Mozambique: religious practices and post-conflict processes

Mozambique: religious practices and post-conflict processes

In sub-Saharan Africa, diverse religious beliefs and practices have been implicated in mass violence as well as post-conflict peacebuilding processes. In Mozambique—following the political turmoils of colonialism, short-lived postcolonial socialist revolution, and a protracted civil war—communities drew on histories of survival experiences, religious imaginaries, and gender relations to address the challenges of post-conflict social and moral recovery. A comprehensive understanding of the role of diverse religious imaginaries in post-conflict reconstruction requires a closer look at how Indigenous religious practices intensify and contain violence. In Gorongosa, a district in the center of Mozambique, the gamba spirits of male dead soldiers return to the world of the living to intrusively possess women’s bodies and wreak havoc, demanding accountability for serious violations perpetrated in the past. Embodied accountability is at once a social, moral, health, and religious process that blurs gender and temporalities of conflicts and suffering as part of the post-conflict recovery and healing efforts in Mozambique.