One can remember driving, four of us plus company driver, broad daylight, from Gaberone airport to the Holiday Inn during the time that the SADF thought it had Carte Blanche to exterminate its enemies in Botswana.
There was a Botsana DF road block between airport and town. To our surprise our driver accelerated towards the blockade, thereby attracting the attention of the soldiers, some of whom began to unsling their rifles from their shoulders. Only when the Captain and I had realised that Bonzo had no ntention of stopping, did we start yelling at him, hitting him and smacking his head, which didn't do a lot of good really, as it doesn't from time to time. He went through a gap in the blockade and finally stopped a few yards past it. By this time, some of the troopies were down on one knee, weapons levelled. No whizz bangery yet, thank goodness!
Quite how Bonzo extricated himself and us from his errors of judgement with his explanations to the troopies, I never found out, but eventually we were waved on our shaken way. We managed to establish that the driver thought that since the company car was brand new, it would be able to outrun the bullets and that he was of the opinion that such would be a very funny thing to do.
The cabin crew throughout the debacle retained a stony silence because, as we later established, the driver, being only a driver, was of a lesser social order than were they.
