|
Bogus traditional healer held
21/03/2006 16:52 - (SA) Harare - A bogus traditional healer, who persuaded a businesswoman to hire "mermaids" and accommodate them in a hotel to help find a stolen car was convicted of theft by false pretenses, said court officials on Tuesday. Harare magistrate Sandra Nhau found Edina Chizema guilty of swindling a businesswoman of her savings with promises that mermaids would help recover the luxury car in 2004 and solved the businesswoman's unspecified "personal problems". In Zimbabwe, where tribal superstition was deeply entrenched, prosecutors said Chizema persuaded Margaret Mapfumo to pay 200 million Zimbabwe dollars (about $30 000) to hire mermaids, feed and accommodate them in a Harare hotel, buy power generators for a floodlit lakeside ceremony and invoked ancestral spirits to find the missing car. Prosecutors said that some of the money was to be used to buy a bull whose genitals - described in court as the animal's "strong part" - would point out the car thief. At a hearing on Monday, the magistrate said Chizema, who had pleaded not guilty and claimed to be a spirit medium, was not a credible witness and the "idiosyncrasies" of her plea were not recognised in law. According to court officials, Chizema was due to be sentenced to imprisonment or a fine at a sentencing hearing later. In Zimbabwe, prominent figures and even leading politicians had often been the victims of such scams. |