The Zimbabwe Dam Mermaids of Gokwe and Osborne Dam

In Shona tradition, the water has its own keepers. The njuzu. Water spirits. English renders the word as "mermaid", and VOA described mermaids as "mythological water creatures with a female body and the tail of a fish". Near Gokwe, in the Midlands, local belief held that angry spirits lived around Gwehava Dam, also called Sengwa 2, about 12km outside the town. They existed "in the form of a mermaid and a large strange snake that dwells within the surroundings of the dam". By November 2011, NewsDay was already running the headline "Mermaids 'stop' Gokwe project".

Late January 2012. Samuel Sipepa Nkomo, Zimbabwe's Water Resources Minister, gave evidence to a Senate committee. The men sent to install pumps at Gokwe and at Osborne Dam, on the Odzi River near Mutare, were refusing to stay. They reported "that people have disappeared mysteriously while some have been chased away by the legendary creatures."

The machines had "broken down under unclear circumstances and without any traces of vandalism". At Osborne, divers with aqualungs went down to find the cause of the blockages. They "returned to the surface pledging to never go back down."

Nkomo was blunt. "All the officers I have sent have vowed not to go back there." He had suspected the men simply did not want the job. So he tried others. "We even hired whites thinking that our boys did not want to work but they also returned saying they would not return to work there again." No worker's own account has surfaced. No report describes what anyone saw in the water.

Nkomo's remedy was to "brew traditional beer and carry out any rites to appease the spirits". Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo agreed. Nkomo was clear about his own view. "I do not believe in mermaids, but the community that lives in the area does."

The ministry hired traditional healers. Cattle were slaughtered. Beer was brewed. Chiefs Njelele and Nemangwe of Gokwe South led the bira ceremony, and VOA reported that four traditional chiefs slept at the Sengwa 2 Dam. Then Chengeto Gozo, the Zinwa catchment manager for Sanyati, spoke to The Standard. "The ceremony was finalised on Wednesday and we switched on the pumps." Water supply to Gokwe town improved. At Osborne, no resolution was ever reported.

Nkomo himself offered a physical reading of Osborne. Something underneath, he suggested, perhaps a suction hole, where "the water will actually be swirling violently." Others pointed to plain mechanical failure, or to workers who did not want the work. Cultural activist Prince Peter Zwide Khumalo warned: "I do not believe that they need to be used to hinder development. This needs to be looked into very seriously."

Chief Edison Chihota of Mashonaland East took the other side. "For anyone to dispute this is also disputing him or herself." He suggested the reservoirs were spiritually disturbed, because bodies were dumped in them during the 1970s war. No one alleged a hoax.

The story travelled from the Herald to VOA, AFP, the Daily Mail and the Irish Examiner, then on into folklore blogs. It was not the last of its kind. December 2012. At Mtshabezi Dam, Bulawayo, officials again blamed a mermaid when generators could not be connected to the pumps.