Kenyan Women Fight Corruption With Sex

Kenya is a country bitterly divided along political and ethnic lines, and a year after election protests turned into widespread tribal violence, bitter political rivalry threatens the country's security again.

Ann Njogu from the Centre for Rights Education and Awarness and one of the orginisers of the Kenyan...

Ann Njogu from the Centre for Rights Education and Awarness and one of the orginisers of the Kenyan sex ban speak to reporters, Thursday, April 30, 2009 in Nairobi.Thousands of Kenyan women vowed Wednesday to begin a weeklong sex strike to try to protest their country's bickering leadership, which they say threatens to revive the bloody chaos that convulsed this African country last year.Leaders from Kenya's largest and oldest group dedicated to women's rights, the Women's Development Organization, said they hope the boycott will persuade men to pressure the government to make peace. Eleven women's groups are participating in the strike. The groups have also called on the wives of President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga to abstain.

(Karel Prinsloo/AP Photo)

But this time a group of women activists say they are ready to fight not with machetes or guns but with sex.

Talk to members of any tribe within Kenya, and most are willing to recite negative stereotypes about one another. Last year that tribal tension took a violent turn during post-presidential election violence that killed more than 1,000 people and displaced nearly half a million.

And despite signing a power-sharing agreement last year, the political parties of President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga have continued to wrangle over power.

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Now the Women's Development Organization of Kenya, made up of 11 different women's rights groups, has called for women across the country to impose a sex ban on their partners for one week to protest the political infighting in Kenya's government. Sex, says the women's group, is the one thing that cuts beyond tribal, political and class lines. The group even plans to compensate Kenya's many prostitutes for abstaining.

"Sex costs nothing, and it excites the public imagination," said Patricia Nyaundi, the executive director of the Federation of Women Lawyers, also known as FIDA.

And the ban has definitely excited Kenyans. It's the talk on all the radio stations as well as the top story for the local newspapers. Men and women have weighed in to support or oppose the ban. Some call it courageous and just what the country needs, while others say it is against the tradition of African marriages, and that the ban is fundamentally unfair.

"Sex is between a husband and his wife in the home, it is not for politics," says Harrison Wabugu, a businessman from Nyeri, Kenya. "Why should I suffer because of the foolishness of the politicians? You think I don't want Raila and Kibaki to shake hands?"

But the discussions are exactly what the group had in mind when calling for the boycott, Nyaundi told ABC News.

"We usually distance what is happening in the political arena and how that is affecting us in our day-to-day lives," she said. "The fundamental issue really is that we wanted Kenyans to discuss the state of the nation at the family level. So far, very good."