A canary yellow Hummer sport utility vehicle is parked in the shade, as out of place in the khaki-coloured landscape as a custard slice on a bar counter. This is Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, a land of imposed deprivation, state-managed poverty and black-market fuel.
At Donnybrooke race track, northeast of the capital Harare, at least a thousand people, almost all of them white, have turned out to watch drag racing.
'Is he drunk?' asks an official who has just been approached by a black man, the only black would-be entrant to the races.
C.C. Chawawa is dressed in black from head to toe, a pair of rhinestone cowboy boots on his feet. He insists on being allowed to race. Against the Hummer.
A breathalyser kit is found. C.C. Chawawa blows into the pipe. 'Okay,' shrugs the race organiser. 'Give him his race.'
In the end it's no contest. C.C. Chawawa's elderly Honda trails the Hummer, whose turbo-diesel engine rumbles without strain as it runs away from him down the track. Cheers, whistles and applause for C.C. Chawawa and his Honda. He may have lost, but he gave them a race, and that, after all, is what people are here for.
Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa recently called Zimbabwe the 'sinking Titanic'. It's an accurate summation of a country that was once an economic leviathan. The economy has shrivelled from a gross domestic product of US$7.4 billion a decade ago to barely US$3.5 billion last year.
