It is a spectacularly entertaining sight, but, while it may resemble the grotesque extravagances of a Hollywood set, there’s nothing fictional about it.
Although it is two decades since he took office, President Robert Mugabe’s security still takes Zimbabweans by surprise.
When Mugabe travels all traffic comes to a stand-still.
Motorists, rudely forced off the road by speeding motorcyclists, watch in stunned awe as the presidential cavalcade speeds past.
If the motorcade is meant to frighten then it succeeds, even if only because of its size and overbearing bodyguards’ use of brute force.
When the president is moving around Harare he is usually accompanied by no fewer than nine vehicles including four police bikes, an ambulance and, at times, an additional top-of-the-range Mercedes. The cavalcade can get twice as big, particularly when Mugabe’s travelling outside the capital, when larger crowds increase the perceived security threat.
Typically the motorcade consists of several Mercedes Benz vehicles, half of which are likely to be unmarked. Anonymous security personnel occasionally shove automatic rifles beyond the luxury cars’ tinted windows.
Clearly modesty and discretion are the least of their concerns.
The mainstay of the motorcade is two open Land Cruiser trucks. Each transport about a dozen helmeted men, brandishing an assortment of heavy weapons. Machine guns gleaming in the sun, the men often hang onto the trucks as if they’re ready to swing into action. It is a sight unlikely to leave even the most lion-hearted observer untouched.
The president’s own ride, a new US$2,5-million custom-built Mercedes Benz, arrived in the country in April 2002, just before the presidential election that the 80-year-old is accused of stealing through intimidation, violence and rigging.
The vehicle’s importation from Germany (at a time when Zimbabweans needed food aid and the country was battling severe foreign currency shortages) met with whispered disapproval. The purchase was made shortly before the European Union slapped targeted sanctions on the former freedom fighter and his close associates.
Apart from its ample security features, the five tonne limo serves as a mobile office that offers the president luxuries including access to the Internet. So far, however, there’s no evidence that the president spends any of his time on the road exploring the world wide web. Cyberspace may be less thrilling than the actual world he inhabits.
At the December World Summit on the Information Society, in Geneva, Mugabe accused the Western media of using new technology for espionage to weaken the Third World.
A local security expert says Mugabe’s lavish motorcade is not inconsistent with security practice in dictatorships. ”Go to Libya and you’ll see the same thing. If you’d been to Pakistan during Zia’s time it was similar,” he adds. ”I understand Saddam [Hussein] was the same as was [Nikolai] Ceausescu.”
A MP with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Giles Mutsekwa, contends that Mugabe’s motorcade is so large because the president is preparing himself for the possibility that, fed up with his oppressive rule, Zimbabweans might do the unthinkable.
”This is what Mugabe is readying himself for,” notes Mutsekwa, who is also the MDC’s secretary for defence. ”It’s not normal for someone who claims to have been democratically elected not to want anyone near him.”
Officially, however, justification for Mugabe’s seemingly excessive security could be that he, while prime minister, survived three assassination attempts. Curiously, the president has a history of accusing political foes of plotting to assassinate him.
In 1982 Mugabe charged the rival nationalist leader, Joshua Nkomo, and other Zapu party officials of plotting to topple him. Although acquitted they were imprisoned for seven years without being charged.
In December 1997 another opposition leader, Ndabaningi Sithole, was convicted and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for conspiring to assassinate the president. He was accused in 1995of plotting to blow up the motorcade with a claymore mine.
MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai currently faces two treason trials for allegedly plotting on two separate occasions to eliminate Mugabe .
The charges against the MDC leadership are based on a disputed Australian TV documentary, broadcast in February last year, where it appears the opposition was planning to have Mugabe assassinated. In a meeting with Canadian consultants, Tsvangirai is said to have discussed how to proceed ”after the head of state has been eliminated.”
The MDC, on the other hand, claims the video footage is based on a trap, set by the Mugabe regime under the supervision of a government lobbyist and former Israeli secret service officer, Ari ben-Menashe.
Since June Tsvangirai has also faced another treason charge for allegedly backing a violent overthrow of the government when he called for a five-day national strike.
It is therefore not unreasonable that Mugabe’s security personnel could justify the extravagant motorcade as a necessary assassination-deterrent.
But that explanation may not assuage the concerns of many Zimbabweans, who marvel at the fact that the motorcade does not, for example, reflect the erratic fuel supply that has resulted from foreign exchange shortages that some attribute to the president’s mismanagement. He, however, has blamed it, in part, on the West.
”We have never noticed Mugabe minimise himself on fuel,” says Mutsekwa. ”You can imagine how much fuel that motorcade gobbles.” The presidential limo alone guzzles about 45 litres per 100km.
Mutsekwa says his party believes in more reasonable security for the president. ”We’d go for a motorcade that is purely ceremonial as opposed to fortifying your head of state.”
According to Professor Mike Hough, the director of the Institute for Strategic Studies at the University of Pretoria, VIPs face many obvious threats, such as kidnapping. ”In the case of Zimbabwe, the reactions to possible threats seem, however, to verge on hysteria.”