How African leaders spend our money - part 1 - by Aidan Hartley - The Spectator

How African leaders spend our money
Spectator, The, Jun 25, 2005 by Hartley, Aidan
Bob Geldof has urged us not to dwell on 'the corruption thing' -but, says Aidan Hartley, corrupt African leaders are using Western aid to buy fleets of Mercedes-Benz cars

'Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes-Benz,' prayed Janis Joplin, and the Lord obliged. With or without divine intervention, the late Pope had one. So does the Queen. Erich Honecker hunted at night by dazzling the deer in his Mercedes jeep's headlights until he got close enough to blow them away. Mao Tsetung had 23 Mercs. Today Kim Jong II owns dozens, all filled to the gunwales with imported Hennessy's cognac. Hitler, Franco, Hirohito, Tito, the Shah, Ceausescu, Pinochet, Somoza - they all swore by Mercedes. Saddam Hussein liked them so much he probably had shares in the company.

Today, though, there is one man who is doing more than the Lord himself to buy a Mercedes-Benz for the leading creeps of the world. That man is of course Bob Geldof, the spur to our global conscience. Africa's leaders cannot wait for the G8 leaders -hectored by Bob and Live 8 into bracelet-wearing submission - to double aid and forgive the continent's debts. They know that such acts of generosity will finance their future purchases of very swish, customised Mercedes-Benz cars, while 315 million poor Africans stay without shoes and Western taxpayers get by with Hondas. This is the way it goes with the WaBenzi, a Swahili term for the Big Men of Africa.

The legacy of colonialism is a continent carved up by arbitrary frontiers into 50-odd states. But the WaBenzi are a transcontinental tribe who have been committing grand theft auto on the dusty, potholed roads of Africa ever since they hijacked freedom in the 1960s. After joyriding their way through six Marshall Plans' worth of aid Africa is poorer today than 25 years ago; and now the WaBenzi want more.

Let us take Zimbabwe, where millions of people are starving, 3,000 die weekly of Aids and life expectancy has fallen to 35 years. In 2005 Britain will give Zimbabwe £30 million in aid, making it one of the three biggest donors. The government will say this money funds emergency relief. Try telling that to the hordes of people whose homes have been burned down and bulldozed in recent weeks. Giving corrupt governments money frees up budgets to squander on cars.

As an example of hypocrisy, it is hard to beat the call for 'clean leadership' in Comrade Robert Mugabe's recent address to Zanu-PF's Central Committee. The old dictator condemns:

'Arrogant flamboyance and wastefulness: a dozen Mercedes-Benz cars to one life, hideously huge residences, strange appetites that can only be appeased by foreign dishes; runaway taste for foreign lifestyles, including sporting fixtures, add to it high immorality and lust.'

He is clearly talking about the WaBenzi, and their preferred version of the marque, the S600L, a long-wheelbase limo with a monstrous 7.3-litre V12 twin-turbo-charged engine. It's as powerful as a Ferrari and 21 feet long. Basic price £93,090, but extras could be £250,000 more.

And who is the most notorious Zimbabwean owner of an S600L? Robert Mugabe, of course. Mugabe's was custom-built in Germany and armoured to a 'B7 Dragunov standard' so that it can withstand AK-47 bullets, grenades and landmines. It is fitted with CD player, movies, internet and anti-bugging devices. At five tons it does about two kilometres per litre of fuel. It has to be followed by a tanker of petrol in a country running on empty. Mugabe has purchased a carpool of dozens of lesser Mercedes S320s and E240s for his wife, vice-presidents and ministers.

You may wonder why men like Mugabe did not go for Rolls-Royce, Bentley or Jaguar. The answer should be obvious: whatever their other disadvantages, British cars were associated with imperialism. Look at history and you see that up to the 1960s Mercedes-Benz was ticking along, doing nothing special. Then at about the same time as the 'Wind of Change' swept Africa, Mercedes produced the stretch 600 Pullman, a six-door behemoth with a 6.3-litre V8 engine. For Africa's new top dogs, it was love at first sight. The WaBenzi were born. Idi Amin snapped up three, Bokassa more when he crowned himself emperor in central Africa. Zaire's Sese Seko Mobutu bought so many that he kept six for his summerhouse on Lake Kivu alone. Liberia's Sergeant Samuel Doe splurged on 60.

Since those days Africa has been through 186 coups, 26 wars and seven million dead, and the Mercedes has been ideal - both for conveying dignity and for getting out of trouble. I wondered what it was like to drive the old Pullman, so I asked veteran trans-Africa rally driver Anthony Cazalet. 'You don't drive it, your chauffeur does,' he said. 'Look, it's a Queen Mum of a car: gentle, smooth, quiet; growls when necessary. Huge amounts of legroom and enormous seats for very big bottoms.' Cazalet recalls taking a friend's Pullman for a spin in Nairobi. 'I floored the throttle and the old girl pulled up her skirt and let rip. Everybody in the car was screaming.'