The Times Online reports:
When Nomatter Tagarira, a spirit medium, claimed that she could conjure refined diesel out of a rock by striking it with her staff, ministers in Robert Mugabe’s Government believed that they might have found the solution to Zimbabwe’s perennial fuel shortage.
After witnessing her apparently miraculous gift they gave her five billion Zimbabwean dollars in cash (worth £1.7 million at the start of the year but now worth one seven-hundredth of that) in return for the fuel. Ms Tagarira was also given a farm, said to have been seized from its white owner during Mr Mugabe’s lawless land grab, as well as food and services that included a round-the-clock armed guard on the rock in the district of Chinhoyi 60 miles (100km) from Harare, the capital.
More than a year later officials realised they had been duped. Ms Tagarira is now in custody, awaiting trial on charges of fraud or, alternatively, of being “a criminal nuisance”.
Via Ace
"...Robert Mugabe’s Government believed..."
They really believed this? In this day and age?
And this man, Mugabe, is in charge of a government that holds millions of peoples' lives on the edge of doom.
Posted by: joated | October 28, 2007 at 08:55 PM
Plus, it took them a year to figure out she was a fraud.
Posted by: gail | October 28, 2007 at 09:19 PM
So, why am I still getting emails from Ethiopian/Nigerian scammers? Why don't they just send them to Zimbabwe’s government officials? They seem to believe in everything.
Posted by: joated | October 29, 2007 at 08:42 AM