We have all come into contact with them at some point. Conmen or bafere as we refer to them in street speak. There are as many varieties of con artists as there are tricks available for them to use. Some of these bafere are small time tricksters (you might have encountered the ones claiming to have picked some mzungu’s lost ‘gold’) while others con an entire company to the point of putting it out of business. What unites the big time bafere though is their tastes—they always like certain things, as a rule.
Media attention junkies
One moment you didn’t know they existed, the next they are all over the media. Flip the TV channels and they are there, turn on the radio and they’ve been hosted, and in your weekend newspaper they are dominating the lifestyle pages for throwing some lavish party. If all of a sudden some unknown is hogging all the media attention, turn on your ‘mufere’ alert. They won’t spare you on social media either, spamming your timeline with one sponsored post after another. They assume the title “socialite” because no one knows what they do.
Associate with power
If you want to smell nice, you make friends with a perfume seller. For con artists, that is a rule that may well be changed to “appear in photos with a high profile person”. If you can appear in the papers shaking hands with the president, good. If that is at a meeting held at the presidential palace, better. If it is a picture of the mufere having coffee with a head of state and this runs on the front page, perfect. The most important thing is to appear to know such important people at a very personal level.
Love to play philanthropist
Con artists love their Robin Hood style. They will not miss an opportunity to donate to an orphanage, a school in need, or even bail out a national team. Of course they will make sure the first people that are invited to these functions are the photographers of national dailies, with the camera crews of the leading TV stations not far off. Their acts of ‘selflessness’ must be captured at all costs.
Wheels to die for
A mufere would rather die than not drive the most flashy car in town. He will always be dashing around town in expensive rides, taken out of an impressive fleet. Depending on how much of the ‘village’ is still left in him, he might even take to driving around in a convoy. Why not, it guarantees the attention a mufere desires so much. And oh, the cars come with personalised plates.
Sharp dressers
It is no secret that con artists have got a taste for the best things in life. This extends to their dress. You just know when a con artist steps into the room. Whether it’s casual or formal, it will often be a man drowning in designer labels. Armani for the suit, footwear by Christian Louboutin and a Tag Heuer timepiece.
Home is everywhere and nowhere
Bafere like to claim every other country as home. It helps them to fit in. A man whose country of origin is widely known to be Tanzania will pass himself off as Ugandan in no time. It is often part of a clever mechanism to keep the long arm of the law away even for just a day longer. Then after years of giving everyone an impression they are ready to become citizens, they disappear just as suddenly as they came.
A thing for ‘celebrity’ dates
A con artist will often only date high maintenance celebrity women or the best-known cash-gobbling socialites whose only claim to fame is the quality of their selfies and the inability to write an error-free Facebook post even if it is only two short sentences. Of course these unions are perfectly logical; the women want the con artist for their money and the mufere wants the woman for everything else other than her brain.
Run-ins with the law
Most big time con artists will have had their fair share of law suits, stints in jail or such other close shaves with the authorities. Yet, with the kind of funds at their disposal, a decent lawyer to argue their case is never far away and only on a few occasions will they get convicted.
In love with big ‘projects’
You will never hear a mufere talk about his involvement in a small project. He lives for the projects that are guaranteed to become the talk of town, as an unsuspecting public and unquestioning media gush about the “tycoon”’s claim that he is buying a personal jet, or building the country’s most amazing hospital, acquiring an island in the Caribbean or an English Premier League team.
Hotels are their homes and offices
Getting to know a con artist’s real home is harder than milking a stone. If he gives you a hotel like Serena (pictured left) as his ‘home’ address, even as he boasts about having millions of dollars stashed away in the bank, look a little closer; you could be hanging out with a mufere. The hotel arrangement works perfectly, as it makes him appear rich, serves the desire not to have a permanent address, plus, they are always on the move.