It’s been a weirdo year

The Harare mayor’s ceremonial limo broke down taking him a short two kilometres to the switching on of the city centre Christmas lights

Granted the vehicle is decades old, a throwback to the colonial era, bit it is not a Rolls Royce, as many thought, but an Austin Princess, according to vintage car enthusiasts.

It doesn’t have a Rolls-style radiator grill or the usual Rolls emblem anywhere on it.

The Austin Princess was favoured in the 1950s and 1960s by British royalty and senior colonisers abroad, especially after being sent over for trips by the royals to African territories before modern limos became the norm.

The masterpiece of auto engineering has held it own until now. Its attraction always was the spacious interior and graceful appearance.

A pristine Princess with the ‘Flying A’ symbol above the radiator

The mayor’s Princess has lost its Austin ‘Flying A’ bonnet (hood in America) mascot, broken off long ago, and  the breakdown, partially blamed on overheating, is the first on record at a ceremonial event.

Theories in the aftermath abound: They must have put polluted municipal water into the radiator, clogging it and blowing a gasket. And just like when the lights went out at the State of the Nation address in parliament in October, the breakdown symbolises the State of the City, a disastrous inexorable record of service delivery – the whole nine yards.

Municipality workers say they haven’t been paid for weeks and have had to resort to moonlighting for private contractors for spending money at this time of year.

Mayor Jacob Mafume, a lawyer and former opposition activist, had to get out of the broken-down Princess and slog it on foot the rest of the way to the Christmas lights ceremony

Weirdo doesn’t end here.

After alleged Venezuelan drug runners are killed in the Caribbean, former Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernandez is pardoned. He had been convicted in the US to 45 years in jail for his regime’s smuggling of 400 tons of cocaine into America. World Cup football has been politicised (as depicted by the great South African cartoonist Zapiro). And watch out for one of these (above) in 2026.

(left) Current world shit storms.

And what went wrong, 40 years on from the Live Aid fundraiser for starving Ethiopian children?Children suffer gravely all over this map. Short answer: Everything went wrong.