ABSTRACT
Healing systems are both cultural and social systems which articulate ill health as a cultural idiom and establish a systematic relationship between beliefs about causation of illness, the experience of symptoms, decisions concerning treatment and evaluations of therapeutic outcomes.2 This chapter discusses healing strategies adopted by war affected population in Southern Mozambique. It examines the role played by cultural beliefs and practices in people's health-seeking decisions and healing strategies to overcome distress and illness. Spiritual agencies such as the ancestral spirits, the malevolent spirits and the spirits of those killed during the war are believed to be central in the process of causation and healing of ill-health. Thus, I appeasing the spirits' becomes a mechanism of social healing and reconciliation, of redressing the wrongs of the past and of rebuilding life after war.
