Mozambique: Police still investigating 'orgonite'

Maputo — The Mozambican police have asked their South African counterparts to analyse samples of the "orgonite" which members of the New Age cult "Orgonise Africa" were dumping into the Cahora Bassa lake in April.

National police spokesperson Pedro Cossa said at a Maputo press briefing on Tuesday that samples had gone to Pretoria, and he did not know when the results of the analysis would be received.

Last week Cossa said the four people arrested (on 20 April) had been putting a "highly corrosive" substance in the lake in an attempt to sabotage the Cahora Bassa dam. He said the detainees themselves told the police that orgonite corrodes concrete (although, as far as AIM is aware, only one of the four speaks Portuguese).

Websites of orgonite enthusiasts (followers of the crazed Austrian psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich, whose fraudulent "orgone therapy" led to his incarceration in an American prison, where he died in 1957) tell us how to make orgonite - it consists of polyester resin, quartz crystals and metal (in this case aluminium) shavings, none of which are remotely corrosive.

Mozambican laboratory tests have already shown the orgonite to be inert, and essentially harmless. Nonetheless, the police have decided to use the more sophisticated laboratory equipment available in South Africa, for a second opinion.

~ more... ~


From DIS interest in Cahora Bassa alleged saboteur raises eye-brows

The Directorate of Intelligence Services (DIS) this week sent an agent to Mozambique, allegedly to try and secure the release of former Botswana Defence Force (BDF) pilot, Captain Tino Phuthego.

Phuthego, who in 2006 led the Botswana Defence Force C-130 crew to the Dafur region of Sudan to support the African Union peace keeping mission there, was two weeks ago arrested with three other men in Mozambique on suspicion of trying to sabotage the Cahora Bassa Dam, one of the largest hydro-electric dams in Africa.

The other three were a German soldier and architect, a South African herbalist and a Portuguese hotelier. The quartet was caught with 500 kg of unidentified powder, trying to feed it to the turbines of the dam. The powder, which has been confiscated by Mozambique police officers, was initially believed to be corrosive material designed to damage the Cahora Bassa Dam.

Information, however, started emerging on Friday that, contrary to initial suspicions, the four men are not members of a private terrorist militia but are in fact members of a lunatic fringe group called "Orgonise Africa". It has also emerged that there was nothing clandestine about this group's visit to the Cahora Bassa Lake. They advertised it on their Internet websites, where they called the journey "Operation Paradise".

[ ... ]

The group to which the four men belonged, Orgonise Africa, believes that everything wrong with the planet is due to a lack of orgone. To set matters right, the dedicated followers of the organization engage in "orgone gifting". This involves dumping "gifts" of a substance called orgonite into the place - in this case, Cahora Bassa Lake - that is to be cured of its orgone deficiency.

Orgonise Africa is a band of dedicated followers of the Austrian psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich, who died in an American jail in 1956. Reich did some valuable work on human sexuality in the early part of his career, but in his later years switched his political allegiance from left to right, and showed signs of mental illness and paranoia.

He claimed that he had discovered a universal form of energy which he called orgone. This energy - undetected by science both then and in the 52 years since Reich's death - was responsible for everything from the weather to gravity and the formation of galaxies. Reich built machines called orgone accumulators which were supposed to concentrate orgone energy. This would be a good thing since, according to Reich, illness and diseases are caused by insufficient orgone.


From Quotes of the week

JOHANNESBURG - A selection of quotes of Southern African interest. This feature moves every Thursday.

“The idea was to go with the own boat up the dam to Zumbo and back and drop orgonite pieces all the way, to improve the quality of etheric energy (life force) of the dam... It revitalises the water... it’s a very subtle thing.” -- Friederike Ritschl explaining that her husband Georg, one of four people arrested for trying to sabotage Mozambique’s Cahora Bassa dam, was merely trying to cleanse the water.