WHILE the case of the diesel mystic, Rotina Mavhunga was closed with her conviction last week, new details have emerged on how she managed to trick the Zanu PF politburo and top security chiefs into believing that she could draw fuel from rocks

Politburo minutes of July 27 2007 reveal that Mavhunga presented President Robert Mugabe with four “golden boulders” and six packets of loose stones so he could appreciate her efforts and those of the spirit realm.

The stones were supposed to be precious and valuable but it turned out they were just ordinary rocks.

Mavhunga, also known as Nomatter Tagarira, who also preferred to be called Changamire Dombo or Sekuru Mboni, had initially claimed that the rocks were producing diesel but on seeing the interest from the government, she said the rocks could also produce pure Jet A1 fuel, petrol and paraffin.

Excited by the prospect of finding fuel, at a time the country was facing acute shortages, Mugabe and his party called upon the Joint Operations Command (JOC), a grouping of security chiefs to investigate the matter further.

The team comprised of Sydney Sekeramayi, then politburo secretary for health and child welfare and Kembo Mohadi, who was deputy legal affairs secretary.

The two were ministers of Defence and Home Affairs respectively.

“The team was assisted by Deputy Commissioner (Godwin) Matanga, Air Commodore (Shebba) Shumbayaonda, Assistant Commissioner (Arthur) Makanda and (a Provincial Intelligence Officer) Madondo who had already been working on the project,” read the minutes in possession of The Standard.

The team is reported to have camped in Chinhoyi for close to a fortnight, but strangely they did not detect that Mavhunga was a fraud.

As if that was not enough several pictures have emerged showing Didymus "Diesel from rock" Mutasa and Sekeramayi groveling at the diesel mystic, while the fuel was splashed all over their bodies as part of some rituals Mavhunga conducted at her shrine.

Mutasa who presented the report to the politburo, said they had been taken to another site in Makuti, which was also said to produce pure diesel from rocks.

“He further chronicled how a number of rituals were performed on ‘sacred sites’ along a range of mountains which stretches from Chinhoyi to Raffingora,” read the minutes.

The security chiefs reportedly underwent a host of other rituals to in the hope that more diesel would ooze from the rocks, but were disappointed by the amount they got.

The JOC team then sent in a police tanker to see how much they could get from the source and were disappointed when only 40 litres were produced.

“The team complied with all Sekuru’s requirements but each time it was his turn to deliver the diesel he would make fresh and unrealistic demands,” the minutes state.

Seeing that her attempts were in vain, Mavhunga is reported to have “roped in new players/spirit mediums such as Mbuya Nehanda who were not part of the grand plan.”

It is at this stage that the government and JOC officials started getting suspicious, as they feared that the new spirits being evoked by Mavhunga wanted to be recognised by the government and they in turn would make their own demands.

As a result of their suspicions, Mutasa concluded that Sekuru Dombo was insincere in his dealings and had failed to provide the diesel.

“He added that it was strongly suspected that the diesel in question was being sourced from elsewhere and put into the long pipe at night,” Mutasa is said to have told the politburo.

The JOC team, which had been stationed in Chinhoyi from  to June 5-8 2007, after failing to get any fuel and strangely failing to catch Mavhunga red handed, reported that the exercise had been futile and there was no diesel in the rocks.

Mutasa said he feared that the woman was working in cahoots with other fraudulent elements in order to fleece the government “of it resources and in turn gain underserved publicity”.

Ironically at Mavhunga’s trial, it was revealed that the fuel had allegedly been sourced by the Registrar General, Tobaiwa Mudede, himself a high-ranking government official.

At the time Mavhunga held the government spellbound she lived luxuriously with the government giving her Z$5 billion, then a fortune, a car and a piece of land among the nation’s highest ranking politicians.

At the time Mugabe claimed that Mavhunga’s beauty had blinded his ministers.

For her troubles, Mavhunga who had been on the run for a year and a half last week was sentenced to 27 months in prison for defrauding the state and misrepresenting to government officials.

By The Standard