Mystic leads Zimbabwe government on fake fuel hunt

Mystic leads Zimbabwe government on fake fuel hunt

By Cris Chinaka

Last updated: 07/22/2007 07:56:11

http://www.newzimbabwe.com/pages/fuel38.16709.html

ZIMBABWE police are hunting a traditional spirit medium who led

President Robert Mugabe's government on a fruitless search for

much-needed fuel she said was mysteriously oozing out of a rock.

The southern African state is battling with acute fuel shortages amid

an economic crisis many blame on Mugabe's policies.

A Zimbabwean government newspaper today reported a 35-year-old

traditional healer and spirit medium claimed to have discovered diesel

streaming from a rock in the northwest around Chinhoyi Caves,

protected by locals as a traditional shrine.

Rotina Mavhunga had said "the diesel was a gift from ancestral spirits

who saw that their children were suffering because of the fuel

shortage" and was pictured by a local newspaper holding a hosepipe

stuck into a rock, "spewing the oil", the Sunday Mail said.

Mugabe's governing Zanu PF dispatched an investigation team, including

three senior cabinet ministers, which established there were no oil

fields, the Sunday Mail quoted the party's information secretary

Nathan Shamuyarira as saying.

"The team reported to the (Zanu PF) politburo that there was no need

to pursue the issue as nothing convincing had been found, meaning that

there were no deposits of diesel in the area," Shamuyarira said.

Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena was not available for comment but

the Sunday Mail quoted him and other officials as saying Mavhunga and

her people had angered authorities with their false claims.

The Sunday Mail said Mavhunga was on the run following the arrest of

more than 50 of her disciples "for failure to prove the existence of

fuel".

The false oil discovery tale itself demonstrates Zimbabwe's

desperation in the face of a deep crisis that has also left the

once-prosperous country struggling with chronic food shortages, no

foreign currency reserves for imports and the highest inflation rate

in the world of over 4500 per cent.

The fuel problems have at times forced public transport operators to

pull vehicles off the road, forcing thousands of urban commuters to

walk to work.

On Thursday, Mugabe's government announced it was banning private fuel

purchases in foreign currency, apparently in a bid to tackle black

market trading in the fuel sector.

But the country's central bank governor Gideon Gono has warned the ban

risked strangling the already battered economy, currently reeling from

a controversial price blitz.

Mugabe, 83 and in power since independence from Britain in 1980,

ordered a price slash three weeks ago, charging that businesses were

hiking prices in support of a Western-sponsored plot to overthrow his

Zanu PF government.

Mugabe says Zimbabwe's economic crisis is a result of sabotage by

opponents trying to punish him for the seizure and redistribution of

white-owned farms to landless blacks.

Analysts say Mugabe's latest policies would further hurt the economy,

but were part of his short-term goal to retain power in general

elections due next March. - Reuters

--

There may come a time when the CO2 police will wander the earth telling

the poor and the dispossed how many dung chips they can put on their

cook fires. -- Captain Compassion.

Wherever I go it will be well with me, for it was well with me here, not

on account of the place, but of my judgments which I shall carry away

with me, for no one can deprive me of these; on the contrary, they alone

are my property, and cannot be taken away, and to possess them suffices

me wherever I am or whatever I do. -- EPICTETUS

Joseph R. Darancette

daranc@NOSPAMcharter.net