[In my book, Government by Deception I mentioned Mugabe’s Soviet-style cavalcade. I have seen a few Government ministers in their black cars racing by on the roads here in S.Africa, ignoring the speed limits!! Typical!

These black leaders love to do things Soviet-style – having Police, etc escorting them, breaking the rules of the road and doing as they please. Ah! Their glorious egos… yet they rule failing tinpot nations!!! Jan]

President Thabo Mbeki’s 12-car cavalcade has evoked the ire of official opposition leader Tony Leon.

The Democratic Alliance leader said in his weekly internet column, South Africa Today, that the “classic sign of an over-centralised government is the tendency of its leaders to spend lavishly on their own comfort”.

“Recently, I had an experience that has become commonplace among those of us who drive home on the Eastern Boulevard or De Waal Drive in Cape Town,” said Leon, who lives in Newlands — not far from Mbeki’s official Cape Town home, Genadendal, at Rondebosch.

Both come to their offices along De Waal Drive, the main route from the southern suburbs of the Mother City to Parliament and the president’s office at Tuynhuys.

Leon, who drives his own car, said: “You hear the blaring sirens and see the blazing blue lights, and you struggle to the shoulder of the road, thinking there is some desperate medical emergency or crime bust at hand.

“With your nose in the guardrail, you look back to discover that the commotion is really being caused by the escort and entourage of some minister or another who is late for a dinner and refuses to wait in the traffic.

“I remembered an incident that occurred shortly after I first came to Parliament in 1990. I happened to encounter the president of the day, FW de Klerk, leaving the Union Buildings in Pretoria as I was entering them.

“At the time, South Africa was involved in a low-intensity but nonetheless deadly civil war, and President de Klerk was a marked man from both the far right and the radical left.

“Yet his entourage, such as it was, consisted of a mere two vehicles: his own Mercedes with a driver and bodyguard, followed by a police chase car. That was it.

“The other day I saw President Mbeki’s entourage, and I managed to count 12 vehicles, including an ambulance, before I lost track altogether. This at a time when the country, in the president’s words, faces ‘a confluence of encouraging possibilities’.

“Certainly a confluence of expensive vehicles, I thought to myself. As the advert from Nedbank used to say: ‘Makes you think, doesn’t it?’

Leon said: “I do not wish to cavil or quibble too long about the strutting and pretension of politicians, who, we must remind ourselves, at all times and in all circumstances and whatever great office of state they hold, are just public officials, not God’s representatives on Earth.

“After all, as bad a traffic hazard as some of South Africa’s leaders have become, some readers might remember without any fondness what happened in Johannesburg circa 1995, when United States vice-president Al Gore came to town.

“On that occasion, every exit off the M1 between Pretoria and Johannesburg was closed.

“Hopefully South Africa’s leaders will not look to that as an example,” said Leon. — I-Net Bridge

Source: Daily Mail & Guardian
URL: http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articlei…/p>