Zimbabwe hunts spirit medium over false fuel claim

HARARE, July 22 (Reuters) – 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.


On Sunday, a Zimbabwean government newspaper 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.

Reuters