HARARE, Zimbabwe - A witch doctor is facing fraud charges after apparently convincing Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, and other top politicians that she could create diesel fuel from rocks.
The Herald newspaper, a government mouthpiece, reports that Mugabe and his cabinet agreed to pay the woman two head of cattle and three buffalo after she convinced them of her power.
It says the tribal healer, known in the West as a witch doctor, also took large sums of money, a car and a piece of land from other top-ranking politicians.
She got the payments after promising to use spells to produce diesel fuel from rocks in the bush outside the provincial town of Chinhoyi, 110 kilometres northwest of the capital, Harare.
But instead of invoking spirits, the woman bought diesel fuel and had it piped into the rocks.
The newspaper says Mugabe himself ordered Rotina Mavunga's arrest. She was charged with fraud last month.
"We are not going to be too hard on her. We just want the truth and to know who put her up to such things,'' the state media quoted Mugabe as telling guests at the commissioning of a biofuel plant Thursday.
Mugabe said he at one point sent a delegation of his most senior colleagues, the defence and police ministers to investigate the claims.
When they returned without a clear answer, he dispatched the ministers of energy, mines and science and technology and a third delegation of top military and police officers, the Herald reported.
Fuel shortages are chronic in Zimbabwe, which has the world's highest inflation rate.
Critics accuse the 83-year-old Mugabe, Zimbabwe's only ruler since independence from Britain in 1980, of ruining the economy by ordering often violent seizures of farms from whites to be handed over to blacks.
Since the campaign started in 2000, a country that once exported food has suffered shortages of even staple foods.
The economic meltdown has been accompanied by a crackdown on Mugabe's political opponents and increasing international isolation.
