How diesel mystic duped Mugabe’s Cabinet team

HARARE, Monday

Details have started to emerge on how the magician who claimed that she had discovered pure diesel oozing from a rock sent Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s Cabinet on a wild goose for 13 days.

Ms Rotina Muvhunga also known as Nomatter Tagarira was last week jailed for 27 months for defrauding the state and misrepresenting to government officials.

Minutes of a meeting of the Zanu PF politburo – the top decision making body of Mugabe’s then sole ruling party - held in December 2007 details how senior government officials and security chiefs were tricked by the cunning diesel mystic.       

Ms Mavhunga is said to have presented Mugabe with a four “golden boulders and six packets of loose stones” so that government could appreciate her supernatural powers.

The stones were supposed to be gold but it was proven that they were just ordinary rocks. 

Initially, she claimed that only diesel was oozing from the rocks but after seeing that government was developing serious interest, she said the rocks could also produce Jet A fuel, petrol and paraffin.

Mugabe roped in the feared Joint Operations Command – a grouping of security chiefs who are fiercely loyal to the veteran ruler- who together with three ministers visited Mavhunga’s shrine for 13 days.

According to the Zanu PF minutes published by the privately owned The Standard newspaper, the team spent close to a fortnight at the shrine but never detected that Mavhunga was a fraud.

The minutes say Presidential Affairs Minister Didymus Mutasa who briefed the politburo is said to have “further chronicled how a number of rituals were perfomed on sacred sites along a range of mountains in search of the diesel.”

“The team complied with all the spirit medium (that possessed Mavhunga)’s demands but each time it was her turn to deliver the diesel she would make fresh and unrealistic demands,” the minutes say.

She allegedly roped in “new players/spirit mediums such as Mbuya Nehanda who were not part of the grand plan.”

The new demands made the team suspicious and they concluded that Mavhunga was not sincere.

“He (Mutasa) added that it was strongly suspected that the diesel in question was being sourced from elsewhere and put into the long pipe at night,” the minutes added.

Mutasa said he feared Mavhunga was working with other fraudulent elements who were taking advantage of the acute fuel shortages the country was facing then.

The registrar general, Tobaiwa Mudede who has been accused of masterminding the rigging of elections by Zanu PF in the past was mentioned in court as one of the government officials who sheltered Mavhunga when she was being sought by the police. For her troubles Mavhunga was given five billion Zimbabwe dollars, which was a lot of money then, a car and a farm.

She was on the run for almost a year and half before she was arrested last month.

When she was asked by the magistrate why she was evading arrest Mavhunga said she was not aware that police were looking for her as some of the officers were regular visitors to her shrine.