Conflitos conjugais e sua mediação em situação urbana: um estudo de caso na cidade de Maputo

Abstract

In this study, we approach the marriage process, marital conflicts, its nature, agents and mediation processes in the city of Maputo. As the majority of the population in the city comes from the three southern provinces of Mozambique, and is recently urbanized, we base our work on the study of the rural societies of the Tsonga groups.

We present the norms that regulate the process of marriage in the urban area, trying to verify what constitutes continuity in relation to the rural area and what represents rupture. We tried to explore the reasons for both aspects. We distinguish the most frequent conflicts between the younger and older generations: these differ by their nature, those that occur between older couples mostly find a social justification, because they reveal a deviation from customary law, while those of older couples young couples present themselves more as a refusal of customary law and demanding a new order.

The agents and the mediation process varied or varied during the historical moments that characterized the community under study, of which, due to their socio-political nature, we could identify three: colonial, post-independence, which our informants subdivided into two parts : post-independence (1975-1980) and what we call current (1980-1994). The predominant basis for mediation is customary law, although in some cases the civil code is used, which is usually the case in courts. The customary law often used in mediation does not reflect the nature of some conflicts that have occurred, which are the result of a phenomenon of urbanization of these populations (TRADUÇÃO NOSSA)