ABSTRACT
The woman peasant is the most oppressed and exploited woman in Mozambique. Reduced to an object of pleasure, a reproducer of children, a producer of food for the family’s subsistence, an unsalaried worker in the service of the ‘head of the family,’ the woman peasant at the same time has a very great revolutionary potential from which the Mozambican Revolution cannot be cut off. The configuration of political and social forces that currently govern Mozambique are largely the result of this country’s past experience with Portuguese colonial capitalism. It is difficult to know with any level of accuracy how pre-colonial relations toward land were constituted. There were many groups of Bantu-speaking people who migrated into the southern African region and settled in what is now Mozambique prior to colonial penetration. Portugal’s efforts to gain a foothold in East Africa began in 1498.
