Highway Robbers

Border posts in the ‘70s and ‘80s were little more than glorified road-blocks established primarily to extort ‘hongo’ from the travelling public, but they never achieved the pinnacles of success of their internal counterparts.

What then constituted a true road-block, you may ask? That's difficult to explain. At one end of the scale was the totally opportunistic, single man affair, often only revealing itself at the last moment when a body hurtled out from the shade of some bushes by the side of the road wearing one boot, a dirty T shirt, a ragged pair of army denim trousers and waving an AK-47 assault rifle. If he could make it out into the middle of the road in time to stop you without being mowed down, this constituted a road-block. There was another wide spectrum of mobile road-blocks occupying the middle ground - these were generally characterised by between one and three empty oil drums depending on quality. Poles and branches might be added to the oil drums in the most sophisticated. The badge of office of the officials manning this category of road-block was the AK-47 assault rifle, not a uniform. Thus, almost any Government official owning a drum and an AK-47, which cost about the same, could mount a road-block. Bullets were not a necessity - threat was the name of the game.

At the sophisticated end of the mobile road-block spectrum were the formal affairs with proper barriers, tyre spikes and sign posts, manned by uniformed officials. These were only found in South Africa, Zimbabwe and some north African countries and are of no consequence to the connoisseur.

All road-blocks of the drum type had one thing in common, or rather, lacked one thing in common - warning signs. Long ago it was learned that if you warn the public of a road-block they simply park and wait until the block is lifted before proceeding on their way, or they divert down a side road. Road-blocks are always lifted at dusk because that's when law abiding citizens (the targets) leave the roads and real bandits start to move about. Real bandits also carry AK-47s, but they have bullets and object strongly and violently to being plundered by civil servants. Road-blocks do not re-open until after eight o'clock in the morning when civil servants start work and they mostly close at midday for a lunch break and they always close when it rains.

To this day, positioning road-blocks is a developing art with large numbers of parameters that have to be taken into account. For example, a road-block must be well concealed and clear of any escape side roads and, since the sort of people who benefit from road-blocks are unlikely to own or have access to transport, they must be placed within walking distance of the office. These two requirements alone place a heavy burden on the road-block planners; and when you add some of the other requirements of a good road-block, the task can become truly daunting. For example, there must be a big shady tree nearby to rest under, particularly if your office is on a lonely back road with very few cars. Proximity to the local version of a fast-food take-away is also important. Another feature of all good road-blocks is a secluded back room in the local pub or even a ripped and flapping piece of canvas in which, or behind which, to conduct the all-important 'negotiations'. Few road-blocks manage to achieve total perfection; nevertheless, in my time I have seen some masterful attempts and the art form is improving all the time.

A road-block on a long, straight road, for example, is a give-away and crazy. On the other hand, positioning it just over the brow of a hill to create an element of surprise can have unexpected results. I had the good fortune to monitor the progress of one such over-the-brow type that was confidently set up one weekend on a very fast piece of road. This was a road-block of some consequence, complete with a central support and tapered, red and white, metal booms with counter-weights, closing off both lanes of the highway. Well, that's how it started. When I next saw it, the beautiful red and white booms and central supports were lying in a tangled pile by the side of the road and an articulated truck lay on its side in the ditch a hundred yards beyond. A drum, draped with sticks, now replaced the former masterpiece. I was told that a goat and some chickens had died in the incident.

Returning that same evening, I found that the drum had now been demolished and had joined the pile of wreckage beside the road. The offending vehicle was nowhere to be seen and the road-block was now reduced from its former glory to a few trampled branches held down by stones. A week later, I returned and found that the officials had struck back at the inconsiderate citizenry by removing the axles from the crashed truck and planting them vertically in a line across the road embedded in concrete. There were still no warning signs.

In Nigeria, like Texas, where everything is always bigger and better and where driving speeds are twice those of any other country in the world, the hidden road-block is self-perpetuating. The roads of Nigeria were lined end to end with wrecks when I was there and road-blocks could be quickly established by pulling a wreck out of the bush and planting it in the middle of the road. This is how they did it in the glory days of road-blocks. With a bit of care in the siting, it was possible to ensure that about every tenth car failed to stop and ended up re-enforcing the road-block. Once initiated, these structures grew rapidly due to the high traffic densities and speeds. I have seen some very impressive mountains of mangled cars and trucks formed in this way. Each pile of steel, often as much as twenty feet high and stretching across four lanes of high-way, was accompanied by a diversion road through the bush where the officials continued to plunder the slow moving traffic that escaped the wall of death above.

Although any Government official with a drum and an AK-47 can mount a road-block anywhere he pleases and for any purpose he pleases, the various branches of the police and military mount the vast majority, usually, as I said, within walking distance of their stations. The primary purpose of all road-blocks is, of course, to extort money or valuables – ‘goodies’, if you like - in as pleasant a manner as possible, but always with the threat of force visibly displayed in the background. The purpose of the harassed citizenry is to resist the attempts at extortion, in as pleasant a manner as possible, using only his superior cunning, guile and, above all, experience. Remember that the motorist has the advantage of having been stopped at road-blocks on countless occasions, in countless countries, in countless conditions and consequently becomes a highly skilled operator. The official on the road-block, by contrast, knows only his own methods. After all, there is no road-block training manual or school of road-blocks - at least, not yet.

Because of the experience of the motorists in technical matters such as passports, documents, law and mechanisation, road-blocks are normally confined to checking simple vehicle defects that yield unambiguous and incontestable results, and hence, a nice little package. However, even this is a serious problem for most police forces when you consider that on any typical road-block in Africa, nobody knows how to drive a car and many may never have been in a car in their lives. The utmost care is therefore needed to select a target that is totally foolproof. In the early 90s in Mozambique, then attracting thousands of uninitiated South African tourists, it was the need to display the tare weight on the body of the vehicle. It was either there or it wasn't, and tourists are always the preferred targets at all road-blocks no matter where. In Zambia it was and still is the need to carry warning triangles. You either have them or you don't. In Congo, it's a spare wheel for some obscure reason and in Mali it was possession of headlights. (They didn’t have to work). Anything more technical could spell disaster.

I once arrived at a fairly remote road-block in Tanzania where they had obviously had some recent successes with hand brake deficiencies. My hand brake hadn't worked for years, but I complied when they asked me to pull up the lever. Three guys went round to the front (to take advantage of the slope behind) and started pushing whilst I sat in the driver's seat with my foot on the brake. When they saw that I was giggling, they rightly suspected foul play and I was ordered out of the car. I switched off the engine, put it in first gear, low range, and got out. I was told to go five paces away from the car and put up my hands. In the style of a cowboy movie, I complied. They now went to the back of the car and pushed uphill, still to no avail. It was an enormous, fully laden, Land Cruiser station wagon and they suspected lack of manpower was the problem. I was inclined to agree with them.

I was now ordered to join in the pushing team and I suggested we move round to the front again to take advantage of the slope behind. No, they wouldn't have that - they thought I might have some magical powers over the foot brake and they wanted to watch the brake lights. No amount of persuasion would convince them that the brake light would not come on if the ignition was off. Finally, we agreed a compromise, two of them with me would go to the front and push whilst one pulled from the back and watched the brake lights. With a 4.5 litre diesel engine in first gear, low range, not even a bulldozer could have moved that car and we finally fell about exhausted and laughing, whilst congratulating each other on the potency of Land Cruiser hand brakes. Three cigarettes was sufficient 'hongo' on that occasion.

Not all road blockers are quite so gullible. Some are extraordinarily resourceful, like the soldier I once found manning a game reserve gate, of all things.

For fifty miles the highway ran arrow-straight through the National Park. Nobody slowed down in this section knowing that all the game had been shot out by poachers for at least twenty miles on either side of the road. The soldier manning the Park exit gate when I finally got there sauntered up to the car examining it carefully through his wrap-around dark glasses as he came up.

‘Are you carrying any Government trophies?’ he asked.

‘You mean am I carrying any rhino horns, elephant tusks or dead buffaloes?’

‘Any trophies at all,’ he said, menacingly raising the barrel of his gun above the car window level where I could see it.

No, I don’t have any trophies.

‘If I find any trophies I will arrest and imprison you,’ he continued.

‘Go ahead, search me.’

He walked round to the front of the car and plucked a dead sparrow off the grill of the radiator.

‘This is a Government trophy,’ he said, dangling the dead bird by one wing in front of me. ‘I am arresting you for attempting to remove a Government trophy from a National Park’.

I protested vigorously and he immediately reduced my sentence from prison to a packet of cigarettes and the newspaper lying on the seat beside me.

Brilliant, I thought, as I drove away looking for the next road block.

And there are some road blocks that can go horribly wrong for the perpetrators, like Harry Cavendish’s road block.

Harry Cavendish was one of those white men who hated being in Africa and, as so often happens, Africa goes in search of these people, picks them out, and reciprocates their dislike by giving them a really tough time. That’s what happened when Harry decided to drive his Range Rover to Lagos. All went well until, late at night, he found himself at a police road block on the Ibadan - Lagos highway. The exact nature of the police road block was not apparent to Harry until a gun was poked through his window and he was ordered out by a uniformed policeman. On the side of the road he was told to strip down to his under pants and then ordered to run into the bush hastened by a couple of bullets pinging off the road around his feet. From the safety of the forest adjacent to the highway, Harry watched his new Range Rover and all his clothes speed off in the direction of Lagos. Later he managed to get a lift into town where he went to stay with friends in Apapa, a suburb.

In the morning Harry decided that, instead of reporting the theft to the distant police station which had jurisdiction over the area of the theft, he would report it to the nearest police station, Apapa. And while he waited in the Apapa charge office to make his report his eye strayed to the area behind the charge desk where he saw something that completely took his breath away. Sitting at one of the many desks was a plain clothes policeman wearing all his clothes of the night before. Even the shoes and socks were his. Harry kept his composure and asked the Sergeant at the charge desk if he could see the Station Chief. In due course this was arranged and Harry was ushered into a grubby back office where he told his story to a wide-eyed Chief.

'If he was armed last night he may well be armed today,' observed the Chief with some perspicacity after Harry had urged a quick arrest. The Chief opened his desk drawer, removed a key and remarked to Harry as he walked over to a steel cabinet in the corner of the room, 'I shall also be armed when I confront him.' He opened the cabinet and let out a long, low whistle, 'My gun and spare uniform have gone,' he whispered.

Harry was quite alarmed by this stage, but that was totally unnecessary because the Chief was right on top of his job and quickly phoned one of the neighbourhood police posts and invited the officer in charge to send an armed detachment to forcibly take his own police station. That's exactly what happened and within twelve hours of the robbery Harry was reunited with his Range Rover and clothing.