Chipo is now permanently disabled after her husband Joseph broke her back with a hoe handle during a dispute, accusing her of ill-treating the children from his first marriage. Theodora is no longer on Facebook, because her husband Tatenda always beat her for displaying other mens’ faces on her page. He also demands to view all her mobile text messages received at night.

According to a report of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, about 35 percent of Zimbabwean women experience physical violence by their current partners and about 21 percent report that their first sexual intercourse was forced.

Being followed around
Traditionally, a woman obeyed her husband and challenging him was almost taboo. A wife could not go out freely without permission from her man. As a result, some organizations will not award study scholarships or allow married women to attend workshops and seminars far away from home without the approval of their husbands.

“In the first days of our marriage,” recalls Gladys, “my husband Stanley would phone in the middle of the night to check if I was in my room. He would follow me unexpectedly to different conference venues. I am glad that he is now levelheaded. No more ‘routine’ checks and regular claps and punches whenever I failed to explain why I was photographed sitting among men at seminars. Surprisingly, Stanley has even agreed to it that I can travel to the United Kingdom for a year-long master’s degree study.”

Married to pain, sorrow and danger
Ruth has never experienced a happy marriage. “After enduring a life of day-to-day battering, one day I woke up and found James pointing a gun at me. I was shocked. He took the gun away, but I realized how our married life had been full of pain, sorrow and danger. So when he took a bath, I ran away to my sister’s place. Our children followed, although they now live on the streets, because I cannot look after them.”

Overhaul cultural beliefs and attitudes
The Musasa Project, a local NGO that confronts gender-based violence, claims it knows why women always persevere quietly despite violent marriages. According to them, the main reasons are that women fear that prison terms will anger the men and that their children will suffer most. Also, they hope that their partners will change for the better. Other women say that cultural counseling dictates them to value marriage and maintain it at all costs.

Converts like Stanley may generally be hard to come by, but the efforts of the Musasa Project to promote the ideal of violence-free marriages may tame more aggressive men.