The Observer, November 9, 2007
Volume XL, Issue 10
Political Connection: Superstitious beliefs in government may prove costly to citizens
You've traveled to another dimension, a dimension of not only contradiction and speculation, but one that defies logic and is based only on blind faith, a nebulous land where the limits are that of imagination. You've entered…the Twilight Zone?
Not exactly. Think more along the lines of Zimbabwe.
Thirty-five-year-old spirit medium Nomatter Tagarira claimed that she could summon diesel fuel from a stone by simply striking the rock with her enchanted staff. While most reasonable human beings would agree that Tagarira's claims more closely resemble bovine excrement, the ministers in Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's government apparently believed her, excited by the prospect of this new psychic solution to the Zimbabwean energy crisis.
They put their money where their mouth is, too – to the tune of five billion Zimbabwean dollars in cash at the beginning of this year after they witnessed her astonishing feat of paranormal powers. (Granted, President Mugabe believes that minting more currency will decrease inflation, so the Zimbabwean dollar is now at one seven-hundredth of its original value.) In addition to this extraordinarily large sum of money awarded to the enchantress, she was awarded a farm, food, services, and armed guards.
I kid you not.
How did she perform her "supernatural" demonstration? With remarkably complex computers? By an intricate system of pumps? The answer is far simpler. Tagarira discovered an abandoned diesel tank from the 1970s and simply laid pipes from the tank to the bottom of the hill, located 60 miles from the capitol city of Harare. All she did was signal an assistant to turn on the tap when she tapped the rock with her staff.
It took over a year for the Zimbabwean officials to catch onto the woman's deception, at which point they arrested her on charges of fraud. Court documents have recorded that until July 2007, Tagarira completely convinced Mugabe's Cabinet, top political representatives, high-ranking army officials, and police officers that she could effectively summon up enough diesel to sustain the entire country for well into the next century. The "extremely qualified" task force reported to the President's politburo, the highest ranked executive and policy-making committee in the country, that Tagarira had miraculously produced fuel from her magic staff. Thankfully, a second task force was deployed and uncovered the ruse, leading to the fraud's arrest.
When I first heard about this issue in the news, my first impression was that the Zimbabwean government needed to redirect their tax dollars from psychic frauds to a rigorous government-sanctioned politburo electroshock program. But upon further reflection, I realized that no country is entirely beyond petty, silly superstitions. For instance, Britain publicly funds homeopathic remedies in the National Health Service. Homeopathy is nothing more than 19th-century German quack medicine, deluding patients into believing that taking remedies of diluted water – yes, water – will treat everything from aches and pains to an itchy scalp. The United States is not exempt from notorious flimflam either. Police investigations pay psychics to help investigate crimes, despite the fact that psychic ability has never been proved. Such was the case when Sylvia Browne, well-known television psychic, told the parents of abducted Shawn Hornbeck that he was murdered, when in fact he was found three years later alive and in good condition. In India, marriages are routinely arranged based on the compatibility of ancient astrological signs. The world is full of delusional, uncorroborated assertions, claims made with no evidence, no credence, and no reason.
We must be cautious in this world, for it is one filled with equally accessible knowledge and misinformation, reason and superstition, science and quackery, as the inept task force in Zimbabwe recently discovered. The frauds, charlatans, and swindlers are mostly harmless, but nevertheless, we abandon reason at our own peril. If we falter, we will be put in far worse positions than explaining a five-billion dollar loss to angry Zimbabwean taxpayers.
Tulsi Roy is a second-year biology/HPS major.
