For the strange love of cars

08 November 2011 - 02:16 By Phumla Matjila
subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now

Germans love their cars, wrote Stefan Zeidenitz and Ben Barkow in their delightful little book, Xenophobe's Guide to the Germans.

"While the Italians reserve this kind of adoration for their children, Germans prefer to keep their children indoors so the cars can play safely in the streets," they said.

Germans are not just obsessed with their cars: "Some Germans don't just derive status from their cars, they take their whole sense of identity from them . An Opel person is looked down on by the BMW person, while Porsche people may be suspected of being flashy fly-by-nights."

It is safe to say that South Africans, on the other hand, love their German cars.

The Golf guy is looked down on by the BMW driver.

The Audi owner is thought to be not serious enough by the woman behind the wheel of a Benz.

And Porsche is the car of choice for those who can afford more than one luxury German vehicle.

South Africans love their cars so much that the most popular restaurants (popular, not best) have a view of a parking lot.

Even at one of the more loved family restaurant franchises it is easier to spot your Beemer glistening in the sun, what with the 180-degree view of the parking bays, than it is to see your children at play in the kiddies' room.

Wasn't it this obsession with having the latest model or a bigger, flashier, more expensive German car that unearthed the dirt behind former Sundowns owner Zola Mahobe's wealth?

Johannesburg-based English author Rob Marsh wrote in Famous South African Crimes that Mahobe, while on a trip to West Germany, "became so consumed by an 'insatiable' desire to own a Mercedes-Benz 500SL" that he wanted to buy one right there and then.

"He seemed to think that this particular model would signify that he had finally 'arrived'," writes Marsh, whose book details 26 of the most well-known crimes in South Africa - from Hendrik Verwoerd's murder in parliament and Lindi Mangaliso's hiring of assassins to kill her husband, to rightwing extremist Barend Hendrik Strydom's Strijdom Square massacre.

Back to Mahobe. Mercedes Benz suggested that, because of the weak rand/deutschmark exchange rate in the '80s, it would be best if Mahobe bought the car in South Africa.

To process the sale, the South African branch of the company contacted Mahobe's bank, Standard Bank, to do a credit inquiry - and all hell broke lose.

Mahobe's partner in crime at the bank, Snowy Moshoeshoe, was not at work on the day the car company made the credit check and it therefore went through the normal channels at the bank - and that is how fraud involving R10-million was uncovered.

All this because Mahobe had an "insatiable" desire to own a 500SL. The rest, as they say, is history.

Is it not Mandla Lamba's flamboyant lifestyle that drew our attention to "South Africa's youngest billionaire"?

At 25, he was said to be a mining tycoon and owner of "a number of luxury executive cars and sports cars".

Alleged crime boss William Mbatha, otherwise known as the King of Bling, also had a penchant for expensive cars, including German ones.

During his trial, we heard how Mbatha had bought 10 exotic cars worth millions of rands from Woodmead Auto. It also emerged that he used one of the gambling chips, worth R100000, he allegedly stole during a house robbery as down payment for a Smart car.

South Africans love their German cars and they love to flash them. The more they flash, the more interest we have in how they are able to afford such luxurious lifestyles.

How does a jobless, business-less, inheritance-less, Lotto-winnings-less youngster get bucket-loads of money?

subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now