m a ppi n g wo m en ’s n eeDs i n Zi m ba bw e’s nat i o na l h e a l i n g pr o ce ss and every day, I am troubled because, until the police declare that they are dead, we cannot register their deaths. This makes it difficult for me to use some of my husband’s property because the authorities do not believe that they are dead since they were linked with the opposition political party MDC-T. (Interview, 21 May 2011) An analysis of these women’s narratives shows some resemblances with what Pauline Boss (2006) refers to as the ‘ambiguity of loss’ in those who experience the traumatic loss or disappearance of loved ones. The significance of seeing the dead body also brings closure to the haunting experiences of denial, and allows relatives to grieve and conduct the mandatory traditional rituals celebrating the life of the departed. Religious attitudes and ritual obligations after death shape perceptions of the importance of human remains to families. During interviews, most women concurred on the need to either see the human remains or have absolute evidence of death in order to complete the necessary rituals. For most women, particularly those in rural areas, documents alone cannot confirm the death of someone who has disappeared – a sense of closure comes only with the retrieval of the body or human remains. The issue of disappearances was also seen as an economic issue, with relatives spending a lot of money consulting traditional healers in search of missing relatives. For women who depended on their missing husbands financially, the loss of a breadwinner often creates economic insecurity and poverty for those left behind. Women activists indicated that, because of the continuing polarisation among members of different political parties in Zimbabwe, families of the disappeared do not trust the government’s investigative efforts, and this extends to a lack of confidence in cases where remains are returned to them without DNA tests being carried out. As one woman remarked: In our African culture, people do not just disappear or die. There is an explanation to every death. Therefore, to perform burial rituals we need something like his clothes, his bones or anything like that, but with what we are seeing now I don’t think this is possible. Whoever is responsible has to tell us the whole story how they killed our person, where they buried him and only then will the elders in the family accept to perform the ritual. (Interview, 21 May 2011) Analysis shows that the process of understanding death or disappearance due to politically motivated violence is heavily embedded in cultural practice, which can be distinguished from seeking the judicial truth. This implies that national healing in Zimbabwe needs to take cognisance of cultural sensitivities in order to help promote healing and avoid further emotional damage to those affected. From a gender perspective, the disappearance or death of a male relative by political abduction can also bring about an identity crisis among the women in his family. In Zimbabwe, the traditional family is patri-local, in the sense that married women move to the husband’s home on marriage. While this can provide economic and emotional support, it can also become a great source of stress if the wives of the disappeared are alienated from their husband’s family because of intergenerational and gender-related power relations. Younger married women tend to find themselves at the bottom of family hierarchies in which they are expected to be subservient to their mothers-in-law who are, in turn, dominated by older men (Osirim, 2001). Both urban and rural women talked of the stigma attached to a married woman whose husband disappears due to politically motivated violence. If that woman decides to leave her in-laws’ home or remarry, she can be seen as betraying both her husband and her inlaws. In many traditional cultures in Zimbabwe, as long as ambiguity remains about her husband’s fate a married woman may not consider remarriage. Thus a married woman may be trapped in a family that resents her presence, but does not want her to leave due to the 17 IJR Zimbabwe Womens needs OP proof 2.indd 17 7/16/2012 11:01:31 AM