Mystic leads Zimbabwe government on fake fuel hunt (diesel fails to flow from magic rock)

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

311 days of leave a year!

Saturday 20th July 2007

Dear Family and Friends,
The big luxury cars and their nouveau riche occupants have gone from our town now. The men in big jackets whose multiple pockets were overflowing with bank notes have also disappeared from view this week. These vultures who came hot on the heels of the price cutting army and youth brigade have picked the carcass clean and now just the bare bones are left : our shops are as good as empty. Most supermarkets have given up all pretence of trying to make it look as if they've got things left to sell and there are just line after line of empty shelves. Bottled water, however, is still abundant - surely a relief to the participants of the endless government workshops who seem to use so much of it.

Our streets have grown dramatically quieter this week as fuel supplies have dried up and yesterday came another nail in the price control coffin. The all powerful 'Task Force' on price cuts announced that fuel paid for in foreign currency and issued by a coupon system has now been banned. Holders of coupons have 2 weeks to redeem their fuel from private importers and that's the end of another life line. It wasn't one that many ordinary people could access but still it kept some individuals, church organizations, donor agencies and diplomats on the road. Day by day the ways that people outside the country can help their families left behind are being cut off and so the reality of aloneness and oppression grows.

It's taken three weeks of madness but at last people are beginning to ask questions about the price cuts. The first one is why the maximum amount of money people can withdraw from their own bank accounts suddenly and dramatically increased from one and a half to ten million dollars just a few days after price cuts began. Coincidental? You have to wonder, as most ordinary Zimbabweans lucky enough to have jobs don't earn anywhere near ten million dollars a month. The government stipulated wage for a domestic house worker, for example is less than a hundred thousand dollars a month - for sure none of them benefited from price cuts or from being able to withdraw ten million dollars a day.

People are openly asking where the resupplies of food and fuel are going to come from now that the cupboard is bare. Everyone is asking where, when and how this is going to end. And everyone is asking why it happened. Many say its been done to win voter support but 8 months before elections are due and with empty shelves already, it makes little sense.

Perhaps answers will come in the next week as Parliament re-opens for the 7th session but we are not holding our breath. The statistics just released about the 6th session of parliament leave much to be desired. In the year long 6th session the House of Assembly sat for business for just 54 days. Imagine 311 days of paid annual leave at the expense of tax payers! The mind boggles.
Until next week, thanks for reading, love cathy.

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