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A 48-year-old farmer in Bié province, Angola, has been detained by the police after he reportedly killed his 44-year-old wife with a machete, hours after learning she had been raped by a group of men at a wedding party.
Angola’s Criminal Investigation Service (SIC) in Bié, working with the National Police in Catabola, Bié province, in a statement, says Jorge Wanga struck his wife multiple times in the head and chest with a machete on July 21 after discovering she had been intoxicated and sexually assaulted by a group of young men at a wedding celebration in Tchissamba village.
After which he allegedly hid her body near a riverbank, where it was recovered eight days later. Wanga has been detained by SIC and is expected to appear before the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
This is femicide, the intentional killing of a woman or girl because of her gender, driven by discrimination, unequal power relations, and harmful social norms. It is the most extreme and brutal manifestation of violence against women and girls, occurring on a continuum of multiple forms of violence.
However, regional social media has framed this incident around the husband’s emotional state, propagating that it was motivated by jealousy rather than his decision to kill his own wife, who is a rape survivor.
This reframing is a documented pattern in femicide reporting across the region, not unique to this case. Angola does not currently have a standalone femicide law. In March 2026, the government proposed raising the maximum prison term for domestic violence from 10 to 15 years and creating an observatory to monitor cases, classifying domestic violence as a public crime. That amendment advanced to the committee stage in the National Assembly in late July 2026, after MPs voted unanimously to approve it in general terms.
The broader picture is stark. Africa records the highest rate of intimate partner and family-related femicides globally. In 2024, an estimated 50,000 women and girls worldwide were killed by intimate partners or family members, which makes an average of 137 every day.
A 2017 survey found that 32% of Angolan women had suffered physical violence since age 15, and 34% had been victims of physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their husbands or partners.
According to reports, Wanga remains in SIC custody. But the status of any investigation into the group of men accused of the assault at the wedding is unknown.
