As stories of miracle cures, witchcraft and the occult go, the most amazing by far is what is happening in Loliondo, north of the Tanzanian city of Arusha.

There, Ambilikile Mwasipile, a 76-year-old herbalist, has turned Tanzania upside down.

Mwasipile dispenses a miracle drink (Africareview.com called it “a cure for all seasons”) that purports to heal nearly every ailment on earth.

The long road leading to Loliondo and Mwasipile’s modest compound is a nightmarish mass of humanity.

A programme on the Kenya NTV channel (part of the same stable as this paper) on Mwasipile’s works just blew me away.

The story broke in the Tanzania media nearly a month ago, and by last week the traffic jam to Mwasipile’s place had grown to 2,000 cars and 12 kilometres long.

Visitors had started arriving from Kenya. There were a few Europeans there as well.

Finally, an alarmed Tanzania government acted. However, it was not to shut down the operation.

Rather it sent security officers to control the inflow of patients, because there are just no sanitary facilities for the multitudes.

The more scientific Tanzanians, correctly, dismiss Mwasipile as a quack.

Two doctors interviewed on the NTV programme said their patients who had given the miracle drink a try actually got worse.

But for every doctor who says Mwasipile’s medicine is a sham, there are two doctors who have drunk it and are proclaiming its greatness.

Gado, celebrated cartoonist in Nairobi who was born in Tanzania, in typically cynical fashion dismisses Mwasipile as a charlatan and mocks “African’s obsession” with the dark arts.

He says, though, that the only valuable commodity the magic man of Loliondo is offering, is one that is not directly on sale – hope.

Where there is hope, the queue is bound to be very long.

As the Economist magazine noted, US President Barack Obama won in 2008 because he “had hope as his running mate.”

The second thing that can be said in defence of Mwasipile and his other African peers, is that they are not the worst charlatans.

The people who are lining up in Loliondo, practised and got accustomed to buying sham products in another long line — the general election queue.

Despite the disappointments of electing previous leaders who gave them a raw deal and robbed them, every five years, the people line up.

Like Mwasipile’s concoction, they elect councillors, MPs and presidents who promise them deliverance from poverty, hunger, and thirst.

Perhaps that’s why Tanzanian politicians are giving constituents treats in Loliondo, as an advance bribe before the next round of elections.

Every conman, witchdoctor, and crook needs a system that supports their chicanery.

The system is vast: The bank that scalps you on service fees, the telephone company with crappy customer care, the hospitals and clinics that sell expired medicines, the contractors that build shoddy roads, and the revenue authority that never pays you back your VAT refund, to name a few.

Together, they create an ecosystem that makes quack cures possible, and a public that is accepting of it. Mwasipile is part of a very big club.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group’s executive editor for Africa & Digital Media. E-mail: [email protected]