Nelson Mwape stands outside a women's refuge jointly run by CARE in Zambia. © CARE/Sandra Bulling“He beat me. He thought I was cheating on him, and so he struck me.” And when he had yet again had too much to drink and was overcome with jealousy, Gladys’ husband picked up a gun. “I saw him coming at me with the pistol and could only scream. I screamed and ran,” says Gladys, describing the moment that changed her life. No one came to her aid that night. In her homeland, Zambia, it is not unusual for women to be beaten by their husbands.
Since then, the 31-year-old has hidden, with her youngest daughter, from the man she married 14 years ago. She lives in a women’s shelter in the Zambian capital, Lusaka. The address is a tightly kept secret. From there she travels in the daytime by means of back roads to a centre for women downtown. Sometimes she has to change cars several times, for fear her husband might be following her.
Downtown she speaks with shelter staff, who give her psychological and legal support. “I have got a divorce,” explains Gladys, “but my other three children are still with him.”
The vast majority of Zambian women regard it as completely normal to be beaten by their husbands. CARE, local organisations, and the Zambian police founded the women’s centre to give those who do not want to live this way, or who fear for their lives, a route of escape. The building is in a quiet side street from which the honks and rumblings of cars can only be distantly heard.
On it, in blue figures, is a telephone number, together with an instruction to report acts of violence against women. “Since our establishment last July, approximately 400 women have come to us,” says Nelson Mwape, the head of the centre. “The majority of those are women who were beaten by their husbands.”
But Nelson also talks of child molestation: “Because there is a persistent myth in Zambia that a person who sleeps with a virgin will become immune to AIDS, many young girls have experienced sexual assault.”
The centre has struck a delicate nerve in Zambian tradition. “We cannot change our thinking and way of life between today and tomorrow,” says Nelson. “Organisations like CARE can only give the impetus; Zambia needs to change from within. The fact that so many women come to us shows that people’s awareness is gradually shifting.”
Gladys has learned to take her life into her own hands. She is standing up to tradition and trying to secure custody of her children. As she needs a regular job to accomplish that, she now works in the centre herself, helping other women to begin a new life free of violence. “I forgive him,” she says thoughtfully. “Although he abused me, I forgive him. For the sake of my children and for the sake of finding my own peace.” And for the sake of showing Zambian tradition that women can fight, too.
