WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT AGAINST WIFE-BATTERY IN DANIEL MENGARA'S MEMA

Women’s empowerment, as a process of change is measured in terms of educational, economic and political achievements of women but its effectiveness in eradicating wife battery has not reached its apogee, in contemporary African marital homes, due to malice, individuality and lack of solidarity or union that govern the world of women/wives. Despite the established measure like denouncing violent husbands/men to the police, women/ wives especially in contemporary African women/wives, irrespective of their educational background, still find it aberrant to report a violent man/ husband themselves contemporary African marital homes and societies. As a way out, most married women, in Daniel Mengara’s Mema (2003), have observed wife-battery and sought for strategic ways to subdue it without separating themselves from their oppressors, men/husbands. The aim of this article is to show how some female characters, in the novel under study, have proved that change cannot come elsewhere but within the women with the use of self help/ mutual aids, witchcraft, motherhood and wifehood, sisterhood and dialogue, as processes of empowering women in order to hold back men/husbands’ brutality towards their wife/wives. So, not only does the article base on multidimensional approach of empowerment but also on the womanist trend because it promotes male and female survival and the entire people despite of their differences.