As healthcare and other essential services continue to deteriorate in Mozambique, a group of local women reject plans to distribute traditional dresses on Women’s Day, calling instead for urgent fixes to crumbling health systems.
By Sr. Christine Masivo, CPS
This year, Mozambique looks forward to celebrating the occasion of Mozambique Women Day on April 7.
As part of celebrations, a group of women across Mozambique are raising their voices against what they see as empty symbolism amid the crisis of healthcare and daily survival.
In an open letter to First Lady Gueta Selemane Chapo, the wife of President Daniel Francisco Chapo, the women expressed outrage over reports that colorful capulanas (traditional dresses) will be handed out nationwide to mark Mozambican Women’s Day.
According to the Vatican’s Fides news agency, the women claim to speak for Mozambican mothers, daughters, sisters, and grandmothers.
“We do not want ‘capulanas‘; we demand respect and dignity for the rights of all,” they stated. “We value symbolic gestures, but not at this time when the Mozambicans are facing real and urgent suffering that needs attention.”
Healthcare
The women highlight the dire need and urgency in the public hospitals. Children are dying as a result of under-equipped facilities, pregnant women endure labor on bare beds without mattresses or vital medication, and families lack basic services. “There is nothing to celebrate,” they lamented.
“We can’t celebrate the lack of decent hospitals and the waste of public resources, yet there is inequality and violence that still persist in our country,” they said, adding that they demand sensitivity and real solutions.
Redirect funds to save lives
The group demands that the state money for capulanas be rerouted to real needs, buy medicine in the hospitals, provide proper beds, ensure that there is food access, and uphold the dignity of women, children, and families.
“The initiative of the capulanas doesn’t solve real problems that we face,” the women noted, framing the distribution as a misuse of resources when life hangs in the balance.
