Nyawo, SoneneSoneneNyawo2025-02-132025-02-132025978-3-98989-042-8https://fis.uni-bamberg.de/handle/uniba/106038This chapter is a celebration of an intellectual maestro, Professor Ezra Chitando, whose academic life has flourished and earned him well deserved accolades. His academic odyssey has yielded knowledge generation in religion within the context of gender, sexuality, development, security, climate change, to name but a few. However, it is impossible to engage with this prolific scholar in all his publications; instead premised on the African feminist framework, and guided by the interpretative approach, this chapter explores Chitando’s insights on sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). I share his sentiments that SGBV is rampant and that it is a regrettable social malaise in African societies. Whilst I fully endorse his analysis of the religio-cultural landscapes that breed violence against women, my contribution in this chapter is to propose an alternative solution to SGBV. I argue that the solution does not only lie with the beneficiaries of patriarchal favors, but the victims and survivors of patriarchy. If women were to be empowered in African feminist religious literacy, they would be liberated from the dependency syndrome that elevates men, as the solution to social ills. Hence, this chapter, employing African feminist lenses, proposes liberative hermeneutics as an approach that can open the eyes of African women and girls not to blindly succumb to religio-cultural constructs that exacerbate SGBV.engchurchliberative hermeneuticspatriarchyreligious literacyreligio-cultural constructssexual and gender-based violence370bookpart