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.

The management of Hidroelectrica de Cahora Bassa (HCB), the company that operates the dam, says that the police never informed HCB of the alleged sabotage attempt. This took Cossa by surprise - if the police at Songo, the Cahora Bassa town, had not spoken with the HCB management, that was "a failing".

Cossa alleged that, when the four were arrested, they were "close to the dam". But earlier reports said the boat they were on was heading upstream, away from the dam, towards Zumbo, which is 300 kilometres from the dam wall.

As anyone who has visited Cahora Bassa knows, HCB employs a security force which would make it virtually impossible for anyone unauthorized to enter the turbine room. The part of the lake close to the dam is an exclusion zone, and no boats are allowed to approach the dam wall.

Meanwhile, the Orgonise Africa four have been transferred from Songo to a prison in the provincial capital, Tete city, while investigations continue. If the Pretoria analyses show that the orgonite is indeed harmless to human and animal health, then the worst they can be charged with is the unauthorized dumping of rubbish in the lake.

The leader of the group, Georg Ritschl, a German architect resident in South Africa, has admitted that this is not the first time that orgonite activities have led to his detention. He told the Portuguese news agency Lusa that he was arrested three years ago in Zimbabwe, and held for three days until the Zimbabwean police determined that the orgonite was harmless.

Orgonite is supposed to be the universal cure for diseases, drought and other climatic disasters, and every other ill that befalls humanity. It works by channeling the "orgone energy" supposedly discovered by Reich, and which he declared was the force behind everything from sexual orgasms to galaxy formation.

The only trouble is that orgone does not exist, and orgonite is, quite literally, a heap of rubbish.