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Paper short abstract:

The study examines the emancipation of Mozambican women through their war memories and their involvement in politics. FRELIMO women ex-combatants have a recognized social and political status in society, but RENAMO women's stories of the war, political experiences, daily lives, and resistance as part of the opposition remain unknown. Some consciously engaged as combatants but many were captured and forced to assume important key social roles in the conflict. Their path to freedom and emancipation is still ongoing but is marginalized.

Paper long abstract:

This study analyzes the silences of the official memory about the roles of women in Mozambique's struggles, contrasting them with the memories of women combatants and their current struggles. The research focuses on the women combatants of RENAMO, doubly silenced by power relations based on gender and by the status of losers, compared to the women of FRELIMO. The recollection of their memories allows us to revisit the past and, through voices and perspectives that are usually subalternized, to offer new perspectives on the relations between gender, emancipation and power.

The objective is to contribute to the debate about the multiple ways of producing memories from critical studies on memory and the production of history, analyzing their memories and the ways they are remembered or erased.

It is a qualitative approach with recourse to several methods: bibliographical analysis, documentary research, interviews, biographical research, emphasizing the triangulation and critical analysis of sources.

The aim is to fill the absence of studies on Memory, from the Renamo point of view, and in particular women's memories, starting from the hypothesis that there is a double subordination of women that results from the articulation of a gender dimension and political legitimacy.

More than a mere reference these combatants are places of memory and also represent a learning space. The issues of social inequalities remain marked not only between men and women, but also among women themselves, in this case those who are on the losing side.