few women
teachers in the rural interior, such as Guara-Guara in Búzi District
(which on the one hand points to changes existing with respect to the
336
sharing of loving affection, opposing the ideal discourse of a
polygamous life), in which the women stated that they don’t like it
but accept it, using plants (mutchena) they put in the body or in the
food of the man to seduce him, developing strategies of attraction
and competition with the other women. Another set of discourses, on
the part of girls and women teachers, says that polygamy is not
acceptable and that they would prefer to stay alone above living in
this situation.
Some civil society organisations working with the rights of women
and youths informed us that also in Sofala Province polygamy is a
common practice and is considered a form of family planning, since
in the Sena and Ndau tradition, during breastfeeding (which may go
up to two years) a woman shall not have sexual intercourse. This
rational way to try to explain sexual exploitation and the work of
increasingly younger women, should be perceived in the context of
the construction of a masculinity that is exerted by force, hidden by
the discourse of tradition and cultural wisdom about birth control. It
is interesting, as said above, that opposition to polygamy begins to
appear, often encouraged by the mothers, but without much success,
given the inexistence of a policy of welcoming these girls on the part
of the State.
Regarding the male interviewees, there are a few differentiated
positions that consist, in the first place, of a categorical affirmation
that having many women is a male right and a cultural tradition,
which finds its justification in the essentialization of male sexual
needs, but also in the fact that the older women can be freed from
working in the field and from “sexual service”, which may indicate
the recent influence of the discourses of rights. In the second place,
for the majority of the younger male interviewees, Government
officials and teachers, polygamy is not accepted, but it is understood
with a reasoning of African culture and pride. It is interesting to
observe that even in the presence of existing legislation these
positions can be expressed with relative ease and conviction, which
shows two things: first, a patriarchal structure which, though subject
to change, admits the possibility of maintaining some of the
principles that give it cohesion, and second, the ambiguity between
337
legislation and public policies defending rights and some political
discourse intending to restore polygamy through the manipulation of
a misleading cultural argument, permanently contested by new
dynamics. It is curious to note the affirmation of a few civil society
interviewees who defend that the existence of many children in a
polygamous context does not mean, as in times past, wealth or
protection in future, since many young people emigrate and do not
return, continuing however to constitute a symbol of virility.
Infidelity and adultery were two questions presented to the various
groups, with the intention to get to know the veracity that women,
mainly Makhuwa women, are permissive, not only with respect to
their husbands’ infidelity (as happens with the other ethnolinguistic
groups) but also with respect to their own infidelity. What was
established is that the myth that was created during colonization
about the sexual independence of Makhuwa women can only be
explained by a certain lack of understanding of the matrilineal
lineage structure for the projection of the appearance of their body,
with a saturated concentration of sexuality, for a possible liberty in
the practice of sexuality. It became clear that this sexualised
seduction of Makhuwa women, mainly on the coast, does not provide
them with the means to access choices and to resist to the patriarchal
imposition, while infidelity is exceptionally accepted, and only in case
the husband is unable to provide for the family, but never for desire
or their own will. This does therefore not change the gender order
and the roles conferred to them. In other words, the sexual
gratification marked on the body of Makhuwa women, contrary to
what common sense would suppose, symbolizes a destination
rendering her particularly subject to group vigilance. The use of
musiro, of beautiful capulanas, the seductive looks, even if all this
hides suffering and humiliation, they bring about the ritualization
which turns women into dependent beings.138

138During the pilot study fieldwork, in Mafalala District, Maputo City, one of the
more powerful women was indicated to the team who could provide information
about the Makhuwa rites. The woman, let’s call her Isadora, caused a strong initial
impression: her face covered with musiro, with very beautiful clothes, overflowing
with cheerfulness and a huge ease to talk about the rites. A few days later she asked
338
The cultural construction of fidelity as a female quality and the
naturalization of infidelity were observed in all ethnolinguistic
groups, as is evident from these remarks of a girl in Beira:
“A woman has the obligation to wait for her husband, when he
is travelling, but a man cannot wait because he has many
needs. A man will never forgive his wife if she has another
man, but a woman will always forgive” (Luisa 4).
As already mentioned, it is observed that regarding the qualities of
masculinity that are trained in the rites, though containing the same
dimensions of respect and sex life, there is a series of activities that
are carried out and included in the category of respect, and that
should be unquestionable, as a master in Mecúfi said:
“Nowadays women are polygamous, they have no respect for
men. A female minister may have four men. The woman is the
basis of the house. She educates the children, the father is the
chairman of the house, the woman is the secretary. But today
it is no longer like that” (Armindo 3).
Though sexual initiation is also performed very early (around 13, 14
years), the plurality of teachings which the youths receive during the
rites indicates that this does not imply marriage, as a teacher in
Pemba told us: “for a wife it may be at an earlier age, but on the part
of a man he needs to find a paratu, to do the job” (Álvaro 1). On the
other hand, with respect to the sexual teachings of boys conducted in
the rites there is less “dramatism” and importance, at least among
the Makhuwa group, as if there were a previous naturalization of
male power: “a man needs to be gratified” (Armindo 3). In this way,
in the rites he knows to identify what should wait, but his sexuality is

to talk in private and recounted her life history, the material difficulties she had to
face because her husband (though being rich) did not give her anything for the
sustenance of the house, the conjugal infidelity that made her suffer and
humiliated her, the defamatory looks of the neighbours and a whole series of
insults she was suffering. When I asked her why she did not leave her husband,
since the house was hers and she had a market stall where she did some business,
her answer was: “what will they say about me, that I didn’t even support a man, he
seems very good to others, they will say that I am not even capable of doing those
things I learned. How can I be a woman counsellor?
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intimately linked to penetration, to the possession of the body and
not decisively to female pleasure. Thus, in the rites, male teachings
about sex have more to do with the display of an aggressive virility
and with the competence to “show he is a man”. As a teacher in
Quelimane told us: “a man learns not to negotiate” (Zair 2).
This notion of masculinity seems however to be questioned, when it
is said that men should learn to please the woman (sometimes giving
the idea that this pleasure arises from the intimate satisfaction of
having controlled female sexuality). The stimulants used (that allow
having sex five times in a row or during a whole night), particularly
among Senas and Ndaus, are part of a logic of power that needs to be
updated continuously. When we put the question of pleasure in these
terms some interviewed women told us: “how can you have pleasure
with a man, with that weight on top of you, without sleep and waking
up with a breast in his mouth” (Daniela 1).
The qualities of manhood and womanhood, as Lagarde (1997) argues,
are interwoven with sexuality, insofar as this is a field in which the
aspects that naturalize inequality are mainstreamed and legitimated,
while sexuality and the qualities are historically and culturally
constructed, as is observed by the mechanisms present in the body of
the female initiates that bring about their relation to others, emitting
recognizable signs, whether through lowered eyes or by how they
greet and sit down, showing that they “are ready”. As a male
informant in Gurué District, Quelimane Province told us: “when a
man arrives looking for a woman, the parents accept him to marry
their daughter and this cannot be negotiated” (Ziro 3).
When we questioned a few civil society organisations about the
possibility of community leaders supporting a change of the power
relations, a female interviewee stated:
“A woman is submissive because there in the community he is
the one holding knowledge, though not always, but he is the
one who determines everything and how I want to be in this
home, I have to obey what he determines. (…) And some of
them are leaders, these leaders who should pass their example
to the communities” (Daniela 1).

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What is evident in these narratives about respect is a profound
asymmetry between the difference in the meaning given by each one
of the sexes to this quality: the female obedience associated with the
provision of sexual service, the resignation, the acquisition of a
certain shrewdness in their relation to an “angry” man, may
constitute for the less attentive observers a strategy of countervailing
power, enabling women to face embarrassing situations, controlling,
or “turning around”, as is expressed by common sense. However, and
though it is observed that girls resort to mechanisms that
subordinate them to “keep” the man satisfied, they are still in a
position of inferiority which manifests itself in the assumption of
male power and in being responsible for his appeasement, even
taking into account, as we will see below, the changes existing in an
urban or urbanized environment.

3.2.2. Sex life: discourses and practices

At this point we will seek to link three orders of problems: the first
one concerns the biological manipulation of the female body and its
transformation into a useful body. In other words, the mechanisms
that, interfering in the body of the child, form part of the
conformation of subdued gender identities and sexual identities,
anticipating and preparing the legitimation of a model of domination
whose nucleus is the taming and domestication of the body. We will
seek to understand, through the meanings that are given to the action
on the sexual organ and to the changes to which it was subjected, the
construction of female identities guided by and for a cultural, social
and political model based on the binary opposition between sexes
and sexuality within a heteronormative matrix of male domination. It
is also our intention to identify on the one hand how gender features
are or are not amplified by the manipulation of the body and/or on
the other hand to recognise the countervailing power and resistance
strategies expressed in the use of the mechanisms present in the
female body, to reverse, control and “appease” the effects of
domination.

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The second order of problems concerns the way in which the social
and cultural normativity constructs representations and practices of
sex life. It is for us important to recognise how the ritual teachings
about sex and sexuality shape (through conventions, codes and
protocols) hegemonic masculinities and femininities and how these,
confronting themselves with values and practices that may question
or not the transmitted knowledge (and even use it), subvert and
violate cultural expectations. In this field there are questions related
to pregnancy outside family control, female sexual initiative and
female and male pleasure.
The third order of problems, related to the previous one, concerns
the way in which initiation rites, as an institution, encourage,
through the teachings that are transmitted there (which are
constituted as truth), the early start of sex life, early “marriages” and
school abandonment. Taking into account the tensions and
ambiguities between the discourses of the various female and male
informants, the question will emphasize the conflicts that occur
between human rights of children and youths and a cultural model
based on the assumption that children are not subjects of rights. We
will seek here to restate the problem of cultural relativism and of
neo-colonial tolerance with respect to the intolerance revealed in how
some cultural bodies construct power hierarchies that are excluding
rights.

a) Othuna and matinjis: forced sex or the force of sex

Sexual identity is marked by the establishment of dispositions in the

body defining its behaviour, while performativities, corporalities and
stereotypes of what was came to be called a female attitude are
constructed through gestures (how they walk, dress and sit down).
Each society produces mechanisms of control over the body, of which
the conventions are part, turning it into an agent and text of culture.
As Foucault (1987) states, the rhetoric about the body reveals these
conventions which, when not adhered to, lead to exclusion and
marginality, transforming it, as Butler (1990) states, into an “abject”
body. The body, resisting, negotiating or submitting itself to the

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norm (which judges and evaluates), is “a body that being unique and
revealing an “I myself”, is also a shared body because it is similar to
an infinity of other bodies produced at this time and in this culture”
(Louro, 2007:40).
Children adapt their gestures and model their bodies to what is asked
of them. For Mauss (2007), individuals learn by socialization to make
use of their body, constituting themselves in techniques that are
developed on the basis of the environment and the decency that is
asked of them at that time. The body is shaped to what is expected of
it and in this sense one learns to locate it and use it as a technique.
What distinguishes, what classifies womanhood and manhood is not
sex, but what is attributed to each one of the sexes will produce
female and male bodies and subjects. Differentiating the sexes is the
basis for the maintenance of male domination, while the
naturalization of the difference between the sexes (rendering them
complementary) produces a system of representations which
hierarchizes and classifies. I.e., signs, beliefs and practices are
constructed about the sexes that legitimate inequality. Instituted as
the norm, inequality validates values and behaviours that, being
products of a wider political, social and cultural order, is
sophisticated insofar as it resorts to social and cultural cohesion for
its continuity.
Both in Cabo Delgado and in Zambézia and Sofala, girls learn
(around the age of 8 years or less) to perform the lengthening of the
labia minora, at sunrise and at sunset.139 This practice, done with the
use of various plants mixed with oil, is watched over by their
mothers, aunts and grandmothers.140 Ignorance of the usefulness of

139 In Dakar, in 1984, The Inter-African Committee considered genital mutilation an

attempt on women’s rights. In the Fourth World Conference held in 1995, in
Beijing, genital mutilations are defined in the context of sexual violence. The WHO
defines the lengthening of the vaginal lips as a level IV genital mutilation.
140 There is a large variety of plants which, after having been grinded and mixed with

fat, mostly oil, are used to perform the lengthening of the vaginal lips. Besides
lengthening the labia minora, the girls are taught to “spit in their hands and to
massage their hands with the same plant with which they rubbed their matinji and
knead their breasts in order to grow” (Vânia 7).
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genital manipulation (“they only told me to do it and you will see the
result”, Matilde 1) and the accompanying pain is perceived by the
children as an exercise of extreme violence, which is strengthened in
the rites with the obligation to expose the othuna: the timidity felt by
the girls get worse when the lengthening is considered insufficient,
being subject to criticism and jocose comments.
Also in Sofala the lengthening of the vaginal lips (matinji) starts very
early, following the same protocol as in the Northern Region and
having the same meaning of service to the other, as was said by a
Ndau girl in Beira City: “to have matinji is good because if you don’t
have it, men send you away. I know a girl who was abandoned
because she didn’t have it” (Luisa 6). Or, as was said by a female
teacher in Inhaminga, referring to men: “the matinji are their
entertainment” (Deolinda 5).
To have othuna or matinji is thus a condition of adulthood and of
acceptance by men who may legitimately give girls back, with the
argument that they are not sufficiently satisfied. Many boys say they
can recognise in how girls walk if they have been subjected to
lengthening, as if a predatory look were studying and assessing
them.141 The othuna and matinji are mainly a form of ritualization in
the construction of gender identities and object of monitoring on the
part of the godmothers matrons, being appropriated by the girls as a
condition of their femininity, not in the sense of forming shared
pleasure, but as an agency of a subordinate condition: ”pulling is to
hold the man’s penis. When you don’t have it, the man slips and gets
out quickly. So, it is necessary to have it, otherwise he will send you
away” (Antónia 1)142. And as a boy told us, “if she doesn’t have
matuna, I will send her away, she still has to learn” (Vasco 2). And
another boy, referring to what he had learned during the rites: “when

141 Many girls talked about their discomfort with the public exposure of the
lengthening, mainly in the schoolyard, where the observation to which they are
subjected appears as an assessment of their capacity and competence for sexual
intercourse.
142 Informers of the Health and Social Action sector mentioned the transmission of

diseases by how the matrons manipulate, without washing their hands, the matinji
and othunas of the girls, using for all of them the same “ointment”.
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a girl is ceremonized she is ready for marriage, if she has not been to
the rites she is only good to have sex with” (Vasco 1).
While the female discourse of othuna and matinji is justified by the
qualities women should have to be a woman, constituting it during
the ritual process as a marker of female identity, in the male
discourse the lengthening of the vaginal lips is not only a form of
recognition of this identity, but also an expression of the exercise of
male power. In other words, the value of othuna/matinji resides in
the power structure and it is in this sense that, since childhood, girls
prepare themselves (even when they don’t know why they do it) for a
model of femininity based on the practice of sexuality under control.
When questioned, all girls expressed the pain and the fear they felt
when they started to pull their vaginal lips, without any explanation
and with a lot of suffering. The shock of the girls exposes in the first
place a pedagogy supported by violence. Even for those who have
heard rumours about the fact, the experience lived in seclusion
(which can only later be shared with friends) is represented by the
children as a mutilation which will transform their body, shaping
their way of walking and dressing and limiting them in their
interaction with the other sex. This painful experience of life is in the
course of puberty accompanied by teachings that generate pride,
creating mechanisms of identification and belonging to the group
and at the same time of exclusion vis-à-vis those who did not perform
the lengthening of their vaginal lips. This means that, validating the
apparent empowerment given to this practice as the norm, the
domestication of the female body if naturalized, creating symbolic
agreements and investments.
It is in this sense, in which the lengthening of the labia constitutes
itself simultaneously as forced sex and as the force of sex, that
Foucault (1976) argues that power is understood as a strategy and as
an effect. The discourse as producer and product of power prompts
revolt, countervailing power. This means that the body is product of
the social and cultural order “against which we react, which we
accept, resist, negotiate, violate, both because culture is a political

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field and because the body itself is a biopolitical unit” (Goellner,
2007: 39).

b) Learning about sex: conformities and resistance

In learning about sex life, the bodies are shaped and disciplined, and
this set of norms constitutes itself in an ideology and a belief (Bordo,
1988). The power that is exerted on the body of women and men
brings about answers that render the power effective, thus allowing
control, as is visible in the pedagogy of sex education in the rites, in
which women learn to stretch in the manipulation of techniques to
please their partner and men learn about sex as a form of
domination. This is evident in the words of this boy in Mecúfi: “they
taught us that having sexual intercourse with a woman is like
flogging that woman” (Vasco 5).
If we make a comparative analysis of the discourses of boys and of
girls about sexuality, we observe that for boys it is clear that the ritual
ceremonies of the girls focus on teaching how to “treat” her husband
sexually, because they are the guarantee for the cultural survival of
the community, both in terms of the reproduction of the hierarchies
and of the preservation of the cohesion of the community. In this
sense, the function of the matrons is to ensure that the male mandate
for domination is fulfilled. At no time of the research we observed on
the part of the agents directing the female rites an intention to
transmit the importance of school and work, entailing the key role of
teaching about the sexualized body. It are these representations of
the value of the body which, establishing a subordinate condition
sometimes perceived by girls as power (and therefore these
mechanisms are effective), expressed in control over (her own and
her partner’s) body, which structure sexual identities normalized by
inequality.
The body supports inequality symbolically, embodying the
conventions and norms that transform it into a female body,
“appearing as interface between individuality, what is unique of her,
and the group, but equally between the biological and the social”
(Détrez, 2003:4). When discussing the power structure present in the

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relations between men and women, Grosz (2000) points out that the
binarity does not only oppose one sex to the other, but also
hierarchizes one as dependent on the other. The question does not
reside in the existence of two sexes, but in the classified opposition of
the superiority of one sex in relation to the other one. The body of
women is subjected for reproduction which imprisons her and
transforms her body into a docile body for the sexual satisfaction of
the other, as these remarks of a party organisation member in Mecúfi
clearly show: “a woman is obliged to have sex, even if she is cooking,
she has to leave the pans and go there” (Antónia 4). And a girl in
Macomia adds: “we were taught that, if you are tired, and you are
cooking, you are in the kitchen, you are cooking, and if your husband
becomes rigid, is even calling you come here, my wife, come here, you
have to leave the kitchen and go to satisfy him, we were taught like
that” (Vânia 7).
For this reason, when studying sexuality we observe that:
“Sex is not only an isolated or minor contingent variation of a
subjacent humanity. It is not trivial for the political and social
status of each one (…). Somebody’s sex cannot simply be
reduced to the primary and secondary sexual characteristics
(or contained by them) because somebody’s sex is different in
all functions - biological, social, cultural functions – if not in
opposition, certainly in its meaning” (Grosz, 2000: 83).
In the same way, Foucault (1976) states the dominant presence of
sex, from laws, policies and the narratives of novels, but it is kept
secret and it is this secret that gives it value.
Although in all spatial units studied the question of sexual attributes
is transmitted with the same appeal to female subordination, in the
Makhuwa Lomwé discourse in Zambézia Province the need is
evident to submit the rites to Islamic law, with respect to both the
obligation of circumcision and the dropping of all contents involving
explicit teachings of sexuality. This means that the instruments
symbolizing the penis are not shown, neither is the sexual act
imitated, conveying the idea that only just before marriage a few
instructions are given about the girl’s sexual behaviour and that

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“everything is written in the Koran”. However, as is shown by this
discourse of a Muslim Makhuwa matron, saying that, if girls only
learn to obey and respect their husband, this teaching is done
through sexuality as the central nucleus of femininity and
masculinity:
“A good woman is one who respects her husband. When she
respects her husband, gives her husband what he needs to be
satisfied, her husband will buy something to give to his wife, if
she then dresses what her husband bought she will be
beautiful. If she respects her husband, he will also respect
her” (Zita 10).
Regarding the question raised directly by the interviewer about the
possibility of the woman refusing sexual intercourse (for example,
when she is tired), the same interviewee said:
“No, she has to accept. Accept that her husband, when
entering the house is going to sleep in the bed. And you, when
he comes, you will warm up water, when you enter the bed,
you have to massage your husband while he is there. He likes
that, that’s how it is. Now, at daybreak your husband is going
wherever he goes, he will go to the shop and buy something, a
dress, to take it home” (Zita 10).
These remarks, in agreement with many others uttered by women
and men, ordering the relations and interactions in an apparently
non-discordant context, reveals the efficacy of the power exerted on
the body of women, through the symbolic representation of a
normality naturalized through mechanisms conforming subordinated
identities.
Observing more specifically the positions about the knowledge of sex
life that is transmitted in the rites, the existence of a confrontation
between various discourses, mainly in rural areas, became clear.
Though showing a generational differentiation, these discourses
express a kind of agreement with the meaning given to the practice of
sexuality. If for the masters and matrons, there is a whole system of
beliefs that represent sexuality and sex life as reproduction of the

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community, which is exercised through male power and control over
the female body, the interviewed girls had an ambiguous discourse
ranging from “I did not like it because it is violent” (Dora 2) to an
endured “acceptance”, thus projecting this violence symbolically to
resistance to domination or, in a less complex way, to the assumption
that sex life (and the exercise of a sexuality they do not control) is
part of the female condition.
The discourse of the partner as head of the family and of the
impossibility of taking sexual initiatives often appears associated
with a kind of knowledge allowing them to “manipulate” the body of
the other. As a girl said: “now in the rites, I learned very well not to
be afraid of men” (Vânia 7). This element does not mean greater
capacity of control over their body, on the contrary, it shows the
teachings they received about pleasing: not to be afraid of one’s
husband does not refer to a confrontation with male domination. On
the contrary, its purpose is the sexual satisfaction of the man,
because it is this knowledge of the other that allows her, through
submission, to be a woman. From this point of view, the same girl
student said: “a man has every right to ask for sex. For us, we can
only accept it, it is compulsory” (Vânia 7).
On the other hand, and this situation is common in both urban and
rural areas, the commitment undertaken by the family with a fiancé
or boyfriend implies his obligation to provide for the girl’s needs in
exchange for sex, frees the parents from their responsibility for the
survival of their daughters, thus transmitting a notion, constituting
itself in belief and practice, of the despoilment of the child as a
subject. This is evident in these remarks of an Education sector
officer in Cabo Delgado: “after the rites the girls will seek a material
provider and the boys will pursue money” (Achirafo 5). This
discourse lays bare the mechanisms focused on the use of the female
sex as a “species” of power, disconnecting girls from the importance
of choice, from the fight for opportunities, from the creation of a
subject of rights. In view of this discourse, it is without surprise that
the attitude of girls who in the barracas offer themselves to men
should be seen: looking us straight in the eye these adolescents do

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not feel any kind of constraint, because what they are doing is to fulfil
in a “free-and-easy” way what they had learned about their body.143
The teachings about sex should thus be understood in a context in
which, though the normative models come together for the
construction of identities that are meant to be fixed and unchanging,
there are within these models resources that, questioning them (like
the case of girls who go around barracas), do not question, at least
apparently, the structure of the teachings in the rites.
When it is stated that the initiation rites are a school of education for
life (Braço, 2008), aiming at harmony and the welfare of the
community, it should be recognised how this education is structured
by a system of references which, developing mechanisms and
constructing dispositions, format behaviours through mechanisms
that are organising and legitimating the gender order. This is visible
in these remarks of a group of girl students in Pemba:
“We learned very well how to massage the penis of our
husband. We did it with a clay stick. We, Makhuwas, can
enter into the rites without being virgins, but they taught us to
put a powder that dries, so the man is satisfied. It is very
painful, it may even bleed. (…) we should not take sexual
initiatives. It is the man who should do this, and the woman
cannot refuse because he is her husband. They taught me to
clean the penis of my husband, to prepare water for him to
bath” (Dora 1).
Another girl in the same focus group stated: “they taught me the
positions I should take, they had a kind of stick” (Dora 1). And
another one: “to dry his cock you wash it with salted hot water” (Zita
2). Or, as was said by a female informant in Cheringoma: “grind

143 “Barracas” are a kind of bars situated in the informal markets, where
pornographic films may be shown and where the presence of young girls is
generally accepted as permission for having sex.
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mafuta144 and put it on his member, this will cause lacerations, the
penis will become quite dry” (Daniela 4).
As a member of a Women’s League of a political party told us: ” in the
rites the children learn that they can already have a boyfriend who
may give them soap, buy clothes, so when she leaves she is already
looking for a man, she gets pregnant, she abandons schools” (Amélia
9). There seems to be a condemnation here of the contents of the
rites, but these people appear, once again implicitly, to be in
agreement with their performance, blaming the girls for becoming
pregnant and leaving school.
Although the girls have talked about the teachings of sex life it was
much more complicated to obtain information from them than from
boys. Their remarks were often made with lowered eyes, with many
interruptions, as if they were dealing with something hidden and
secret in the field of what remains unsaid. Their discourse normally
referred to an asexual body, while in the whole narrative there was
simultaneously an “enlargement” of sex.
In line with what we have just said about the knowledge of sex
transmitted in the rites, a young female official said:
“We know the body. So, when we are in front of the mirror,
and say that we have a female sex, that we can do something,
maybe to please, but I also think that from the moment of the
initiation rites and the matrons say that you have your sex
and you can use it if you like, there is a choice. I think that at
no time there is an obligation or there is pressure on you to do
that, but then, if we are talking about a minor who enters the
initiation rites, then I can say that she has no choice, in the
first place because she is a minor and she has not yet
considered other possibilities” (Ana 5).
The question raised by the interviewee has to do with the age and
with the decrease of options for the children. We think, however, that
if girls and boys would enter the rites at a later stage, these would

144Mafuta is an oil that may be extracted from plants, such as mafurra (fruit of an
oleaginous tree).
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lose a lot of their efficacy in formatting masculinity and femininity: it
is precisely because nowadays children have more access to
information and to take positions (though in most cases they cannot
exercise them) that the initiation rites start earlier, in an attempt to
eliminate resistance.
The sexual identity, expressed by gestures and attitudes, is
normalized by conventions that, constructing qualities, guide the
recognition of what is represented as being the dominant sexual
identity. Or, as was said by a Makhuwa Lomwé matron in Alto
Molocué:
“To clean the man’s member is very important, it is a reason
for divorce. If she does it well, he will give her a capulana. She
cleans, gets the new capulana, puts it on top of the man. After
cleaning, she pulls his fingers, pulls his arms, she is
massaging him. No, a woman can never be massaged” (Zita
5).
In agreement with the content of the teachings, the question of sexual
health is only raised in terms of hygiene (also perceived as
culminating sexual intercourse, traversing a cycle that starts with the
recognition of signs the woman should know how to interpret and
correspond to) in a context of the fulfilment of qualities and never of
access to and the exercise of rights: “they taught me not to use a
condom because it has worms” (Dora 1). In the discourses of some
interviewed girls and boys sometimes the idea is implied that
biomedical knowledge about the prevention of HIV and AIDS is not
part of the knowledge transmitted to the initiatees of both sexes. On
the contrary, there is a transmission of local myths about the
prevention of sexually transmitted diseases.
These remarks are in agreement with the discomfort of a female
official of the Health sector who, after mentioning that her work
experience with matrons is very positive, clearly showed that the rites
are an incentive to sex life and that the use of condoms is rarely
mentioned: “when we told the matrons that they should not talk so
much about sex life, they responded that this will side-track our
culture” (Ana 7). And in fact the matrons are right, because removing

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the component of sexuality from the rites (as it is today perceived and
transmitted) is to break with its core dimension. The problem begins
to be posed, not as a return to a cultural “purism” (which today
constitutes itself as a source of survival and demarcation of status for
many boys and girls), but in the strategies that should be developed
to strengthen those girls and boys who reject ritual violence, not only
from a material, but fundamentally a symbolic point of view, making
known the changes existing in the construction of new identities. As
said before, the cultural order presupposes normatives based on
dispositions that determine values and practices. In other words, the
cultural heritage is subject to changes that result from the interaction
between cultural, but also social, political and economic contexts and
processes.
As we could observe in the interviews, there is a clear idea that the
rites are a condition for marriage, for having sexual intercourse and
becoming pregnant, which constitutes (given the symbolic value
children represent) the culmination of the girls’ fulfilment. However,
some matrons and other key female informants stated repeatedly:
“Formerly they taught that, when you leave the rites, you are
not allowed to find a man, you will get spoiled, your womb
will break and your baby will not come out, but today it is no
longer like that, thy become pregnant immediately. (…) Today
we show them a big stick and we tell them: you see? Hold
your sex and, if you insert it, it will come out on the other
side, where you shit” (Zita 4).
Thus, they are in fact confronting and opposing information obtained
by the girls at school, in hospital or in the media, with the
information provided during the rites, which means putting the
knowledge created in the different spaces into conflict/tension. This
does not necessarily mean that a range of choices is presented to the
girls from which they can choose, negotiating or rejecting the
transmitted teachings (though, as we will see, this situation may also
occur), because when the myths and stereotypes are questioned they
resist and continue to serve as a pattern for identity classification.

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This situation raises another problem that has to do with the
constant decrease of the age for entering the initiation rites, because
if in the last few decades a decrease may somehow have occurred of
the age of the first menstruation, it appears to us that the main
reasons for the fact that the children start heir initiation much earlier
(in some regions where the Makonde group is dominant even before
their menstruation) are an attempt to legitimate knowledge,
coherently organising an order of knowledge embodied in the body
and expressed in the processes of subjectivation and interaction that
often lead to early pregnancy. The result of this may be that the
participation of children of 10 to 12 years of age in the rites leads to
the existence of a high percentage of obstetric fistulas in the
country.145
Also, whenever a pregnancy is unwanted in urban areas, it can often
be avoided and interrupted, resorting to health centres. In rural areas
this is more difficult, not only because there is no access to planning
and one resorts to traditional methods of abortion, but mainly
because pregnancy gives rise to a status of adulthood. Regarding this
situation of adulthood conferred by pregnancy there is an idea, which
mainly finds expression among the Sena group in the centre of the
country, that:
“Girls have to become pregnant very early, because, if she
passes that early age, she will have other problems and will no
longer be able to have children. Therefore girls get pregnant
very early, between 11 and 12 years, from their first
menstruation. When they are 18 they already have five, six
children. (…) After the rites the priority is to get married or

145Although it is a subject that only recently has started to be discussed and there are
no exact data (there are however indications that about 100,000 girls and women
are in this situation), the Health agents mention the existence of a significant
number of obstetric fistulas in girls who had their first delivery between 12 and 14
years of age. Mercedes Sayagues et al. (2011). Omitidas: Mulheres com fístula
obstétrica em Moçambique. Maputo: WLSA Mozambique.
354
 find a man and have children just like that, mainly daughters”
(Daniela 1).146
However, though many girls become pregnant by amorous blackmail
or because they want to “have a family”, one of the decisive factors is
the incitement to the early exercise of sexuality, as we saw in the
remarks above, engendered by the rites in the construction of the
girls’ identities. The consequences of early pregnancy, in addition to
school abandonment, are profound physical and psychological
traumas for the children:
“Many girls have obstetric fistulas and after that they can no
longer have children and they dry up. They get that trauma
and become sad girls, very sad girls, you look at their face and
ask them what’s wrong, but they say there is nothing, but are
unable to smile” (Daniela 1).
Sexuality is thus experienced in a violent way, being part of the vast
set of obligations a woman has to fulfil. In the rites girls learn to
subordinate themselves, whether through the teaching of strategies
to appease her man, or through sexual intercourse and the
application of the learned techniques, or through endurance and
tolerance in cases in which, even not knowing the reasons of their
husband’s anger, they should “accept” it. The normative guiding the
construction of the girls’ identity in the rites is clearly a way to
discipline them and guide them towards submissive values and
behaviours. This does not mean, and more due to modernity than to
traditional knowledge about the body acquired in the rites, that the
girls cannot resist or manipulate the knowledge learned and
imprinted on their body (as a mark of submission) to develop
mechanisms that, pleasing their partner, confers them some power,
due to a series of factors that often have to do with violence suffered
in the family or at school. This possibility of power and belonging,
which produces satisfaction by participation in the rites, is related to
cultural and social recognition and fundamentally to the usefulness

146 This reference to daughters shows how women conform themselves with a
strategy of family survival.
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of the body, reduced to sex, which is “rice and maize” (expressions
used in some ritual songs). What becomes increasingly recognizable
is that the ritualization of the body, whether in the dimension of
respect or in sex life, is marked by the construction of gender
identities and sexual identities, profoundly enchased in the
performed ceremonies.
As several authors such as Foucault (1987) state, sexuality is
interwoven with power. In the case of women this power comes from
their reproductive capacity and their sexuality. But this power is
limited and constrained by the qualities and mechanisms that
discipline the body. This means that the power of women is a
necessary power for the construction of relations of domination.
Women have the power of those who don’t have power, conforming
themselves, resisting or finding forms of countervailing power the
premise of which is more often than not the naturalization and
reaffirmation of male power, which includes some practices taught
during the rites such as that “after menstruation a woman should put
a towel to stay warm, keep her vagina well closed and this is what a
man likes most” (Zita 1).
On the other hand, the sexuality transmitted is perceived in a context
of the exchange of material goods for sex, in a process stripped of
affectionateness, or with a logic of affectionateness mediated by a
representation of the female sexual organ as a material asset, as was
said by a girl in Pemba, telling her own history:
“My mother died at childbirth. (…) So, after I had participated
in the rites, (…) I asked him [my father] for notebooks,
sometimes he would give them, sometimes not, and then I got
to know someone. He became my friend, he gave me room to
talk about myself, so I did. And he said, with what I earn I will
help you to pay for the university. (…) Within a month I
became his girlfriend. Today, when I meet him, I have already
finished the university, today I am unable to sleep with him
again. So I understand that somehow I was doing this because
I knew that I wanted to study, and he gave me money, he
bought a computer, and I finished my course. And related to

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 this situation of the initiation rites, I pleased him, I did
everything they taught me, and it worked. I did everything,
everything, everything, and each day with a lot of creativity,
you have to convince, you have to convince, it is an anything
goes, it is serious, it is every day, it is even if it were a
research, every day you have to dream, what will I do
tomorrow? (…) Then comes the next day, the day after, then
you have the idea to convince them to stay. (…) You become a
technicist, you must be a technician, you have to think, to
think to keep or to set your mind on what you have, it ends up
being, it ends up being a job. Others are working at the office,
doing everything to have their final report, you are also
drawing up plans, well, that’s it, this is more or less what
happens” (Ana 5).
Regarding the reaction of the family, the same interviewee said:
“I am a student, but I have to send money to my grandfather,
and he knows I don’t work, so where do I get this money
from? I start to use the laptop at home and my father doesn’t
ask me where I got this laptop from. I put the question to my
father. I tried to do this as a wake-up call, but nothing
happened. Well, I think I’m not to blame, but these things
make me very sad, so that when I look at those other women
today, I respect them, because the first thing I think is that
that woman must have some problem, something she needs,
so…” (Ana 5).
In this sense, Giddens refers to the “hijacking of the experience” as a
result of the “confinement of female sexuality and the generalized
consideration that male sexuality is not problematic” (Giddens,
2003:195). This means that in modernity the liberation of choices
depends on a series of factors that can or cannot allow the practice of
sexuality, because people continue to be subjected to social and
institutional control (though depending on the social and political
contexts) through mechanisms that, acting on the gender normative,
can prepare answers that in advance maintain or adapt the gender
inequalities.

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In the same way, with respect to boys, sexual teachings constitute one
of the central nuclei of the rites. They are however conducted, in spite
of the huge amount of violence, with a sense that intends to embody
the values of command and control over themselves and over
women:
“There in the rites they have something that looks like a hole
in a hammer and another thing which is a fruit (lipude), it
looks like a papaya but it is a climber. After cutting it, they put
a few hairs around the fruit to symbolize that it is an old
woman, and the hole in the hammer is a girl, well it is to say
that we cannot have intercourse with an old woman” (Vasco
9).147
The reasons that the trials through which boys have to pass are more
violent and harsh than those of girls fit into the male mandate for
domination, of which sexual initiative is an example: “I must take the
sexual initiative, because I am a man, a woman cannot do it” (Vasco
3). And as a teacher in Beira City also stated: “a woman who takes the
sexual initiative is an anachinhoca, which is an insect instigating her
to take the initiative” (Dinis 1). Or as was also said by a matron in
Inhaminga:
“A woman may feel desire, but she can wait for her husband
because it was her husband who liked her, it was her husband
who took her from her parents’ house to her own house. If she
takes the initiate there will be a big problem, your husband
will say you are a whore” (Dirce 5).
However, both sexes have learned how to identify the desire to have
sex, but it mainly becomes women to show that they recognise the
signs, with an assistant/“vigilant” role being reserved to the man
while she is making movements that are recognizable by men as
correct, as was said by a matron:

147The assertion of it not being allowed to have intercourse with an old woman can
be seen as a result of the danger and the myths constructed about the old age of
women (menopause).
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 “Men don’t like her to take the initiative, she has to wait until
her husband speaks, he is saying to the woman to get that
castor bean, to burn it, to start to pull, the husband is lying in
bed watching her, so when he needs her he just taps his
fingers. Now she knows that she must go to bed” (Zita 3).
This apparent passive role of men before the start of sexual
intercourse is expressed in domination with penetration and with all
the acts that follow sexual intercourse, such as cleaning the penis of
the partners. It is interesting to note that among groups with some
social status the discourse of the repression of female pleasure and of
the imposition of male initiative are mixed, with the possibility of
caressing the women during sexual intercourse, however without this
being perceived as a right of the woman to feel pleasure, but as proof
of male virility. In other words, female sexual pleasure is not
represented as a sharing of desire, but fundamentally as a more
sophisticated form of control over the body of women, as was said by
a boy in Búzi: “she will like it, so we will like it, we will be satisfied, it
is good for us” (Luís 3). This statement contradicts what a female
civil society informant in Cheringoma told us: “pleasure, it is possible
in town, but out there in the countryside they have never pleasure.
He mounts her and doesn’t even alert you, you only feel he is already
there, he is already on top of you, she will be frightened, he is already
there and you cannot react” (Daniela 4).
However, the domestication of the body also engenders resistance
and gives rise to strategies to revert the relations of domination, as
was made clear in a statement of a young woman in Beira City, who
said that, though not having been subjected to initiation rites, she did
the lengthening of her vaginal lips when already an adult, out of
curiosity, and because she had heard that is gave added value, with
an influence on her own and her partner’s pleasure. This apparently
means that the pressure of the dominant cultural normative for
female wholeness is not perceived by the informant as important for
the need felt for having matinji. The gender features based on the
body may allow a hiding of the structure of domination as well as
mean a change of this structure or of some of its components. The
result of the lengthening of the vaginal lips is both inclusion into the
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model and its change. In other words, the use of matinji may mean a
process in which knowledge, preshaping the development of
countervailing power strategies, confronts the immobile and fixed
gender relations, with its contingency and change. As in the case of
our interviewee, the practice of sexuality must be seen together with
access to work and to status, which ends up prompting a series of
emancipatory elements, such as when she says: “I bought a fridge,
my money has been invested according to my wishes” (Daniela 2),
subverting gender relations as power relations, and asserting herself
as a subject. This process of individuation is strengthened by the
political capital of the interviewee and by the contact she has with the
discourse of human rights, which may have led to the production of a
narrative of re-identification. Appropriating a mechanism the object
of which is the genderization of the biological body of women, the
discourse of this interviewee shows the possibilities to reverse the
patriarchal normative, or at least to shake it.148 Resisting the culture
and bringing about change, the body should be perceived through the
link between the social and cultural contexts and the subjectivation
expressed in the meanings that are given to the images of sex and
sexuality.
The same situation of contestation and resistance is found in the
discourses of some women teachers who construct a differentiated
narrative, allowing a departure from the excluding normativity, for
example when they refuse polygamy, even when practising Islam.
They state being allowed to take sexual initiative and to masturbate,
simultaneously identifying gender inequalities with respect to unpaid
household chores carried out by girls, contrasting it with the
possibilities created by the activities of the boys (it is common for
them to do odd jobs, help a neighbour, work in a workshop and
receive money). This discourse, though rare, is very important
because it touches on one of the core aspects of the gender order,

148It should be noted that the lengthening of the vaginal lips of this woman does not
fall within the process of ritualization to which girls are subjected. It was an adult
choice which, though it may somehow also be related to the dominant cultural
normative in the Central Region of the country, appears as liberating, using the
mechanisms of control as a strategy of countervailing power.
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which is the fact that the sexual division of labour is directly linked to
a normative which, essentializing and hierarchizing work, situates it
in a power order.
The body is effectively normalized, regulated, but as we saw above it
may bring about confrontation (reproduction versus pleasure) and
thus introduce changes in the gender relations. The hegemony of
patriarchal domination should be seen as a process that can be
questioned and transgressed. As Esteban (2004) states, all
empowerment of women involves the body, how they experience it,
how it is recognized, how they innovate and create. This author
insists on the need to go beyond the social structure and study the
possibilities to reverse the order, the transgressions, the capacity of
innovation, of confronting the accepted order with new experiences
and new meanings.
The body is a place of power for women but subject to the model that
conforms domination, while for men the starting point of the model
imposed on them is their domination, as is exemplified by some
matrons when referring to the existence of a sofa in the room, where
women sit down and open their legs to show their othuna to their
husband and thus rouse his desire. Some of the female interviewees
mentioned that, even if a woman has no desire, she should do this to
show that “she is ready”. As Begoña Pintos states, “the body as a
material reality defined in a social context; the body assumes and
represents again and again the set of interpretations received about it
(2001:9).
It is no coincidence that many boys, mainly in Cheringoma and Búzi,
mention constantly the sexual potency achieved by the use of plants
such as gonandzololo and kisagongo, which extend sexual
intercourse or allow a man to have it several times. While, from a
culturalist point of view, the use of sexual stimulants is meant to
represent the virility of the African man, engendering stereotypes (an
idea that is not only an attribute of a certain colonial anthropology)
that are based on a gratifying sexual intercourse, uncountable
interviews of boys emphasize male power as the basis for the use of
these plants. Although the existence of plants that constitute

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stimulants for women has very rarely been mentioned, from the
various narratives we can deduce a notion of masculinity imposed on
the sexualized body of women.
The discrimination of women is present both in the urban and in the
rural world, shaping a power relation that is adapting itself, despite
the existing possibilities and resources, including the discourse of
rights. Individuals embody the gender marks, but they are also
agents insofar as the practices are transformed. It is in this sense that
Esteban (2004) considers the body a subject and proposes to
elaborate methodologically physical itineraries that reveal the
conflicts and tensions between the cultural mechanisms of control
and the possibilities of contestation. The author states that this
methodological relocation to the body will allow to understand how
manhood and womanhood “are not stable and fixed categories
without splits” (Esteban, 2004: 1), as is for example observed in
urban centres, where some girls are pressured on the part of other
girls to have sexual intercourse, while they are often insulted or
provoked, as happens in Quelimane Town where they are called
“mother Maria”. This situation may mean both an agreement with
the ritual teachings and a challenge and a form of contestation and
liberation from the cultural and social stimulus for sexual initiation.
However, and this situation is more visible in rural areas, a girl who
refuses the blackmail of sexual intercourse, hears from her male
friends things like these, as told by a girl in Guara-Guara, in Búzi
District: “[He said] you don’t want to sleep with me, because you
used my money? Should I also sleep with you to pay the money you
used? And after that he beat me” (Luísa 3).
We observe that through the teachings of sexuality and through the
role it occupies in the ritual process, female desire is constrained by
mechanisms that place women in a situation of risk and “alert” with
respect to sexual intercourse: the pleasure of the woman is a
corollary of male desire, i.e., it occurs or may eventually exist in
addition to the efforts that the woman makes to control the
“situation” to please the man. Although it is object of policing,
because it is a condition of masculinity (the constant display of
virility as a cultural obligation), male sexuality is free and licit,
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contrary to surveillance that is exerted on female sexuality.
Penetration into the female body is one of the most important forms
of the manifestation of a sexuality confined to domination (of which
the deposition of sperm in the body of the woman is an example) to
which affectionateness is frequently marginal.
The power that is exerted on the body occurs in a relation in which
men and women use strategies of domination and counter-
domination, or as Foucault calls it, insubmission. Therefore, as
mentioned above, reaction to control is in itself a form of control and
of a subjection of the self, as is clear in the question of pleasure, in
which the woman “knows” that pleasure can only be felt insofar as
the other is satisfied and insofar she has compensation, for example
expressed in the offering of goods or, to be more precise, in the
pacification of the house. This situation is particularly visible in the
rites, as the large majority of the female interviewees reacted
negatively to the possibility of feeling pleasure alone or with other
men “because a man doesn’t like to enter a place where the dirt of
another man is present” (Antónia 2). Therefore, a woman does not
seek satisfaction of her sexual needs, but it may occur, always and
when they are “imprisoned” in a relation with a partner; it is in this
context that pleasure may occur, in the framework of the entire
power structure that shapes their interdictions and limits. In this
line, as was said by a girl in Pemba:
“In the rites they say at no time that you have to learn to give
pleasure to yourself, but rather to give pleasure to another.
What they say, for example, is that you have to make love
each time your partner wants to. Isn’t it? You have to be
obedient, you have to cook whenever he wants to eat, so,
everything is directed at obedience. (…) A woman is not
allowed to show desire, it is even said that she should avoid
asking, because it may show that a woman…isn’t it” (Ana 5).
It is however interesting that some of our younger female
interviewees, such as women teachers or even girl students, said that
a woman has the right to ask for sex, but as was said by one of the
female civil society informants in Pemba: “this depends on the heart

363
of the man to accept [otherwise] there are beatings, everything is in
the hands of your husband” (Amélia 5).
In the same order of ideas, when we talked to a Makonde matron her
position was very clear with respect to the impossibility of a woman
showing desire to have sex:
“A woman cannot be the first one to ask because, when she is
the first one to ask, the man automatically thinks that this
woman is a prostitute. This already instils mistrust in her
husband, because after all, my woman already has the
courage to ask me for sex, which means that when she is with
other men she does the same” (Arminda 1).
The same discourse of the impossibility of taking the initiative to
sexual intercourse is observed in these remarks of a Makhuwa girl in
Mecúfi: “she cannot take the initiative because the man starts to
distrust her” (Vânia 4). To a question about the possibility of a
woman refusing to have sexual intercourse, the same interviewee
responded: “that man will be very suspicious, he will normally say, ah
so you already made love to another person, therefore you don’t want
(…) and he may beat you” (Vânia 4).
There are however changes, mainly in towns and among women
teachers, in the sense that there is a right to sexual pleasure and to
sexual initiative, as was said by a female teacher in Beira City: “today
everybody lives in a modernized world” (Deolinda 10). The
transmitted idea of modernization may both mean the possibility of
choice and impunity with respect to the choices made, and a
disorganization of the social order. This means that modernity is a
recourse people use to assert positions and values, producing a
balance between the elements defining belongings, whether ethnic or
of gender, with a variety of sources of information and lifestyles
allowing them to embody new representations and practice new
behaviours.

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c) Sexual initiation, early marriages and school
dropout

The legislation in force in Mozambique stipulates that minority ends

at the age of 18, so that from this age marriage is allowed (Family
Law, Law 10/2004 of 25 August, article 30). Therefore, all marriages
contracted before this age can only be accepted exceptionally. Data
published by the INE indicate that in Mozambique 18% of the
children had married before reaching the age of 15 and 56% before
having completed 18 years (UNICEF, 2011). The table presented
below is representative of the high rate of early marriages of girls
before the age of 15 and of the high rate of incidence in comparison
with the Southern Region of the country (where female initiation
rites are not performed), which supports the argument that the
initiation rites are an important factor, mainly in the rural areas. The
overall average for the country is 21.4% for the rural areas and 11.2%
for the urban areas.
Table 4: Child marriages contracted before the age of 15, by
province
Province
Niassa 24.2%
Cabo Delgado 29.6%
Nampula 20.6%
Zambézia 22.3%
Tete 19%
Manica 20.8%
Sofala 18.6%
Inhambane 9.4%
Gaza 8.8%
Maputo 5.8%
Province
Maputo City 3.9%
Source: INE, 2008.

In the same way, this document informs that 34% of the female
adolescents aged 15 to 19 are mothers. It states that “in absolute
numbers more than 700.000 girls aged 12 to 14 are married or live
together”, adding that “early marriages are associated with social risk
factors, since they help to explain the incidence of dropouts (…). The
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dropout rate of 15 to 19-year old female adolescents is over 40%”
(UNICEF, 2011). Although the document states that early marriages
are directly related to the patriarchal culture and to practices that
perpetuate asymmetric gender relations, it lacks depth and it also
fails to establish relations between the difficulties in the application
of legislation and public policies and the existence of a continuous
uncritical appreciation of the traditional institutions.
The Human Development Report, The Rise of the South: Human
Progress in a Diverse World (2013), indicates that Mozambique
occupies the 185th position (in the framework of countries with the
lowest Human Development Index (HDI) and among 187 countries
that were object of this study). With respect to the HDI figure
(0.327), the Gender Inequality Index (GII) is 0.582, corresponding to
a classification of 125. This UNDP document also reveals, though the
percentage of women in Parliament is 39.25%, that only 1.5 % of
women has at least secondary education against 6% of men (between
2006 and 2010).
In a study conducted about early marriages, Nhantumbo et al. (2010)
relate early marriages clearly with gender violence, considering that
the socialization mechanisms structure roles that exclude women
from rights, prescribing their expectations and shaping their future.
For the authors “early marriage constitutes a phenomenon that
develops directly linked to the process of the construction of female
identity emphasizing the subordination of women” (Nhantumbo et
al., 2010: 23).
Regarding sexual initiation, the research conducted by us established
that, irrespective of spatial units (being however more evident in the
rural areas) and due to a series of already above-mentioned factors,
the initiation rites constitute a mandate for the start of sex life, not
only by what they learn, but by the pedagogy used in the
transmission of knowledge and by the meanings given in the
construction of female adulthood.
I.e., girls do not only start sex life earlier because they have
participated in the rites, but because the rites stimulate their
curiosity and more than that, they provide the arguments for

366
premature sexuality. Although the matrons have stated that “we have
only said that they are ceremonized girls and must not become
pregnant just like that” (Arminda 3), what is taught and how it is
taught and, mainly, the fact that the status of adulthood is made
concrete with pregnancy and marriage, brings many girls to consider
that having sexual intercourse very early is not only legitimate (12 to
13 years), but to this legitimacy the support of the communities is
added, provided that the practice of sexuality is controlled by the
family (as is the case with early marriages). Therefore, and we state it
once again, what is at stake is not sexual intercourse or knowledge
about their body, and mainly about the body of the other. The
question is that this knowledge is to be applied in a gender order in
which the power relations develop in a context of female
disempowerment, as is evident in this statement:
“She had her first menstruation and her aunts informed her
grandmother. They took her to the bush, where she stayed
during the entire menstrual period, receiving teachings about
how she should take care of her husband, how she should
learn to be a woman, I don’t know what. And on the final day
of the menstruation, she came out of the bush with a group of
women, her grandmother with a cheap capulana, a red scarf
on her head, a sign that she is now ready for a man. And they
pass through the whole village, the whole world gets to know
it, the whole world sees it. It is as if it was a party, then they
took her to her house, and there was already a man waiting
for her. So this is very complicated! She left the house, she
started getting involved with men very early. And she had her
first child when she was 13 and she thinks until today that it is
her body, and that with her body she may satisfy everything
and everyone. Now she is 25, she already has 4 children,
which is a sign that she … I don’t know, there in the initiation
rites I don’t know what she learned, that she can do anything
with her body” (Leocádia 2).
In the same way, a female teacher in Guara-Guara, Búzi District,
stated that the rites favour the premature start of sex life: “for
example, before the rites I didn’t feel anything, even when seeing a
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man I didn’t feel anything, but after the rites I started to dream about
them” (Deolinda 2).
When at the end of the rites the matrons say “you are ready” or “you
should not be afraid of a man”, this means that a social role and
function for the production of children (as a resource and as identity
affirmation) and dependence on male sexual desire was ascribed to
the girls. However, in the discourse of matrons a great animosity is
observed against girls who after the rites start sex life in an
uncontrolled way, as this discourse shows:
“For example, what forces us in these modern days is the
evolution because a girl wants to use trousers and trousers
means money, so she has to go with António who gives her
200, the trousers cost 700, so she has to complete those 700,
she has to go to João, who is already telephoning her. Love, I
want to see you, I feel homesick for you. [And she:] All right,
come there at 18 hours. She goes, she has not yet washed the
liquid inside her, and goes to meet another man, what the
other man has you don’t know, neither what the other man
will leave behind, you don’t know, she is already with
António. The second time she completes 400, to have 700 she
still needs 300. It is true, the girls are like this nowadays, they
sell their body, they don’t have sex for love … no, they have it
out of self-interest, for an objective, therefore there are these
diseases. It is normal for a girl to go to bed with 3 to 4 men to
complete the value of a pair of trousers. Then she goes to the
Nigerians and buys these trousers with a short zip, thus, come
back, leave it for tomorrow. She starts another search to find
shoes because she cannot use those, people call them narrow
bottle” (Zita 1).
This narrative shows, in addition to the conflicts between a tradition
contextualized in a past that one wants to be present and new
realities (not susceptible to being adjusted), the strategies developed
by the girls, from the teachings they receive in the rites: the
objectives of the rites are questioned and manipulated as a recourse
by the girls, which constitutes precisely the contrary of their function,

368
to order and regulate behaviours. This must not be used, as some
culturalists denounce, to acquit the rites of the construction of
subordination and gender hierarchization, serving precisely to show
that, taking into account the current contexts, the initiation rites
stimulate the strengthening of a gender order expressed in a
particularly violent way: the questioning of the order and the
strategization developed by the girls continue to be done, according
to the standard of sexual teachings (transmitted in the rites) as
countervailing power, within the same model of inequality.
Corroborating violence with what is done in the teaching of identity,
stimulating obedience, with the negation of the self as a subject, a
Makhuwa Lomwé girl in Gurué, confessed:
“I was dozing and the mistress said: ah… because you, that
thing, she said, I don’t want you to talk to me. She undressed,
let me fall down, slept in my belly, started to dance there
while she had, what’s its name… her period. All that dirt there
right on top of me. So from that moment I started to hate that
woman” (Júlia 1).
While male initiation corresponds to the initiation of virility that
contains exercises of domination in the field of sexuality (but not
only that), with respect to women it corresponds to a subordinate
condition, even if this subordinate condition produces elements that
may shape strategies of counter-domination, while the gender
structure that organizes inequality between the sexes is maintained.
The incentive for sexual intercourse that the rites transmit and not
for the practice of sexuality by choice and as a right, is expressed well
in these remarks of a young female State official in Pemba Town:
“From the moment I entered the initiation rites, I already
observed it, they say that the girl is already grown up, and
somehow her parents stop buying a school uniform, they stop
enrolling her. So I think that the girl feels somehow obliged to
do something for herself, in addition to what her family does.
So I think that it is made easy, because she has also already
the acceptance of the family, if she appears pregnant at some
moment, for her parents it ends up being a relief, because

369
 they have the idea that she is already grown up, the moment
has come to leave the house because she has already
performed the initiation rites. So it ends up being a
stimulator, as if to say, she can marry, the moment has come
to leave her parents’ house” (Ana 5).
The mothers are often reproached for not only stimulating marriage,
but also the exchange of goods for sex, as this discourse of a girl in
Beira City shows: ”I had a friend whose mother said, I won’t give you
any soap, I’m not prepared to suffer for you, solve it yourself, alone
(…) and that girl ended up becoming pregnant when she was 14”
(Luísa 2). Another female informant clearly relates the families’
stimulus of the sale of sex for goods:
“We have no money, I have five children, what will they do
tomorrow? Open your legs for notebooks, if he even brings
fish to the house… mum, uncle gave me 20, (…) and you will
not even beat her, you take the money and start cooking, it is
absolute poverty” (Zita 1).
As we saw in other interviews, poverty is a much used argument, but
it can only be understood in a context in which the girl’s body
constitutes, as was said by a male informant in Beira City “crates for
her father” (Dimas 2). In other words, any tolerance with this
argument (frequently found in public discourses) reveals complicity
with the violation of children’s rights and a material and symbolic
contempt for the female condition.
Many initiated girls state that after the rites their “friends abandoned
school, because their parents married them, others become pregnant
at once and also stop studying, they already feel a woman” (Vânia 1).
But while this happens, there are signs that girls increasingly ask
women teachers to help them not to marry. This situation raises the
problem, first, of the need for intervention in the community on the

370
part of State sectors, and second, of the creation of mechanisms that
allow these girls to continue studying.149
However, in towns, though a premature start of girls’ sex life is also
observed, it may not lead to drop out from school, be it because there
are more means to take a decision about pregnancies or because
many families don’t consider the practice of sex by girls a justification
to leave school, contrary to what happens in some rural areas where
girls’ sex life is a strategy for family survival, whether through forced
unions due to debt or a promise of the parents or because the rites
transformed them into “ready” women who have to participate in the
sustenance of the families. As a girl in Búzi told us:
“I have a boyfriend, his family came and brought “paratu”,
they put some money and he buys a school uniform,
notebooks and a bag. (…) As he already gave me things, he has
the right to go to the school to control me and threaten me
when I am chatting with any boy student” (Luísa 4).
It is because of the “paratu” that when men decide (many of them
returned from South Africa) that girls should be given to them, even
if they are attending school, “the parents cannot do anything because
they would have to return the money, something that never happens,
because the money has been used for household expenses” (Dilma
10). However, Health agents reported cases of girls whose parents
want to marry them and who demand that the man does a HIV and
AIDS test, either because they heard that he was sick, or because they

149 In Búzi Town the research team was told that on the initiative of a local
organisation complaint boxes were installed in all schools, where girls and boys
can deposit their complaints. Already in the first month, a girl asked the school for
help because her parents wanted to marry her. From a joint intervention of
teachers and the District Directorate of Education with the community leaders and
the girl’s family, it was possible, at least apparently, to reverse the situation.
However, during the week in which we were in the district, this girl was not at
school and we were unable to communicate with her. We called the attention of the
school directorate for this fact, but we had not yet been given an account of the
situation. Well then, it appears to us that there should be a kind of accompaniment
that could prompt more accusations and more community involvement. If not,
these situations can even show the students of both sexes that it is useless to lodge
complaints, underlining that the school and the State are unable to fulfil their
function.
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heard about the importance of the test at school. In one of the cases
in which it was confirmed that the man was seropositive, the parents
wanted to force the girl to marry him under the argument that he had
already paid the “paratu”. The question arising here is not so much
the commitment assumed with the man, which had been broken due
to the assumption of the disease, but the honour of the family,
appearing in the eyes of the community as failing the norm,
constituting itself as a family without honour, irrespective of the
reasons that have led to the breach of the promise.
Many teachers and Education sector staff relate the participation in
the rites directly to school abandonment, as was said by this teacher
in Pemba Town:
“The girl leaves the initiation rites and there is a strong idea,
but there in the rural areas, (…) in which the parents or the
women themselves, an education is introduced that she is
grown up, she can do anything, do anything concerning sex,
so exactly this girl can marry. (...) It can be in love and the
parents say, you are already too big to attend school, you are
losing time, while they incite the girl to marry (...) and occupy
her place in the household. So, it is from here that people
consider that part of the initiation rites promotes school
abandonment” (Álvaro 1).
There are, though less often, teachers who indicate that the initiation
rites also exert pressure on boys to start working, to leave home, as is
expressed in the remarks of this teacher in Mecúfi:
“These initiation rites contribute because, when they go there,
they usually get another education that they are already
grown up, it may be the father saying this, it may be the
mother saying it. It is the tendency even when they leave the
rites, the student wants to assert himself, the father usually
says, you are already grown up, now you should have your
own house, you should have your wife, and he then starts to
follow his father’s behaviour, which makes him abandoning
school, he no longer goes to school to study, he starts to think
that he has to take care of a house, heavy work, he abandons

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 school, he starts to work in the machamba, he starts to go
fishing to sustain himself” (Álvaro 2).
The correlation between early marriages and initiation rites is a
reality established by the study, but it does not explain the reasons
because in other regions where no rites are conducted, as Matutuíne
Town, Maputo Province, the existence of early marriages is observed.
We think that it is necessary to consider three orders of other factors
(equally present in other regions). The first one has to do with the
fact that the socialization of the children, irrespective of their areas of
origin, is directed to functions that have to do with a cultural order
which distinguishes and differentiates them with respect to rights
and opportunities to exercise these rights.150 The second order of
factors may be explained, as already mentioned, by the parents’ fear
that the start of their daughters’ sex life (outside their control) will
result in the loss of important gains from the marriage of these girls,
gains that should not only be seen from a material point of view, but
also from the point of view of social and cultural recognition. The
third order of factors has to do with the level of information that the
families already have, as a male informant in Beira City told us:
“today the parents already know that they can marry their daughters
earlier, without their sexual organs getting rotten or the mother
dying” (Dimas 5). While there are girls who oppose themselves
successfully to forced marriage, in many remarks we observe a
certain fatalism: “those who do not accept are expulsed from home
and thus become prostitutes” (Luísa 3).
Many teachers observe that after the rites the children are more
“respectful”, more silent, they don’t participate in the lessons, they
keep their eyes lowered, as if they were in a space that no longer
belongs to them, awaiting their destination: “when you leave the
rites, you are already grown up, so any man thinks that you are ready.

150 Manychildren in Matutuíne are removed from school, sometimes while sitting for
end-of-year tests, due to the indebtedness of the parents with men, most of them
workers in South Africa, who come at the end of the year to Mozambique to collect
the debts, i.e., to take the children to their houses, becoming their wives. This is
almost always done with the complicity of the girls’ families, while any intervention
by teachers is considered by the community as interference.
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So the parents want her to marry. She also wants it, with those
counsels of the elderly she no longer thinks about school” (Álvaro 2).
A matron adds: “only this is said by the parents, they have a man who
wants to marry you, whether you like it or not, be quiet, you cannot
refuse” (Zita 2).
In the course of these remarks we note the existence of tension
between the function of the initiation rites and the new realities
brought by modernity, by the market, by the Constitutional State and
its organs, such as education. This tension, which in the discourse
sometimes appears as a conflict, shows how the shaping of the social
roles of boys and girls, prepared to live in contexts that have little to
do with past realities, are perceived with some constraint, even in the
case of matrons and masters who defend a power, which falls apart
vis-à-vis the confrontation with the demystification of the meanings
that are given to the traditional practices. The attempts to co-opt,
adjust and reconcile modes of thinking and living, expose the
mechanisms that, with increasing consistency, are no longer capable
to impose behaviours on the girls and boys that are normative of
their identities. Even when the discourses reveal fatalism and an
impossibility of change, reality takes charge of uncovering the
conflicts between the identity dimensions constructed in the rites and
the new elements that girls and boys will look for in other spaces and
sources of information.
However, and we say it once again, the awareness of the problems
brought about by an initiation that subjects the girls and boys
participating in it is not a sufficient reason for not sending their
daughters and sons to the rites. A female teacher said it like this: “I
took my daughter to the rites, otherwise they could think that I am an
agitator and that I don’t respect tradition”. As there is no courageous
and stimulating political position of access to and the exercise of
children’s rights, clearly rejecting that harmful cultural practices
should be fought and punished, this narrative, full of ambiguity, is an
example of the efficacy that the renewal of the cultural bodies is
having in the last few years, in which the cultural question has served
as an appeal to unanimous political and ideological action.

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It is also interesting to observe that, though the majority of the boys
doesn’t show any sympathy for the situation of girls who are obliged
to marry prematurely, which is revealing of the influence of the rites
on the naturalization of violence,151 there appear in any case boys who
revolt against early marriages, attributing the responsibility for this
to the families and taking up a position against the teaching of
sexuality in the rites. This is all the more curious as, even for these
boys, the discourse of culture and identification became so powerful
and so restrictive of new choices, new ways of life, that it impedes
them from finding or reflecting about alternatives. We think that this
situation is related to the political context of intolerance which,
transposed to culture, creates a need for homogenization, under
penalty of being marginalized by the community.
However, and we must mention it as important information to retain,
a group of Makhuwa Lomwé teachers in Alto Molocué, contrary to
all other informants who ambiguously proposed to remove “only” the
contents about sexuality from the rites, clearly exposed their
perplexity and dissatisfaction, not only with the information
transmitted there, but also with the results and the agents
transmitting it:
“I would like to comment a bit about the main theme. The
question of values … we are talking about initiation rites.
What was a value yesterday, may today not be a value because
what happens, what often happens is that there is a “sex-
centeredness”, the intention to see everything in relation to
the sexual aspect. Why is this? As my colleagues were saying,
in the initiation rites of times past, in which the boys and girls
had to respect this aspect, to question this aspect meant to
violate an established rule. Not today, therefore society has to
sacrifice some aspects. We, as members of society, should
sacrifice some aspects that are not helpful at all. What do I
gain, taking an adolescent to the rites? We have to consider
which values, in which context this is transmitted, in which

151“The parents already spent all the money on the rites and don’t have any left for
her to keep studying” (Francisco 1).
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 context. Is it that what we are transmitting will be positive, is
important for good governance? Thus it is this what is at
stake, they are inculcating into an adolescent girl who had not
yet started sexual activity that survival is on the basis of sex.
(…) I remember, I performed the initiation rites in my home
ground, in Milange, we were obliged to embrace a tree as if it
were a woman, to make some movements, as if it were a
woman. Well, I have studied this, but what is it? What is the
impact of what they did to me? There is thus a serious
problem in the idea of initiation rites” (Francisco 4).
Forced marriages (as also happens with excisions and the
lengthening of the labia minora), which may be explained in the same
context of recognition of the legitimacy of male domination (Héritier,
2000), are a harsh reality that teachers, education sectors and
members of civil society organisations at local level associate with the
initiation rites.
There is a perception in the large majority of the interviews that the
families have exclusive competence to take decisions about the
initiated girls, which constitutes a right that cannot be questioned
(even not by the traditional leaders). This clearly shows how the
structure of the rites constructs the adult through a pedagogy that
deprives them of rights, strengthening obedience and paternal
dependence. The decision about the child belongs to the family, even
if this means to exclude it from rights. The argument of money spent
with the child for food and the satisfaction of its basic needs is
frequently used to remove the child from school. The expression
“leaving paratu” (that we have been quoting frequently) means that
there was a man in the house of the parents (the child may be five
years old, or less) and left some money that will be increased
gradually until the end of the rites, then requiring that the girl is
given to him. This situation is so trivial and considered very fair, and
in fact it is, in the context of the patriarchal culture. In this regard we
were informed that when in a meeting with State leaders in Búzi
District the question was raised of a girl having refused to be given to
her payer, who then lodged a complaint with the leaders, the solution
found by the representative of the Mozambican State was that the
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parents had to give back the money received. This situation which
today could be object of a fictional story (given that with respect to
the legislation in force the only possible answer of the State would be
to arrest the parties involved in the trafficking), shows the complicity
with the crime, and more than that, it reveals the mechanisms used
in the gender order, naturally perceived as fair. In the question of
early marriages, at no time the children’s rights enter into the rules of
the game (Ana 1).
On the other hand, some teachers, when trying to avoid school
dropouts, tried to talk to these men with the objective of letting the
girls study, having received this answer:
“They were threatening, these traders threatened the family,
well, if it is like that, I will leave your daughter at home, the
family felt uneasy because money would cease to enter, and
we teachers we cannot do anything” (Álvaro 3).
Many examples of school abandonment on the part of girls were
given by the teachers, as a discouraged teacher told us: “you see, in
this school there are today 21 girls and 18 boys, while in grade 7 there
are 14 girls and 31 boys” (Armindo 4).
Some civil society organisations are doing very praiseworthy work to
combat early marriages, but the results have not corresponded to the
efforts put in. There is a lot of resistance on the part of the parents
and the communities who consider that civil society is interfering
with the life of the community, endangering their autonomy. This
means that, depending on how the link between State powers and the
community is brought about, on the benefits that all parties can
receive from the intervention of the organisations, the populations
are not very sensitive to change.
However, we have interviewed girls in Búzi Town who had managed,
through relatives living in the provincial capital, to resist to early
marriages. At the time of the interview they were between 14 and 15
years old, having been forced around 12, 13 years. When questioned
if they had performed the initiation rites, all of them said yes, but
that they intend to stay at school and study to have a job. The interest

377
of these cases is the existence of people belonging to the same
extended family, who protect and stimulate the girls, paying some
money to the parents “as compensation”. This means that these
children were capable of developing mechanisms of non-conformity
with the teachings in the rites. When we insisted about what would
have motivated them to refuse marriage, some of them said, smiling,
that the men were very old and had AIDS: “I was 14 and he was 40”
(Matilde 4). Another girl said that she had learned it on the radio, in
church, at school, emphasizing the role of the Brazilian soaps where
she saw that girls had rights. When I questioned them about the
heroine of the soap, they responded with conviction that she was the
scoundrel of the story, i.e., she was the one behaving herself in a
more or less marginal way, with respect to the norms imposed by the
family. This situation must be understood in the context of the
individuation of the processes of identity construction, in order that
they contributed to a series of factors that allowed delegitimizing the
power structure in which they live and circulate. But also these girls
are unable to break with the images constructed about the qualities
of femininity conferred by culture, stating that they will send their
daughters to the rites to be in a good light by the community and in
order that they will not be given back by their husbands. However, in
the interstices of the norm resistance is being constructed and
identities are being reshaped, as is shown by this statement of a
young woman, daughter of a Sena father and mother, who refused to
lengthen the labia and to participate in the initiation rites:
“My father was a military man and we travelled a lot, but
when I was seven I went to stay with my grandmother. When
I was 9 or 10 years old my grandmother forced us girls, me
and all my female cousins, to pull the labia minora of the
vagina. (…) And it was very painful, isn’t it? When I peed I
always felt a burning pain. So, I felt as if something was going
to be different in me, so I ended up desisting. And each week
she also forced us, all the girls, to show it, you see? If we were
still virgins or not. We made a queue, then my grandmother
called us to open our legs and she would see if we had already
lost our virginity or not. I desisted, perhaps because I was a

378
 girl, perhaps I could say I was an informed girl because I was
born in a military environment, my father was a military man,
we were well-considered, isn’t it? So I think it was this
influence, and also at school, I always studied in these public
schools, I was always a girl who was always ahead, so they
thought that we were not complete to serve a man. But it isn’t
true, I never felt like that, I never felt something abnormal in
the relations I have, always the only thing I already felt, it is
that situation, I don’t know if it is part of the rites, of women
using those herbs? Or they put them to be able to reduce the
size of the vagina? Well then, in some cases, some of them
demand it, I don’t know what, they demand it, saying that you
have to put this, but it is that thing, I really don’t know!
Because sometimes women are disturbed, so people feel
obliged to do everything to satisfy. Even after my first
marriage, I had this education, but at a certain moment I saw
that things were difficult for me. And as I am an informed
person and I was always very daring and very much inclined
to involve myself in the associative movement, I was gradually
able to see that no, that attitude isn’t correct, isn’t it? So I was
always contrary, what my parents said, I was always contrary.
I ended up opting for myself and I divorced and I have already
married again, they have already criticised me a lot, they have
criticized me a lot, my father stopped talking to me for a year”
(Leocádia 2).
This statement shows the importance of the contexts for the
construction of the resistance of this young woman. Belonging to a
family acknowledged for their participation in the armed struggle for
national liberation, frequently moving to another region, without
time or political predisposition for traditional cultural inclusion,
attending school from a very early age, this young woman was
capable to resist to the lengthening of the vaginal lips and
participation in the rites. However, her reference to plants that
narrow the vagina may point to pressures produced by her relations
with partners who were not subjected to the same order of values as
the interviewee (in the interview she referred quite a lot to the

379
control of her former husband over her work, the daily use of time
and his control over her body), which seems to have originated her
divorce. It is curious to observe that the transgression accepted by
the parents, with respect to her refusal to participate in the rites, is
limited, when it concerns breaking with the gender order (as
happened when she divorced her first partner). In other words, the
appropriation of modernity does in itself not mean a change of the
gender relations, but rather the possibility to readjust them,
reshaping some hierarchies and more explicit forms of gender
violence.
The feeling of refusal or at least of consciousness about the violence
of the rites has several times been aired during the research, as can
be observed in these remarks of a girl in Macomia who, when asked
whether she knew someone who had abandoned school because of
the rites, responded: “I myself, I am already an adult, it is enough to
be ceremonized, your father will say now you can already have a
husband, go and let him bring rice to our house, we will no longer
give you anything, even notebooks, but I am resisting, I am asking”
(Vânia 8). Some of these girls are forced to prostitute themselves to
be able to keep studying, they know that they are ill reputed in the
community, but they pursue a destination freeing them from
subjugation: studying, the aspiration to leave the district, waning to
be somebody, are expectations for these girls motivating them not to
abandon school.
In the entire description the girls and boys gave of the ritual
teachings, the existence of transgressions became clear, for example
denunciations by adult informants of the behaviour of boys and girls,
revealed by the little assistance given by them to their families, as
well as by the “uncontrolled” way in which girls exercise sexuality.
However, the transgression of the girls and boys, expressed in the
clothes they use, in how they socialize, in their choice of partners, in
their circulation through various spaces, is also codified and has to be
accepted by their pairs. In this scope sexual initiatives and the games
of seduction are present, which can only be practiced and accepted in
specific contexts and with limits, under penalty of exclusion. New
norms are created that substitute the old interdictions but that may
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also constitute themselves in interdictions, if they exceed the jointly
accepted limits. We should also take into account the possibilities
and opportunities allowing that each of them may act against or go
beyond the inculcations that were imposed on them, and the
strategies that may question or break with the old order, negotiating
new ways of interaction. One of the cases told by a female teacher in
Inhaminga about a girl, who fled from the rites, clearly shows how
transgressions are being produced:
“I have a cousin from Nampula, she was studying in Maputo
and attending grade 8. Her parents sent her to Nampula to
perform the rites and she left, she said she didn’t want to, and
her parents became very angry because they had already
spent a lot of money for the godmother and the matron. When
she returned, her parents said you are no longer our daughter
and she said, it’s all right, I will stay on the street. And now
she is well married and has her licentiate degree, her parents
even divorced because her father said that it was her mother’s
fault that she had not performed the rites, but today my
cousin is happy with her marriage and with her work”
(Deolinda 20).
Finally, it is important to point to three big groups of questions
concerning the teachings transmitted by the initiation rites and the
meanings given to them by the various groups of interviewees. The
first group has to do with the construction of identity and with the
role the rites perform in the preservation of a past through the
transmission of the habitus, subjecting new realities and experiences
according to a principle of continuity. By the attribution of
characteristics defining behaviour, the rites seek to shape identities,
constituting themselves, as several authors state when discussing
national identities (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982), in a system of
cultural representation defining belongings and mobilizing
individuals for the production and reproduction of a normative that
is referenced and naturalized. It is in this sense that the whole idea of
diversity is conceived as a risk, because it allows decentralization and
identity fragmentation.

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It is in this context that through the rites individuals learn to break
symbolically with childhood, re-establishing the social order through
their actions and the meanings (that are given to them), which is
intended to be fixed and unalterable. This means that the rites not
only confirm the social order, but also provide, through beliefs and
practices, its mechanisms of legitimation.
In the research it was notable that all teachings were related to myths
that anchor knowledge and truth, impeding or rendering useless
their questioning. The teaching of gender identities is done in close
connection with sexual identities. We can even state the difficulty of
their distinction, considering that the construction of masculinities
and femininities focus on the sexualized body. The conventions of
good conduct, even those concerning the division of labour and
“respect” are satiated with sexuality. Boys and girls learn to
distinguish and to recognise themselves on the basis of a male
mandate for domination, whether with respect to the distribution of
functions and roles, such as head of family, or through the regulated
incitement to sex life. In fact, the rites provide the guide constraining
bodies to values and practices which constitute a factor of inclusion
into the community. It is in this sense that gender violence can be
understood and for example expressed in early marriages and early
pregnancy.
The second group of questions has to do with the tensions caused by
new contexts that allow on the one hand to demarcate conventions
and on the other hand to question them. We refer particularly to the
fact that early marriages are contracted, or at least perceived, as more
frequent and at a younger age, which has to do with the decrease of
the age of the first menstruation, but mainly with the rupture and
demystification of “diseases” and death, provoked by early sexual
intercourse. Contact with other spaces and sources of information
allows that both the families and their children can resort to an early
start of sexuality without the fulfilment of the predictions. As
mentioned above, early marriages are part of a strategy of survival of
the families, which is in agreement with the ritual teachings. Saying
that after the rites the girls “are ready” means permission for sexual
initiation and for handing over the child to a man. The rites can thus
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not be acquitted from dropouts and forced unions of children: this
fact is confirmed by the reaction of the communities and their leaders
with respect to families who hand over their daughters in exchange
for money and goods, taking them out of school. The families
continue to be recognized and included in the community, without
their prestige and honour being affected.
On the other hand, the appearance of new meanings is observed,152
mainly among girls and boys, with respect to learning, not only the
link between the violence and suffering caused by the trials and
punishments to which the children are subjected, but also with
respect to the formatting of identities, as is the case of the rejection
by some boys and girls of domestic violence and polygamy, of forced
unions and of the assumption of sexual initiation and pregnancy as a
choice. This means that, open to other spaces, the youths include
transience, fluidity and questioning or negotiating old loyalties into
their identities. Individuals proceed to defining themselves by
uncountable belongings, in a discontinuous and fragmented process
in which new ways of re-identification are being constructed and
normalized. This whole process occurs under tensions that
sometimes lead to extreme acts such as the suicide of parents
rejected by their children and homicide committed due to the
incapacity to manage the conflicts between a past taken as reference
and modernity which displaces and decentralizes individuals
(Giddens, 2000).
Individuals are summoned by modernity to multiple choices, they are
involved in reflexivity, in the questioning of tradition and the
complex establishment of the relation between tradition and
modernity. The traditional hierarchies are replaced or can be
reformulated on the basis of new hierarchies that emphasize equality
and freedom against the conformation characterised by the
preservation of the order, as for example happens when women resist

152 And also of the progressive abandonment of certain practices such as female
tattoos, mainly among the Makhuwa and Makonde population, considered central
to male sexual satisfaction.
383
to violence, leave the house of their husbands without fear or face
social disapproval.
The last question and to resume what we analysed at the beginning of
this study, the research made clear that it is possible, and necessary,
opposing the cultural relativism that, observing the rites in a context
of pre-modernity, resorting to a linear, simple and fixed past (which
criteria to localize the past?), to observe how the cultural institutions,
how the initiation rites constrain or not access to and the exercise of
human rights. When one criticizes the imposition by the West of a
single approach to human rights and anchors this on a neo-colonial
and imperialist position, one leaves out two facts: the first one is that
human rights were constituted, and are even today around the world,
through minority movements (interestingly stigmatized and
repressed, employing the same kind of reasoning used today, to claim
that cultural differences appeal to different rights) which when laying
bare and imposing the inclusion of all human beings as subjects of
rights, did so in the name of a humanity which, despite the
diversities, has in common that the rights are undivided and
universal. The second fact is that culture is subject to change,
opposing inherited interests, hierarchies and rights, expressed in the
discourses and practices of individuals, naturalizing the regime(s) of
inequality, through the available mechanisms and resources used by
a power in order to reproduce itself. What became clear in the
research is that the existence of new meanings attributed to the
initiation rites not only question their efficacy as an element of
cultural identification, but also introduce new problems that have to
do with resistance to a system of beliefs that impedes access to and
the exercise of rights. Included in this case are those girls who run
away from the rites and refuse to lengthen their vaginal lips and
those girls who, in Búzi, refused to marry and to abandon school.
“Betraying” the pure and original culture which limits their rights,
these girls, seeking new ways to express belonging, reinvent new
senses and new meanings allowing them to shake a subordinate
condition.

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Conclusions
The treatment of the initiation rites in the spatial units that were
object of this research departed from two presuppositions: the first
one concerning the rites as a cultural institution, taking into account
both the system of representations and practices that establish
cohesion and belonging to a group as the mechanisms that,
intervening in their regulation, are subjected to successive
adaptations and readjustments. It is in this sense that the analysis
made takes culture as a complex and hierarchized system. This
system is perceived through the power structure and by how
individuals situate themselves and act through mechanisms allowing
them to negotiate, adjust or break with the fixed model of
normativity. Culture must thus be understood on the basis of social,
economic and political contexts which, acting on it, can produce
changes and/or resistance. Breaking thus with the hegemonic and
essentialist vision of culture we seek to understand the meanings that
girls and boys are conferring to the teachings and the mechanisms of
embodiment in a fluid and unstable process.
Another presupposition related to the previous one is the link
between culture and human rights, a question frequently raised in
the course of the study. Breaking with a reductionist vision of
relativism, which restricts and subordinates the rights of individuals
to a homogeneous cultural model that is intended unchanging, we
sought to understand how the circulation of individuals through
spaces, the contamination of the discourses of rights and the
existence of a modern State attempting to regulate the social order,
act on the processes of ritualization. This action results in the
recomposition of the functions of the rites, and in how individuals at
the various levels of intervention renegotiate powers, seeking to
preserve the elements of cohesion through adjustment to new
realities or, on the contrary, question in the final analysis the

385
ideology expressed in the beliefs transmitted by a traditional
symbolic order, putting in play new meanings and practices.
From these premises the research established three orders of
problems that lead to the need to redimension the cultural question
and, in this case, the initiation rites, taking into account the diversity
of contexts in which they are conducted. In the first place, the
existence today in the Mozambican reality of an attempt, coming
from various fields, to bring about a legitimation of tradition, linking
it to an idea of nationalism versus patriotism based on a certain self-
seeking immobility of culture. This phenomenon is expressed in the
growing assumption that human rights laid down explicitly in the
legislation, as is the case of the Constitution of the Republic, the
Family Law, the Law against Domestic Violence and the Law for the
Promotion and Protection of the Rights of the Child, are not, or
cannot be closely related to the cultural reality. I.e., human rights,
being imported, cannot and should not (according to some more
radical voices) be adopted, or should be adopted with a certain
relativist precaution, when it comes to defending the rights of the
youth of both sexes, who are excluded by the hierarchy of power
present in the cultural model, as subjects of rights. We are mainly
referring to children and women but also to men who receive a
mandate of domination from which it is difficult to escape. We will
resume this subject below.
Although we have discussed this question at length, we would like to
emphasize that human rights are not a specific condition of some
people or region (neither are they inherent in western culture), but
the product of long and painful conquests that make that today the
claim to the universality of rights is a conquest of all human beings.
This is also the position of the Mozambican State enshrined in legal
mechanisms and in public policies. However, during the research it
was established that there is so to speak a deflection between the
discourse of rights and the preservation of cultural institutions,
without taking into account the changes that the latter have been
seeing in the last few decades. This results in ambiguities and
ambivalences expressed in an attempt to control the initiation rites
with regard to the time at which they should be conducted (school
386
holidays), the intervention of the Health sector in circumcision and,
mainly, advice to remove sex and sexuality from the ritual teachings.
On the other hand, the school curriculum still contains the
promotion of the rites, as an example of our culture, while discourses
are produced and actions organised aimed at the promotion of access
to and the exercise of rights.
It became clear that these formal changes in the rites (relative to the
time, the ritual space and the fact of circumcision being carried out
by health agents and/or by using new blades) led to a closer link
between actors at different levels of the social order. This means that
power distribution relations are established between community and
traditional leaders, between masters and matrons and State officials
which, though on the one hand legitimating the rites and their
agents, deprive them, or may deprive them, of an hegemonic
knowledge which imposed itself as the one true and transcendent
knowledge in the framework of the social order. It was interesting to
observe the monetization of the rites expressed in a rehierarchization
of families in the communities: contrary to what happened before,
when the payment of the rites was merely symbolic, the rites shape,
as we have already argued, a status which has not only to do with the
passage to adulthood, but also with the social position of the families
and their initiatees of both sexes.
Another order of problems concerns the differences and similarities
between the initiation rituals between the various ethnolinguistic
groups and between urban and rural environments. While in the
towns, with the exception of Quelimane, where the frequency of the
performance of initiation rites was not identified (neither the need
for their existence as a form of identity affirmation, even among the
Makhuwa Lomwé girls and boys), in Pemba as well as in Beira
(though more in the former than in the latter), there is a shortening
of the ceremonies and greater informalization of the spaces. The
close contact with modernity, greater access to school and the
experience of life in a more cosmopolitan environment, engenders
the creation of opportunities that enhance choices, allowing new
ways of identification and rejection or, on the contrary, the
exploitation of the ritual teachings to put at stake, and in a more
387
sophisticated way, the mechanisms of power and also of
countervailing power in social relations, particularly social gender
relations.
In the rural areas, though the initiation rites fulfil more vigorously
the functions of community cohesion and identity shaping, and the
conflicts between discourses and actions about rights are moderated
by the lesser degree of penetration of the factors of modernity in the
communities, as for example the small number of schools for
children attending the 2nd level of primary education (between 10 and
12 years of age), we observe resistance, though still in a tentative way,
against practices allowed and somehow encouraged by the rites, as is
the case of early “marriages” of children. This situation is evident in
districts such as Búzi, where the circulation and ethnolinguistic
miscegenation enables greater capacity of negotiation and
transgression.
However, and here we enter the third order of problems, the rites
continue to be, by the factors of demarcation for their performance,
by the ceremonies that constitute them and by the meanings that are
given to them, a factor of cultural cohesion. When we talk about
cultural cohesion, we talk about elements that identify the belonging
of each person to a certain way of looking at and situating him or
herself in the world. The cohesion contains thus both the recognition
of belonging through the conformation with representations and
practices consecrated in the processes of interaction and also of
subjectivation, and the recognition of exclusion for those who do not
belong to the group.
Therefore, the concept of cohesion contains in itself inclusion and
exclusion, but more than that, it contains the prescription of social
roles and functions performed through a power structure which
harmonizes hierarchies (rendering them legitimate), while
simultaneously incorporating the mechanisms of control and
surveillance of behaviours.
The rites of coming of age are, through the contents of their
teachings, constructors of differentiated gender identities and sexual
identities. The mechanisms of identity inculcation are brought about

388
with extreme suffering. The punishments and trials to which the girls
and boys are subjected, with the purpose of regulating behaviours,
should also, and not only symbolically, be seen as legitimation of the
violence exerted on those girls and boys who, being at the margin, are
not individuals, but should mainly be understood in a context that is
meant to be impervious to change, i.e., in which any change
constitutes a threat to the established order.
As we had the opportunity to analyse and exemplify, in addition to
the sexual division of labour, the teaching of respect and of sex life
are the core elements that organize and articulate the ritual function,
in a differentiated and unequal way for each one of the sexes. The
discourse of respect that always appears associated with a feeling of
tolerance and inclusion which should guide social relations is, in fact,
perceived in a different way for boys or for girls. For the latter it
means obedience to their partner and a resigned acceptance of the
male command. For boys, respect is presented in a less explicit way,
but always remaining the idea of the provision of a house and
heading the family. This dichotomy between the two sexes which
genderizes the established relations is today, on the part of many
girls and some boys, object of conflict: by the influence of the school
and the discourses about rights, the subordination leading to female
silence begins to be questioned, though in most cases women
continue to be charged with the obligations inherent in patriarchal
culture.
Regarding the analysis of sex life we sought to identify the
representations and practices of sex and sexuality and the
mechanisms used for the construction of the body relative to the
other and to the self, taking into account the contexts producing the
discourse. It was our intention to understand how the teaching of sex
life confers to each boy and girl initiatee the power of knowledge
about their own and the other’s body, and how this knowledge is, or
is not, a mechanism of control over their own sexuality. In this field,
it was important to understand which meanings the girls and boys
ascribe to sexual pleasure, to sexual initiative and to decision-making
about their sexuality. The research also sought to understand how the
initiation rituals produce the changes “imposed” by new realities,
389
incorporating them, or not, in the learning process. With this we
want to say that more than seeking the exotism of any cultural
purism, we had the intention to contribute to an understanding of
how the cultural practices interfere with the construction of the social
identities of girls and boys, taking into account the embodiment of
new dispositions which, using the ritual teachings, confront it by
putting in place new modes of recognition.
During the study we observed that the teaching of girls and boys
about sex life uses mechanisms aimed at the preservation of a gender
order. Initiating a child from very early on in the lengthening of the
labia minora (as a pre-ritualization), depriving girls of sexual
initiative and imposing it on boys, symbolically denying female
pleasure, transforming the female body into a docile body that should
recognize itself as being at the service of a partner, subjecting girls to
constant self-surveillance and preparing them for the precocious
start of sex life, the initiation rites intend in fact to inform and situate
the social place of each one of the girls and each one of the boys. The
discourses about early “marriages” show how the initiation rites
legitimate the forced unions of children and school abandonment.
However, and as we sought to explain in the course of this study, by
virtue of a series of factors, such as the school, conviviality among
pairs and the exposure to actions and discourses about human rights,
strategies are launched which, aimed at opposing and resisting the
mechanisms of the subordination of women and the hegemonic
female and male models, new and contrary meanings are being given
to the teachings about sexuality, contributing to the construction of
new identities, for example running away from early marriages, the
refusal of ritual violence, including the refusal to participate in the
rites.
When dimensioning the ritual process in its components of respect
and sex life, we would like to make it clear that we did not follow a
reductionist purpose, depriving the initiation rites from their
complexity and their dynamics that can only with difficulty be
perceived in isolation. Our options have to do with the need to
understand, in the studied contexts, how the construction of the

390
elements expressed in the social normativity (which the rite
congregates) is produced, allowing to observe the multiplicity of
elements that are converging to characterise the gender identities,
simultaneously seeking the opposition subverting the dominant
order in its interstices. This means to take into account the power
structure guiding the social relations between the various sex and age
groups and the possibilities for transgression of the norm, expressed
in the new meanings that girls and boys ascribe to the mechanisms
conforming identities.
Finally, we consider it important to mention the importance of the
existence of informed debates between academics and between State
institutions, so as to identify, in the complexity of the cultural
institutions, the change processes imposed by a plural reality in
permanent mobility. We do not believe it useful to subject the
cultural analysis to the knowledge inherited from contradictory
schools which, fixing themselves frequently in ideological
presuppositions, impede that new ways of treating the processes of
the construction of social identities, mainly gender identities and
sexual identities, come to light.

391
392
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409
410
 Annex 1
Codification of the identity of the informants

Chart 1: Codification of the names of girls and boys (individual

interviews)

Zambézia
Province

Delgado
Maputo

Maputo

Sofala
Cabo
City
Sex

Women Joana - Vânia Júlia Luísa

Men João - Vasco Julião Luís
Chart 2: Codification of the names of girls and boys (collective
interviews)

Zambézia
Province

Delgado
Maputo

Maputo

Sofala
Cabo
City

Sex

Women Augusta - Dora Gilberta Matilde

Men Augusto - Diogo Gil Marco
Chart 3: Codification of the names of matrons and masters
Zambézia
Province

Delgado
Maputo

Maputo

Sofala

Sex
Cabo
City

Women Lúcia - Arminda Zita Dirce

Men Libério - Armindo Zuber Dipac
Chart 4: Codification of the names of adult men and women
Zambézia
Province

Delgado
Maputo

Maputo

Sofala

Sex
Cabo
City

Women Carminda - Antónia Fernanda Deolinda

Men Carlos - Álvaro Francisco Dinis

411
Chart 5: Codification of the names of State sector informants, by
Province

Zambézia
Province

Delgado
Maputo

Maputo

Sofala
Cabo
City
Sex

Women Leonor Bernarda Ana Zubaida Dilma

Men Bento Bernardo Achirafo Zair Daniel
Chart 6: Codification of the names of civil society organisation
informants, by Province

Zambézia
Province

Delgado
Maputo

Maputo

Sofala
Cabo
City

Sex

Women - - Amélia Zaida Daniela

Men - Januário Arménio Ziro Dimas
Chart 7: Codification of the names of traditional leaders, by
Province
Zambézia
Province

Delgado
Maputo

Maputo

Sofala
Cabo
City

Sex

Women - - Mafalda Felismina Eduarda

Men Hélio - Matias Feniasse Ernesto

412
 Annex 2
Characterization of the spatial units

1. Sofala Province

Sofala Province is situated in the Central Region of the country. Its

capital is Beira City, the second largest city of the country. In 2010,153
Sofala had a total population of 1,812,811 inhabitants, 881,471 of
whom are men and 931,337 women. This number represents an
increase, as the 2007 Census indicated a total population of
1,685,663. About 38.3% of the population lived in urban areas and
61.7% in rural areas.154
Education
In Sofala Province, 43.4% of the population is illiterate, with an
illiteracy rate of 61.9% for women and of 23.0% for men. These
figures show that the levels of illiteracy are three times higher for
women, and about 11% higher than the national average. The Census
indicates that the cause of this inequality between the sexes is
possibly the fact that the procreators give priority to the education of
their sons to the detriment of the education of their daughters. There
is a variation of the literacy rates, according to area of residence and
sex, with a 59.9% rate in rural areas and 20.8% in urban areas.155
The majority of the population above five years of age speaks
Portuguese (62.9%). This percentage is higher for men (75%) than for
women (51.6%).
Although the gross enrolment rate156 is high, the net enrolment rate
at all levels of education covered by this study 157 is much lower, as
can be observed in Table 1.

153 INE (2010). Statistical Yearbook of Mozambique.

154 INE (2007). III General Census of Population and Housing.
155 INE (2007). III General Census of Population and Housing.
156 Percentage ratio between the total number of enrolled students at a certain level

of education (irrespective of age) and the resident population of the normal age for
enrolment at this level.
413
 Table 1: Enrolment Rate by sex,
according to level of education
Enrolment Rate (%)

educat
Level
Gross Net
ion
of

Total Men Women Total Men Women

EP1 123.5 131.6 115.5 89.2 93.0 85.4
EP2 73.8 82.8 64.9 26.5 27.6 25.3
ES1 43.5 48.5 37.8 17.4 19.0 15.8
ES2 16.0 18.2 14.0 3.7 3.9 3.6
Source: Ministry of Education, Directorate of Planning (2011),
“3rd March” statistical survey.

As can be observed in Table 1, the gross enrolment rate at level I

primary education is 123.5%, revealing the existence in EP1 of a high
number of students older than 10 years of age, which is the minimum
age to complete this level without repeating. According to the 2007
Census, this phenomenon may be related to late entry into school or
to repeaters or dropouts. This fact can be sustained by an analysis of
the net rates, because it is observed that in the transition from EPI to
the next levels, the percentage of enrolled students tends to decrease,
and the situation is even more critical in ES2 where we have only
3.7% of students studying at a level of education corresponding to
their age.
Health
In Sofala Province there are 152 health units, 119 of which are health
centres, 28 health posts, 4 district hospitals and 1 central hospital,
situated in Beira City. There are 134 doctors, 112 of whom are
working in Beira City. With a total population of 1,812,811
inhabitants, this means that each doctor attends an average of 13.5
people.158

157 The net enrolment rate indicates the percentage of the population in a certain age
group enrolled at the level of education corresponding to their age.
158 Information provided by the Directorate of Planning and Cooperation of MISAU

(2012).
414
Languages
The most frequently spoken maternal language is Cisena, spoken by
49.1% of the population, followed by Cindau (29.8%) and finally
Portuguese (13.3%). The majority of the Portuguese-speaking
population resides in urban areas (90.5%) while the percentage in
rural areas is only 44.5%.159
Religion
Concerning religion, and according to the official source that we have
been quoting, a large part of the population of Sofala has no religion
(33.2%), 21.2% profess the Evangelical/Pentecostal religion, 18.5%
the Catholic religion, 18.9% are Zionists, 2.4% profess the Islamic
religion and less than one percent of the population professes some
unknown or unspecified religion.160

1.1. Beira City

Beira City is the capital of the province and the second largest city of
Mozambique, after the capital of the country, Maputo. According to
the 2007 Census, Beira has a population of 431,583 inhabitants,
219,624 of whom are men and 211,959 are women.
Education
As we can we observe in Table 2, at the various levels of education
there is a total of 156 schools. The number of students is 130,171.
There are more than twice as many students in EP1 than in EP2. This
is quite significant as the information is for the provincial capital and
the second largest city of the country. The losses between the two
levels of primary education can not only be explained by the number
of repeaters in the first few grades, but has also to with the number of
schools. As this number does not satisfy demand, it leads to school
abandonment and/or the transfer of students to evening classes.
With a total of 2,946 teachers the teacher/student ratio in primary
education (EP1 and EP2) is 50 students per teacher and in secondary

159 INE (2007). III General Census of Population and Housing.

160 INE (2007). III General Census of Population and Housing.
415
education (ES1 and ES2) it is 34. It is interesting to observe that in
Beira City the differences between the enrolment numbers of girls
and boys are much smaller than those in the remainder of the
province, though there is also a decrease in the enrolment of girls in
ES1 and ES2.161
Table 2: Number of schools and number of students
by level of education and sex

Level of No. of Number of Students

Education schools M W Total
EP1 64 34041 33963 68004
EP2 49 12375 12873 25248
ES1 28 13612 15451 29063
ES2 15 3626 4230 7856
Total 156 63654 66517 130171
Source: Ministry of Education, Directorate of Planning and Cooperation
(2011), “3rd March” statistical survey.

Health
In Beira City there are 29 health units: 1 central hospital, 8 health
centres and 20 health posts. There are 112 doctors, which means that
with a total population of 431,583 inhabitants, each doctor attends
on average 3,853 people.162

1.2. Búzi District

Búzi District has a population of 159,459 inhabitants, 75,181 of whom

are men and 84,278 are women.163
Education
In Búzi District there are 133 schools teaching at EP1, EP2, ES1 and
ES2 level. A total of 125 of these schools are public institutions and 8
are community institutions. There is a total of 44,258 students in the

161 Ministry of Education, Directorate of Planning and Cooperation (2011), “3rd

March” statistical survey.
162 Information provided by the Directorate of Planning and Cooperation of MISAU

(2012).
163 INE (2007). III General Census of Population and Housing.

416
district, 38,381 of whom in EP1 and EP2 and 5,877 in ES1 and ES2.
As the data of Table 3 show, the number of male students is
considerably higher at all levels of education, particularly in ES2, in
which there are 606 boys enrolled against 286 girls. It is also
important to observe the considerable decrease of the number of
students of both sexes, from level 1 of primary education to higher
levels. The number of students enrolled in EP2 is almost 6 times
lower than the number enrolled in EP1, which is in agreement with
the discourses of families, State officials, community and religious
leaders and civil society organisations about the families’ low
expectations with respect to schooling. Many boys abandon school to
start working and girls abandon school to “marry”. In the same way,
it is necessary to take into account the sharp decrease of the number
of schools in EP2 (99 in EP1 against only 24 in EP2), which
emphasizes the tendency of school abandonment due to lack of
places.
Table 3: Number of schools and students
by level and sex.
Level of No. of No. of Students
Education schools
M W Total
EP1 99 17336 14809 32285
EP2 24 3115 2573 6096
ES1 6 2965 2020 4985
ES2 4 606 286 892
Total 133 24022 19688 44258
Source: Ministry of Education, Directorate of Planning and Cooperation
(2011), “3rd March” statistical survey.

There are 708 teachers in the whole district, 207 of whom are women
and 501 are men. In primary education the teacher/student ratio is
66 students per teacher and in secondary education it is 48 students
per teacher. Contrary to other spatial units, in EP1, a level of
education which in the other study units favours teaching by women,

417
the number of male teachers is twice as high as the number of female
teachers.164
Health
There are 28 health units in the district: 1 rural hospital, 6 health
centres, 5 health posts, and 16 village health posts. There are 3
doctors in the district for 159,459 inhabitants, which means that each
doctor attends on average 53,153 people.165

1.3. Cheringoma District

With its district capital in Inhaminga town, according to the 2007

Census Cheringoma has a population of 34,093 inhabitants, 16,768
of whom are men and 17,325 are women166.
Education
As can be observed in Table 4, the district has 55 schools distributed
over the various levels of education, with the same tendency of a
decrease of the number of schools in the 2nd level of primary
education (40 schools in EP1 against 13 in EP2). With a total of
15,232 students, the number of enrolled boys is higher than the
number of enrolled girls. En ES2 there are even three times as many
boys than girls.167 In this district there are also many dropouts in the
transition between the two levels of primary education and between
primary and secondary education. The same reasons indicated with
respect to Búzi District may explain the situation found. The
situation may even be worse than that identified by the statistics,
because as we were informed informally, halfway the school year the
classes, mainly in EP2, may even be reduced to less than half, due to
the harvesting time in June/July, the performance of initiation rites

164 Ministry of Education, Directorate of Planning and Cooperation (2011), “3rd

March” statistical survey.
165 Information provided by the Directorate of Planning and Cooperation of MISAU

(2012).
166 INE (2007). III General Census of Population and Housing.
167Ministry of Education, Directorate of Planning and Cooperation (2011), “3rd
March” statistical survey.
418
(though as we have analysed in Chapter IV, there has been an effort
to shift the rites to the holiday period) and early “marriages”.
Table 4: Number of schools and students by
level of education and sex

Level of No. of No. of Students

Education schools
M W Total
EP1 40 5920 5748 11668
EP2 13 1241 826 2067
ES1 1 785 427 1212
ES2 1 193 92 285
Total 55 8139 7093 15232
Source: Ministry of Education, Directorate of Planning (2011),
“3rd March” statistical survey.

In Cheringoma the total number of teachers is 352. We should note

the limited number of women teachers, mainly in EP2 (52 men
against 15 women), ES1 (29 men against 5 women) and ES2 (7 men
against zero women). The average teacher/student ratio is 44
students per teacher in primary education (EP1 and EP2) and 37
students per teacher in secondary education (ES1 and ES2).168 This
means that, despite the incentives of the State and civil society
organisations to attract women teachers for the rural areas, the
results are not yet as hoped for.
Health
Cheringoma District has 8 health units: 1 rural hospital, 4 health
centres, 2 health posts and 1 village health post. There is only one
doctor in the district for 34,093 inhabitants.169

2. Cabo Delgado Province

Cabo Delgado Province has a total of 1,632,065 inhabitants, 790,264

of whom are men and 841,801 are women. About 44% of the

168 Ministry of Education, Directorate of Planning and Cooperation (2011), “3rd

March” statistical survey.
169 Information provided by the Directorate of Planning and Cooperation of MISAU

(2012).
419
population is younger than 15 years. This province is administratively
divided into 16 districts and 4 municipalities.170
Education
In this province the illiteracy rate is 66.6%, varying according to age
and sex. Thus, it is lower for younger ages, and much higher for
women (81.7%) than for men (54.2%).
Concerning enrolment rates, as Table 5 shows there is little access in
the province to the secondary level, taking into account that the
(gross and net) rates are very low, particularly the net rates in ES2,
corresponding to almost 1%. It should be pointed out that, as in
Sofala Province, when moving from one level to the next the
percentage of students decreases, leading to the conclusion that
among the spatial units studied this is the province that presents the
biggest difference between the net enrolment rate in EP1 (90.1) and
that of EP2 (11.0).
Table 5: Enrolment Rate by level of education and by sex
Enrolment Rate (%)
education
Level of

Gross Net
Total Men Women Total Men Women

EP1 133.2 141.6 125.1 90.1 94.1 86.3

EP2 54.2 60.0 48.4 11.0 11.6 10.5
ES1 24.8 28.6 21.0 5.9 6.1 5.7
ES2 7.8 9.4 6.3 0.9 0.9 0.8
Source: Ministry of Education, Directorate of Planning (2011),
“3rd March” statistical survey.

Health
The health network in the province comprises 112 health units: 1
provincial hospital, 3 rural hospitals, 79 type I and II health
centres,171 and 29 health posts. There are 50 doctors working in the

170 INE (2007). III General Census of Population and Housing.

171 A type II health centre is the smallest health unit providing Primary Health Care
in rural environments, and is meant to serve populations in their direct area of
420
province for 1,632,065 inhabitants, which means that each doctor
attends on average 32,641 people.172
Languages
According to the 2007 Census, the maternal language of the majority
of the population of Cabo Delgado Province is Emakhuwa (67.1%),
followed by Shimakonde (20%) and Kimwani (6%). Shimakonde is
mostly spoken by the population of 50 years and above, contrary to
Emakhuwa which does not present a significant variation according
to age. A tiny 1.2% of the population speaks Kiswahili.173
Religion
Regarding religion, 53.8% of the population professes the Islamic
religion, followed by 36.1% professing the Catholic religion.
Inhabitants without religion, 7.6% of the total, occupy the third place.
The percentage of the population professing the Anglican and Zion
religions and those professing an unknown or unspecified religion
represents 0.5% of the population.174
The population of Cabo Delgado is mainly made up of three
ethnolinguistic groups: the Makhuwas, usually cultivators and living
in the south and the north of the Province, on the coast as well as in
the interior; the Makondes, from the plateau in the extreme north of
the country, and the Kimwani, mainly fishermen and living in coastal
villages in the coastal area of the centre and north of the Province.

influence, of between 7,500 and 20,000 inhabitants. This type of centre is situated
in the capitals of sparsely populated Administrative Posts. In its turn, a type I
health centre is a more differentiated and larger health centre, meant to serve
populations of between 16,000 and 35,000 inhabitants. They are in general
situated in the capital of districts with little population and in the capital of
Administrative Posts or localities. This type of centre may have a doctor, if
justified. (BR, Ministerial Diploma 127/2002).
172 Information provided by the Directorate of Planning and Cooperation of MISAU

(2012).
173 INE (2007). III General Census of Population and Housing.
174 INE (2007). III General Census of Population and Housing.

421
2.1. Pemba Town
According to the 2007 Census, Pemba is the capital of Cabo Delgado
Province and has a total population of 138,716 inhabitants, 69,936 of
whom are men and 68,780 are women, while 42,5% of the
population is younger than 15 years.
Education
As Table 6 shows, there are 156 schools in Pemba Town, 64 of which
of EP1 and 49 of EP2. It is interesting to observe that, contrary to
other spatial units and with the exception of ES2, at all levels of
education the number of enrolled girls is higher than the number of
enrolled boys.
Regarding teachers, the statistics show a total of 2946 teachers. It
should be noted that in EP1 the number of women teachers is almost
twice as high as the number of male teachers, contrary to the
tendency in ES.175 This reveals a series of factors that possibly have to
do with the lower schooling level of women, poor motivation or a
preference for men in the selection of teachers. The teacher/student
ratio is approximately 19 students per teacher in primary education
(EP1 and EP2) and 10 students per teacher in secondary education
(ES1 and ES2), which is clearly higher than in the other spatial units.

Table 6: Number of schools and students by level and sex

Level of No. of No. of Students
Education schools M W Total
EP1 64 12859 14120 26979
EP2 49 3842 4539 8381
ES1 28 3926 4252 8178
ES2 15 1519 1369 2888
Total 156 22146 24280 46426
Source: Ministry of Education, Directorate of Planning and Cooperation (2011), “3rd
March” statistical survey.

175Ministry of Education, Directorate of Planning and Cooperation (2011), “3rd

March” statistical survey.

422
Health
In Pemba Town there are 8 health units, namely 1 rural hospital, 3
type II health centres, 1 village health post and 1 urban health centre.
There are 29 doctors working in Pemba, giving a ratio of 4783
inhabitants for each doctor.176

2.2. Mecúfi District

According to the 2007 Census, Mecúfi District has a population of

43,285 inhabitants, 20,485 of whom are men and 22,800 are women.
The majority of the population of the district is young, as
approximately 48% is younger than 15 years. More than 53% are
women.177
Education
Table 7 shows the existence in Mecúfi of only 25 schools, teaching 1st
and 2nd level primary education (19 of EP1 and 6 of EP2) and 2 1st
level secondary education schools. Contrary to Pemba Town, where
there is gender parity until the end of ES1, the number of girl
students (290) attending ES1 in Mecúfi is less than half the number
of boys (741). There are no ES2-level schools in this district, so that
many students, whose families have no money to send them to
Pemba, stop studying.
Mecúfi has a total of 230 teachers but, contrary to what happens in
Pemba, in the first few classes the number of women teachers is very
low. Of a total of 154 teachers in EP1 only 59 are women, while of a
total of 43 teachers in EP2 only 10 are women.178 In primary
education (EP1 and EP2), the ratio is 44 students per teacher and in
secondary education it is 22 students per teacher.

176 Information provided by the Directorate of Planning and Cooperation of MISAU

(2012).
177 INE (2007). III General Census of Population and Housing.
178 Ministry of Education, Directorate of Planning and Cooperation (2011), “3rd

March” statistical survey.

423
 Table 7: Number of schools and students by level and sex
Level of No. of No. of Students
Education schools
M W Total
EP1 19 3715 3743 7458
EP2 6 615 622 1237
ES1 2 451 290 741
ES2 0 0 0
Total 27 4781 4655 9436
Source: Ministry of Education, Directorate of Planning and Cooperation (2011), “3rd
March” statistical survey.

Health
There are only two health centres in the district and only one doctor
for 43,285 people.179

2.3. Macomia District

According to the 2007 Census the district has a population of 79,825

inhabitants, 38,412 of whom are men and 41,413 are women.180
Education
Table 8 shows the existence of a total of 61 schools in the district with
17,578 students, 9,491 of whom are male and 8,087 are female. Two
tendencies persist with respect to school attendance: the first one
shows that in primary education the number of students decreases in
the transition between the two levels of education. Enrolment in EP2
is about 7 times lower than in EP1. The second tendency is the
progressive proportional decrease of the number of girl students
when transiting to a higher level of education. The small number of
EP2 schools (only 12) should also be noted, which aggravates school
abandonment on the part of boys and girls and stimulates “early
marriages” of girls.

179 Information provided by the Directorate of Planning and Cooperation of MISAU

(2012).
180 INE (2007). III General Census of Population and Housing.

424
There is a total of 352 teachers, 66 of whom are women and 249 are
men.181
The teacher/student ratio in the district is approximately 42 students
per teacher in primary education (EP1 and EP2) and 30 students per
teacher in secondary education (ES1 and ES2).
Table 8: Number of schools and students
by level and sex.
Level of No. of No. of Students
Education schools
M W Total
EP1 47 7592 6908 14500
EP2 12 1150 814 1964
ES1 1 681 333 1014
ES2 1 68 32 100
Total 61 9491 8087 17578
Source: Ministry of Education, Directorate of Planning and Cooperation (2011), “3rd
March” statistical survey.

Health
In Macomia there are 4 health centres, and 2 health posts. There is
only 1 doctor in the district for 79,825 inhabitants182.

3. Zambézia Province

Situated in the Central Region of the country, Zambézia has a

population of 3,890,453 inhabitants, 1,878,160 of whom are men and
2,012,293 are women. About 47.8% of the population is younger than
15 years.183
Education
In Zambézia Province the illiteracy rate is 62.5%. The rate for men is
43.5% and for women it is 79%. This rate, as is the case in the other

181 Ministry of Education, Directorate of Planning and Cooperation (2011), “3rd

March” statistical survey.
182 Information provided by the Directorate of Planning and Cooperation of MISAU

(2012).
183 INE (2007). III General Census of Population and Housing.

425
provinces covered by this study, varies according to the area of
residence, being higher in rural areas (68.2 %) than in urban areas
(37.5%).184 It should be pointed out that for the total of students
attending the various levels of education, the net enrolment rate is
very low, including a tendency of asymmetries between boys and girls
(Table 9).185
Table 9: Enrolment Rate by level of education and by sex
Enrolment Rate
Level of Gross Net
education
Total Men Women Total Men Women
EP1 162.3 173.1 151.6
* * *
EP2 57.4 68.3 46.6 14.2 15.9 12.5
ES1 23.3 29.1 17.7 8.3 9.8 6.9
ES2 6.3 8.0 4.6 1.1 1.4 0.9
Source: Ministry of Education, Directorate of Planning and Cooperation (2011), “3rd
March” statistical survey.

Health
Zambézia has 210 health units, namely 154 health centres, 47 health
posts, 8 (general, rural and district) hospitals and 1 provincial
hospital. There are 75 doctors, giving a ratio of one doctor per 51,872
inhabitants.186 Thus it is clear that this spatial unit has the largest
doctor/inhabitant ratio, exceeding that of Cabo Delgado Province by
almost 20 thousand.
Languages
The maternal language most widely spoken by the population is
Elomwe (37.1%), followed by Echuwabo (23.5%), Portuguese (9.2%)
and Cisena (8.2%).187

184 INE (2007). III General Census of Population and Housing.

185 Ministry of Education, Directorate of Planning and Cooperation (2011), “3rd
March” statistical survey.
186 Information provided by the Directorate of Planning and Cooperation of MISAU

(2012).
187 INE (2007). III General Census of Population and Housing.

426
Religion
In this province 40% of the population is Catholic, 15.2% has no
religion and almost 10% of the population professes the Islamic
religion.188

3.1. Quelimane Town

According to the 2007 Census Quelimane, the capital and largest

town of Zambézia Province, has a total population of 193,343
inhabitants, 99,172 of whom are men and 94,171 are women.189
Education
As we can observe in Table 10, Quelimane Town has 63 schools, 27 of
which of EP1 and also 27 of EP2, seven schools of ES1and only two
schools of ES2. The town has a total of 64,522 students, 32,220 of
whom are girls and 32,302 are boys. At all levels of education the
number of boys is higher to the detriment of the number of the girls,
with the exception of EP1, where there are 17,556 girls and 16,718
boys.
In Quelimane there are 1462 teachers, 776 of whom are women and
686 are men. It is interesting to note that in EP1 the number of
women teachers is higher than the number of men: there are 477
women against 127 men. On the other hand, and as we saw in other
areas, in ES1 and ES2 the number of women teachers is very low (237
men against 74 women in ES1 and 147 men against 32 women in
ES2).190 The teacher/student ratio in EP1 and EP2 is about 47 and in
ES1 and ES2 it is 37 students per teacher.

188idem
189INE (2007). III General Census of Population and Housing.
190 Ministry of Education, Directorate of Planning and Cooperation (2011), “3rd

March” statistical survey.

427
 Table 10: Number of schools and students by level of education
and by sex
Level of No. of No. of Students
Education schools M W Total
EP1 27 16718 17556 34274
EP2 27 6028 5876 11904
ES1 7 7653 7142 14795
ES2 2 1903 1646 3549
Total 63 32302 32220 64522
Source: Ministry of Education, Directorate of Planning and Cooperation (2011), “3rd
March” statistical survey.

Health
Concerning health units, this district has 1 provincial hospital, 4
urban health centres, 3 health posts and 1 type III health centre.
There are 38 doctors, giving a ratio of 5,088 inhabitants per doctor.191

3.2. Mocuba District

According to the 2007 Census, Mocuba has 300,628 inhabitants,

147,202 of whom are men and 153,426 are women. With an area of
8,803 km², in 2007 the population density was 34.15 inhabitants per
km².
Education
Table 11 shows that Mocuba District has 261 schools, most of which
of EP1 level, a small number of secondary schools and only one
school teaching ES2. There are 117,303 students, with a larger
number of boys than of girls enrolled at all levels of education,
namely a total of 62,195 boys against 55,108 girls. The fact that the
number of EP2 schools is almost 4 times smaller than the number of
EP1 schools is possibly one of the reasons for the extreme decrease of
the number of students attending the second level of primary
education. Once again, and in a quite significant way, we observe the
limited opportunities for the population living in Mocuba to move up

191Information provided by the Directorate of Planning and Cooperation of MISAU

(2012).
428
the school system and to have access to formal employment,
particularly on the part of girls.
With regard to teachers, of a total number of 1714 teachers only 728
are women, while at all levels of education the number of women is
lower than that of men. The teacher/student ratio in the district is
approximately 64 students per teacher in primary education (EP1
and EP2) and 140 students per teacher in secondary education (ES1
and ES2).192
Table 11: Number of schools and students by level and sex.
Level of No. of No. of Students
Education schools M W Total
EP1 198 47185 43086 90271
EP2 55 7318 5867 13185
ES1 7 6278 4984 11262
ES2 1 1414 1171 2585
Total 261 62195 55108 117303
Source: Ministry of Education, Directorate of Planning and Cooperation (2011), “3rd
March” statistical survey.

Health
Mocuba District has 1 rural hospital, 2 urban health centres, 8 health
posts, 2 type III health centres and 3 village health posts. There are 6
doctors in the district. With a total of 300,628 inhabitants each
doctor attends 50,105 persons.193

3.3. Alto Molocué District

According to the 2007 Census this district has a population of

272,482 inhabitants, 131,709 of whom are men and 140,773 are

192 Ministry of Education, Directorate of Planning and Cooperation (2011), “3rd

March” statistical survey.
193 Information provided by the Directorate of Planning and Cooperation of MISAU

(2012).
429
women. With an area of 6386 km², in 2007 the population density
was 42.67 inhabitants per km².
Education
Table 12 shows that there are 272 schools in Alto Molocué District,
217 of which of EP1 level. There is only 1 school teaching at ES2 level.
Once again, access to the second level of primary education is very
limited, considering that there are four times less EP2 schools than
EP1 schools. In the same way, the number of students decreases
sharply in these same levels: from a total of 70,500 students in EP1 to
only 11.084 in EP2. Even considering the existence of repeaters and
changes of places of residence, a difference of about 60.000 less
students in EP2 is not very convincing. This situation is even more
serious if we consider that the data provided by the Ministry of
Education show that the large majority of girls and boys does not
complete primary education.
There are 1511 teachers in the district, 1015 of whom are men and 497
are women. Regarding the teacher/student ratio, in primary
education it is 57 and in secondary education 73 students per
teacher.194195
Table 12: Number of schools and students by level and sex.
Level of No. of No. of Students
Education schools M W Total
EP1 217 35149 35351 70500
EP2 51 5878 5206 11084
ES1 3 2963 2298 5261
ES2 1 925 521 1446
Total 272 44915 43376 88291
Source: Ministry of Education, Directorate of Planning and Cooperation (2011), “3rd
March” statistical survey.

194 As
in Mocuba District, the teacher/student ratio in secondary education seems too
unrealistic. This was however the officially obtained information.
195 Ministry of Education, Directorate of Planning and Cooperation (2011), “3rd

March” statistical survey.

430
Health
There are 21 health units in the district, namely 1 rural hospital, 1
type I health centre, 6 type III health centres, 5 health posts and 8
village posts. There are only 2 doctors which means that with
272,482 inhabitants, each doctor attends 136,241 people.196

3.4. Gurué District

According to the 2007 Census, Gurué District has a population of

297,935 inhabitants, 145,989 of whom are men and 151,946 are
women. With an area of 5,606 km2, the population density is 53.15
inhabitants per km2.
Education
Table 13 shows that Gurué District has 262 schools, the majority of
EP1 level. There are 69 schools of EP2, 4 schools of ES1, and only one
school of ES2.
As can be observed, at all levels of education the number of girls is
lower than that of boys. From Table 13 we can deduce that access to
education on the part of girls is still limited.
There is a total of 1609 teachers in the district, 1030 of whom are
men and 579 are women. In EP2 there is an enormous difference
between the number of male and female teachers, as there are 226
men and only 82 women. This discrepancy also exists in ES1, where
we find 76 male teachers and only 16 female teachers197. The
teacher/student ratio in the district is 66 students per teacher in EP1
and EP2 and 52 students per teacher in ES1 and ES2.

196 Information provided by the Directorate of Planning and Cooperation of MISAU

(2012).
197 Ministry of Education, Directorate of Planning and Cooperation (2011), “3rd

March” statistical survey.

431
 Table 13. Number of schools and students by level and sex
Level of No. of No. of Students
Education schools M W Total
EP1 188 44009 42296 86305
EP2 69 6193 5264 11457
ES1 4 3116 2331 5447
ES2 1 966 457 1423
Total 262 54284 50348 104632
Source: Ministry of Education, Directorate of Planning and Cooperation (2011), “3rd
March” statistical survey.

Health
Gurué District has 29 health units, namely 1 rural hospital, 6 health
posts, 17 village health posts, 1 type I health centre and 4 type III
health centres. There are 4 doctors in this district and 297,935
inhabitants, giving a ratio of 74,484 inhabitants per doctor.198

198Information provided by the Directorate of Planning and Cooperation of MISAU

(2012).
432