The original image shows members of Kenya Sex Workers Alliance protesting the killing of one of their members.
Syndicated Story By PesaCheck
This Facebook post with an image showing sex workers thanking Kenyan Deputy President (DP) William Ruto for supporting their “hustle” has been ALTERED.
The post claims that Mtito Andei sex workers have thanked Ruto for pledging Ksh1 million to help them form a SACCO.
“Sex workers at Mtito Andei have thanked our God-fearing DP William Ruto for his kind gesture of supporting their hustle after pledging to donate one million shillings to help them form a Sacco,” the post reads.
A photo showing predominantly women holding a banner with words that read in part, “Kenya Sex Workers Alliance (KESWA)” with a logo is attached.
However, a Google reverse search of the image shows that it has been online since September 2012. Then, commercial sex workers from Thika went on the streets to demonstrate the killing of one of their own.
They were not holding a banner thanking Ruto for supporting their hustle in the original photo. Instead, the banner text reads, “Stop killing sex workers they are human. Save us from our saviours only rights can stop the wrongs”.
Citizen TV also covered the Thika demonstrations by the commercial sex workers.
During his visit to Mtito Andei on 25 October 2021, Ruto told sex workers to form a SACCO so that he could deposit Ksh1 million to enable them to start doing “respectable” businesses.
The sex workers had urged the deputy president to speed up the ‘Hustlers Empowerment Fund’ to enable them to switch to respectable sources of income. Ruto promised to keep tabs on them and ensure their new ventures thrive.
In 2020, the same image we are fact-checking surfaced but in a different context. The photo appeared with the claim that the Kenya Sex Workers Alliance had endorsed Ruto’s presidential bid due to the great support that the second in command had been showing them. PesaCheck debunked the claim and discovered that the image had been altered.
PesaCheck has looked into a Facebook post with an image showing sex workers thanking Deputy President William Ruto for supporting their hustle and finds it to be ALTERED.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Naomi Wanjiku and edited by PesaCheck chief copy editor Rose Lukalo. The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck managing editor Enock Nyariki.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.