TUDOR PARFITT'S SUPPOSED ARK OF THE COVENANT may have been nicked by Robert Mugabe's family - this according to the Daily Express:

But now, almost a year later, Parfitt is worried. Since the publication of his book and the broadcast of the documentaries, the whereabouts of his intriguing discovery are once again unknown. Parfitt says he has been told by sources close to family members of the autocratic Zimbabwean president Robert ­Mugabe that the object is now in the possession of one of Mugabe’s relations, perhaps even Mugabe himself.

“I first got suspicious when I started to hear that several people who had tried to see the Ark, many of them ­respectable academics, had been turned away and the museum was becoming very cagey about it,” he says. “Then a contact of mine who has connections to Mugabe’s extended family told me that people close to Mugabe have taken it.

“I’ve tried to make attempts to confirm it but Zimbabwe being such a difficult and corrupt country has meant I haven’t been able to discover where it has been taken.”

[...]

Now the object is missing, further analysis is impossible.

“At first the authorities in Zimbabwe had been relatively uninter-ested in what we were doing but as they began to appreciate what we had found the threats started,” says Parfitt. “Members of my team who had been allowed to film the ngoma were told that if they tried to return they would come to harm or be thrown in jail.”

Parfitt also says that sources who have told him of the Mugabe family’s interest in the Ark have stressed that their lives could be in danger for even discussing its present whereabouts. These aren’t empty threats. Mugabe’s thugs have killed and tortured countless people. At least half of Zimbabwe’s population is in danger of starvation and cholera is killing one in 20 citizens.

If Parfitt’s suspicions are correct and Mugabe really does have possession of the sacred Ark of the Covenant, it could hardly be in more evil hands.

Well, the Ark can take care of itself. Recall the Nazis in Raiders.

Seriously, regular readers will recall that I am highly skeptical of Professor Parfitt's theory. Nevertheless, the object, whatever it is, should stay in the hands of its Lemba owners and, I hope, also be available for scholars (especially specialists in African history) to study.

Background here.