As Zimbabwe's voter registration closed yesterday, one can't help but wonder if the country's recent sex boycott also come to a happy ending. Our correspondent caught up with the woman behind the no-vote-no-sex campaign, MDC minister Priscilla Misihairabwi Mushonga.
Over the past couple weeks, Mushonga has urged women to deny men their conjugal rights as a way to force them to register as voters and then to cast their actual votes on election day, 31 July. The controversial though popular Zimbabwean minister for regional integration and international cooperation had called for a sex ban at a campaign rally in Ndebele-speaking Matabeleland province.
RNW spoke with Mushonga, who also serves as the powerful secretary-general of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) faction led by Welshman Ncube, to ask why she called the boycott.
"Our men have failed to play their role to bring about change in the country. It has always been women who have been going to register to vote and we, as women, have decided to take up the challenge to change the political status quo in Zimbabwe," she said, while leaving a church service in Bulawayo. "We can fight as women, but we also need men on board because they are the missing link in the struggle for change."
According to Mushonga, women tried their best to reason with men, but they were not listening. This is why they decided to hit them where it hurts most - in the bedroom - by denying them what they love most. And there would have to be proof: no voter registration slip, no sex.
The 49-year-old politician became a widow in 2011 when her husband, a surgeon, died of injuries sustained during a robbery at their house.
Support and severity
Mushonga said her call for a sex boycott in Zimbabwe received widespread support among women. Most of the women who spoke to RNW confirmed this.
Joyse Ncube, a secretary at a local company, noted that men are lazy and don't want to be part of change. She added that it's always women who go and register to vote, while men spend their time drinking beer.
Meanwhile, some men had warned Mushonga not to 'corrupt' their wives and threatened severe consequences.
"If my wife takes part in this sex strike nonsense, that's the end of our marriage. I paid lobola so that I enjoy everything that comes with it including my conjugal rights," fumed Bekezela Ndlovu, a resident of Magwegwe township in Bulawayo.
A traditional leader in Hwange, 270 kilometres north-west of Bulawayo where the minister called for a sex boycott, told RNW by phone that he would not entertain any reports from women claiming to have been beaten by their husbands for taking part in the sex strike.
According to Gilbert Sibanda: "The minister can't use sex as a weapon to force us to go and vote. Some of us have lost interest in voting because we have failed to remove Robert Mugabe through the ballot."
The message
Mushonga told RNW that she was inspired by similar boycotts in countries, such as Sierra Leone, Liberia and Kenya.
"People should focus on the message rather than the sex issues. Our message is for change in this country," she said.
By month's end it should become clear whether Zimbabwean men - and women - have gotten the message.
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Priscilla;
The call to boycott sex with husbands in families is nonsensical. It can only come from a whore who does not have a permanent husband.
Since 2011, Priscilla has not had sex because of the unfortunate fact that her "husband' passed on. She unfortunately wants other women to be like her - hoping from one married man to another.
Those women with happy marriages know what to do to persuade their husbands to participate in elections than to refuse them sex. I do not need to be denied sex for me to vote. When I joined the war of liberation - which was actually painful - I had not been denied sex.
The problem with our women is that they just jump into any ship that comes. This is why men have taken a back seat. How can a person who liberated this country not know the importance of voting to the extent of requiring some push like being denied sex?
It is clear that men are taking a back seat because women are driving them to this party today; to this other party tomorrow and to yet another party the next day. Men are fully aware that the ONLY party worth supporting - instead of all these 'mafikezolos' that we are being driven to - is ZANU-PF.
In a bid not to antagonise their wives, men have decided to take a back seat because they cannot afford to sell their country to imperialists through these sellout parties that our wives are forcing us to join and vote for.
It is, therefore, important for women to know and understand this.
I know of one man who has been to four churches since 2009 and all this was because of his wife who persuaded him to join church after church but nothing came out of it all. He has now resigned to staying at home leaving the wife to continue going on a whirlwind chasing for a suitable church and party.
As one guy rightly up it, anyone who heed Priscilla's call to boycott sex with their husbands is doomed and is, without any doubt, sealing her fate as a divorcee after the elections.
Remember elections only come once and if you antagonise your marriage for political gains, you are bound to regret when you end up with no husband but politics in your bedroom.
Let’s be honest !!! Watching from afar, Zimbabwe has become totally dysfunctional state that has to blame everyone and everything, but themselves for their chaotic and shameful existence. Now someone has to turn to dick heads to rally on about voting and leaders of their own destiny into the beer hall. The African man thinks beer and sex makes them men!!! It goes to show exactly what kind of brain is leading the country into chaos and no destiny.
The bones are still as the leaves blow away from the cracked stones.