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8 - Wineliwa – the Creation of Women

Initiation Rituals during Frelimo's abaixo Politics (1990/2000)

from Part II - NIGHT OF THE WOMEN, DAY OF THE MEN: MEANINGS OF FEMALE INITIATION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2013

Signe Arnfred
Affiliation:
Roskilde University
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Summary

Wineliwa – Emakhuwa for initiation rites – actually means ‘to be danced to’. When in the early 1980s on behalf of the OMM, Organização da Mulher Moçambicana, I was collecting data in northern Mozambique regarding female initiation rituals and other related issues, I found the women insisting on the importance of their daughters being danced to.

Nowadays, one woman said – this was in 1982 – Frelimo wants us to dance at district headquarters on national holidays, but they prevent us from dancing to our daughters:

We have stopped performing the initiation rites, but still more frequently we will be called for to dance with no gain for us, and not knowing why. We are going off to the District Headquarters dancing on the twenty-fifth of September, on the third of February and on other days [these days are new national holidays of Independent Mozambique] but we do not know the significance of those dances. In the old days, when we were beating our drums, it was in order to educate our children, it had an important meaning for us. But today we are dancing on all these festive days without knowing why. One day we could refuse. The population could refuse saying: You[ie. the Party and Government structures, who demand the dancing] are enemies of the drums. But today we are not able of saying so, because we have respect for our Government. But it doesn't let us do what we want to do. We feel very inhibited. The Party prevents us from dancing when we feel the need to dance, and at the same time we have to dance at every occasion without any meaning for us.

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Chapter
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Sexuality and Gender Politics in Mozambique
Rethinking Gender in Africa
, pp. 166 - 181
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2011

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