When Protection Turns into Persecution: The Story of Juliana Cafrique

The Story of Juliana Cafrique

This is how women and girls have been losing their lives at the hands of those who were meant to protect them.

Across Angola, thousands of women survive through informal street trading — walking long distances under the sun, carrying goods on their heads, and selling from hand to hand. These women, known as zungueiras, are not criminals. They are mothers, daughters, and breadwinners. They are women excluded from formal employment, excluded from higher education, and excluded from organized markets that could offer them dignity and safety.

For many, street trading is not a choice — it is survival.

Extreme poverty, unemployment, lack of education opportunities, and the absence of inclusive economic policies force women into informal work. Women who could not enter university, who never had access to quality education, or who were pushed out of school early due to poverty, early marriage, or pregnancy, turn to the streets as their only source of income.

Yet, instead of protection, they face violence.

Police officers, tasked with maintaining order, often respond with aggression, abuse of power, and fear tactics — firing guns into the air, chasing traders, destroying goods, and criminalising poverty. In these encounters, women lose not only their livelihoods, but sometimes their lives.

The Story That Shocked Angola

In 2019, Angola was shaken by the death of Juliana Cafrique.

Juliana Cafrique, 28 years old, was a zungueira by profession. She lost her life while working — not committing a crime, not threatening anyone, but simply trying to earn a living. She was shot by a police officer in the Rocha Pinto neighbourhood of Luanda.

Juliana left behind a husband and three young children, aged six months, two years, and seven years.

Her death occurred in March — Women’s Month — a time when speeches of appreciation, empowerment, and solidarity with women filled public platforms. Yet, on the ground, a woman was killed for being poor, for being visible, for being a woman in the informal economy.

Juliana Cafrique was born on 4 April 1990, in Libolo, Cuanza-Sul province. She was not just a statistic. She was a mother, a wife, a daughter, and a symbol of thousands of women whose lives remain unprotected.

Her story sparked national outrage and renewed calls to end police violence against zungueiras and to restore dignity to Angolan families.

How This Story Connects to the Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 5: Gender Equality

Juliana’s death exposes the deep gender inequalities faced by women in Angola:

• Women dominate informal street trading because they are excluded from formal jobs.

• Female traders face gender-based violence, harassment, and lethal force.

• The criminalisation of zungueiras reflects systemic discrimination against poor women.

• The failure to protect women’s lives violates their fundamental human rights.

Ending violence against women is not only about domestic spaces — it must also address state violence, police brutality, and economic exclusion.

SDG 4: Quality Education

Juliana’s story is also a story of educational exclusion:

• Many zungueiras never had access to quality education.

• Girls forced out of school due to poverty end up trapped in informal, unsafe livelihoods.

• Lack of education limits employment options, perpetuating cycles of poverty.

• Without education, women are denied the tools to claim their rights, access justice, and secure safer work.

Investing in inclusive, accessible education for girls and women is a long-term solution to breaking the cycle that pushes women into dangerous survival strategies.

A Call for Dignity and Justice

Juliana Cafrique should be alive.

Her children should not be growing up without their mother.

Her husband should not be mourning a preventable death.

No woman should die for trying to feed her family.

True development means:

• Protecting women, not persecuting them.

• Educating girls, not abandoning them.

• Creating inclusive markets, not criminalising survival.

• Training police to serve communities with humanity and accountability.

Remembering Juliana Cafrique is not just about the past — it is a demand for justice, reform, and dignity for every woman walking the streets today.