Maputo – “We don’t want capulanas, we demand dignity and respect for the rights of all.” On the occasion of Mozambican Women’s Day, to be celebrated on April 7, a group of women from the country addressed a message to Gueta Selemane Chapo, wife of President Daniel Francisco Chapo, after learning that colorful traditional Mozambican dresses will be distributed to commemorate the day.
“We have received news that they plan to distribute capulanas to all women in the country. On behalf of our mothers, daughters, sisters, and grandmothers, we express our profound indignation. Not because we don’t value symbolic gestures, but because, at this moment, the Mozambican people are facing real and urgent suffering,” reads the statement sent to Fides and signed by a group of Mozambican women united in the name of dignity and the rights of all.
“Our children continue to die in hospitals under precarious conditions. Pregnant women sleep on beds without mattresses, women in labor wait for care without essential medicines, and families suffer from a lack of basic health services. We ask ourselves: what is there to celebrate? Celebrate the absence of decent hospitals? Celebrate the waste of public resources? Celebrate the inequality and violence that still persist in our country? We demand greater sensitivity. People are suffering and waiting for real solutions, not showy gestures.”
The women insist that state resources not be used for a symbolic gesture while so many lives are at risk. “We don’t want capulanas; we already have enough and we don’t need more. This initiative,” they emphasize, “doesn’t solve the real problems we face. The money allocated to this symbolic gift should be used to save lives, guarantee medicine, beds, food, and dignity for every woman, child, and family in Mozambique.”
“We demand respect for the right to dignity, health, and social justice. We are tired of the silence and inaction, tired of the propaganda while hospitals, schools, and families suffer. We demand that these funds be allocated where they are truly needed: to the lives of the women and children who suffer every day in our country,” they conclude.
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