As a rough
rule of thumb, the larger and the more showy presidential motorcades are, the
worse the President really is. You can contrast Nyerere who used to ride in a
Peugeot 504, sitting next to the driver, with Mugabe who has a massive
entourage of flashy black Mercedes, motorbikes and the rest. Woe betide anyone
who does not pay due respect to this show of might. Anyone not stopping
instantaneously, and getting right off the road, is considered insolent, if not
traitorous, and beaten up or hauled off to prison or both. Interestingly South Africa
is one of the major culprits. Even minor Ministers love to surround themselves
with these flashy motorcades, and their security men are continuously being
sued for assault due to their enthusiasm for punishing offenders.
Of course
there’s one country which outdoes the rest in their obsession with security and
therefore absurd motorcades: the mighty U.S. of A. When Clinton came to
Johannesburg they even closed many of the roads on which he would be travelling:
Not just ordinary roads, but motorways – in both directions.
One of the tricks
they like to play is to have several dummy cars, so the assassin cannot tell
which one the Big Man is in, which makes the show even more silly. I saw it once
in Ramallah, on the West Bank, when Hilary Clinton was there: there were five
identical black four wheel drives with heavily tinted windows, all driving at
twice the safe speed. Maybe she wasn’t even in any, who knows. Assuming she was
in one of them, what she felt like is not known: did she enjoy it, or did she
feel a bit silly – or arrogant maybe? Because it is above all the arrogance of
these shows that annoys people, especially when “important” people think they
have the right to close roads in the middle of rush hour.
So where, on
this scale, would you expect Kabila to fall? Pretty near the top, I would
expect, right next to Mugabe. But no, he’s not like that at all, and though
this is one of the few nice things I can think to say about him, I think it’s
quite endearing.
He evidently
despises all this security fuss. We were out in a park once when we (almost)
bumped into him walking along, evidently paying a surprise visit to a nearby
school. Yes, he had bodyguards front and back, but there was no fuss. We see
him driving himself in a black and very well polished, Land Cruiser along the
river bank, looking both happy and ordinary. Sometimes he gets bored with cars,
and drives a quad bike instead. The security people must hate it, and he is
always followed by a convoy of cars bristling with guns, and an ambulance at
the rear in case he has a crash, but he does it. You also even see him, in an
official motorcade of five or eight cars, soldiers back and front and numerous
officials in tow, driving himself.
Maybe he
does this because he spent several years in Tanzania and learned how Nyerere
endeared himself to his subjects by his humility. Or maybe, and more likely,
he’s like a little boy who wants to have fun.
There’s a
nice story about Nyerere: he was flying to London for some international
meeting regarding the liberation of Zimbabwe. After they had been airborne for
a few hours, he was surprised to see Joshua Nkomo walking down the aisle,
exercising his greatly overweight body. They were indeed as surprised as each
other, and when they got talking Nyerere discovered that Mugabe was on the same
flight. How come they hadn’t seen each other before? Why, Mugabe and Nkomo,
using funds given by well-wishers for the liberation of Rhodesia, were flying
business class. Nyerere, true to form, was travelling economy.
That’s
something that Kabila will never emulate. NEVER.
No comments:
Post a Comment