The Green Leader raid was part of the Rhodesian strategy of
cross-border raids which began in earnest in mid-1977. After the debacle at
Geneva, the Rhodesian government concentrated on finding an ‘internal solution’
to the war. Pretoria would continue to provide the arms to attack guerrilla
camps in Mozambique and Zambia, and later Angola. This would ‘buy time’ to
negotiate with moderate black leaders, who would be suitably awed by the still
vigorous white military power. Such was the thinking in Salisbury. It meant
that the Anglo-American proposals of September 1977, touted by Andrew Young,
the American ambassador to the UN, and Dr David Owen, the British foreign
secretary, were doomed.
The Patriotic Front was neither awed nor keen to negotiate
an end to the war. By April 1977 the Rhodesian government conceded that about
2,350 guerrillas were active in the four operational areas: 500 in Hurricane,
1,000 in Thrasher, 650 in Repulse and 200 in Tangent. New operational areas
were opened in central Rhodesia (Grapple), the Salisbury area (Salops) and Lake
Kariba (Splinter). As the numbers of guerrillas increased, so did the extent of
the penetration and disruption of the government infrastructure. Schools,
clinics and mission stations were forcibly closed. In the south-east in May
1977 the government admitted that 22,000 tribesmen in four administrative areas
had refused to pay their taxes. All over the country African councils in the
rural areas could not function; local council buildings were looted and burnt.
Stock theft and attacks on white farms mounted. In August 1977, the rail line
to Sinoia was sabotaged on the outskirts of Salisbury. The most devastating
guerrilla attack in 1977 was the bomb planted on 7 August at a Woolworth store
in Salisbury: 11 people were killed and more than 70 injured. Nearly all the
casualties were black. ZIPRA infiltration increased across the Botswana border;
the new tempo of Nkomo’s effort brought a massive upswing in recruits, many of
them schoolchildren, who crossed clandestinely into Botswana. They were then
flown to Zambia for training.
Also, ZANLA raids grew more daring. On 18 December at 10.45
pm about 60 ZANLA guerrillas attacked the Grand Reef security force base near
Umtali. The troops were watching a film show in the canteen. The show came to
an end as rockets crashed on to the area. The guerrillas had seen one RLI unit
leave, but they had not noticed the arrival of another RLI Fire Force which
returned fire. The guerrillas then disappeared into the night, after killing one
African and injuring six whites at the base. A vociferous section of the RF
demanded total war on the guerrillas: it wanted a full-scale call-up and urged
that, while a large regular army was being created, the security forces should
destroy all guerrilla bases in the frontline states. Some hardliners in the RF
hatched a plan to appoint a military junta under General Walls, after putting
Smith under house arrest. Later 12 RF members, nicknamed the ‘dirty dozen’,
hived off from the ruling party to form the Rhodesia Action Party. (They were
all defeated in the August 1977 general election.) But the dissident RF men had
a point: the Rhodesian effort was poorly organised. A new War Council was set
up to co-ordinate the various ministries directly involved in the war; it also
included the service chiefs. A National Manpower Board was established to
oversee white conscription. The most important development was the creation of
a Combined Operations centre (ComOps) in March 1977 which took over the role of
the OCC and the National JOC. ComOps now co-ordinated the activities of the
various Joint Operations Commands which remained the HQs of the respective
operational areas. ComOps was thus the national JOC for day-to-day
administration and also a think-tank for long-range strategic planning. It was
headed by Lieutenant General Peter Walls, the Rhodesian-born,
Sandhurst-trained, SAS commander and former OC of the Rhodesian Army. There was
some canvassing for Air Marshal ‘Mick’ McLaren, the former air chief, to become
the ComOps supremo. McLaren was considered by some to be a more capable
commander than Walls; in the end the army, as the larger organization, had more
‘pull’ and McLaren was made Walls’s deputy. Both men were due to retire from
the armed forces, but the government was thus able to retain their expertise.
ComOps HQ was appropriately situated in Milton Buildings
next to the prime minister’s office in central Salisbury. By late 1979 the
political-military balance had swung heavily towards Walls. By then, real power
in Rhodesia lay in the hands of Walls, not Smith or Muzorewa. Ken Flower, a
small, wily Cornishman who headed the CIO, also wielded tremendous power behind
the scenes. By this time Smith and Walls were hardly on speaking terms because
of disagreements over strategy. Both men were strong-minded and Smith found it
easier to get on with Walls’s deputy, Mick McLaren. The two ex-airmen spent
hours talking about aircraft, often of the World War Two variety. (After the
Rhodesian war ended, Walls was asked why he hadn’t persuaded Smith of the
importance of providing a political strategy for the war. Walls maintained that
as a ‘simple soldier’ he was not in a position to dominate the political
leadership, especially a stubborn man like Smith. Bearing in mind the position
of the army in the last stages of the war and Walls’s personal influence, it is
difficult to accept Walls’s conventional interpretation of civil-military
relations. Perhaps Walls, a former member of the Black Watch, had fully imbibed
the Sandhurst principles. The strain between the two men did not develop into a
total rift. After Walls’s exile to South Africa, Smith continued to recommend
that visitors to Johannesburg should look up his former military chief.)
Besides changes at the top, in April 1977–despite an outcry
from the business community–conscription was extended to the 38 to 50 age group
and exemptions were severely reduced. The maximum call-up for those under 38
was increased to 190 days a year; those older than 50 were asked to volunteer for
police duties. In September the government encouraged national servicemen to
stay on for another year by offering Rh$100 a month bonus. The bottom of the
barrel was being scraped; the only alternative was to boost the number of black
soldiers. Black doctors had already been drafted and apprentices were next on
the list, but large-scale black conscription was unnecessary as hundreds of
volunteers flocked every month to join the Rhodesian African Rifles. The RAR
was augmented with a third and a projected fourth battalion. In addition, the
PV programme was stepped up. In June 1977, according to the Ministry of
Internal Affairs, more than 145 PVs and 40 consolidated villages had been
completed; another 32 PVs were scheduled for construction by the end of the
year. The Catholic Justice and Peace Commission asserted, however, that 203 PVs
had been erected and that, in August 1977, 580,832 people were living ‘behind
the wire’, often in squalor. Dawn-to-dusk curfews had been imposed on most TTLs
and ‘no go’ areas had been extended along the Botswana and Mozambique borders.
The government was trying to pull out all the stops. As Roger Hawkins, the
minister of Combined Operations, put it: ‘Until now it has been accepted as
basically a police operation with military support against criminals. Now it is
to be a military operation, mainly by the army, with police support.’
Hawkins also admitted that ‘our greatest problem before was
lack of decision’. Decisions were now made. The most significant was to
escalate the cross-border raids. ComOps personnel had been impressed by the
various film versions of the Entebbe raid; in particular, they wanted to
experiment with a Dakota fitted out with communications equipment to act as the
‘command module’ of future raids. And the SAS were arguing for a ‘1,000-kill’
raid. In May 1977, Mapai, about 95 km from the Mozambique-Rhodesia border, was
captured by security forces. It was not a successful raid. In spite of the
scale of the operation, only 32 guerrillas were killed, although large
quantities of equipment were seized. But a Rhodesian Dakota was shot down and
the pilot killed at the Mapai airstrip. The raid was prolonged to three days to
salvage the plane. ComOps privately blamed the military failure on a tip-off;
politically the Mapai raid was a disaster. An irate Vorster phoned Smith to
tell him to pull out his troops. Pretoria was still not convinced of the
validity of Smith’s plan to bomb his way into a constitutional settlement.
South Africa did not want an endless war; it was looking to its own military
needs (in November 1977 the UN imposed a mandatory arms embargo on the
apartheid state).
But then South Africa changed tack. For a number of
political reasons, including the need to project a tough image to sidestep the
HNP challenge in the November elections, the National Party government began to
support the internal settlement plan in Rhodesia. Bishop Muzorewa’s UANC looked
like going along with Smith; so did Ndabaningi Sithole’s wing of ZANU. On 25
September 1977 Smith had flown to see Kaunda in Lusaka to encourage the old
warrior Nkomo to return. With his options widening, Smith had in effect
rejected the Anglo-American settlement by late September. The Rhodesian
government particularly loathed the idea of integrating the guerrilla armies
with the Rhodesian security forces during a transition period monitored by a
British Resident Commissioner (Field Marshal Lord Carver) and a UN-appointed
military supremo (General Prem Chand). Perhaps a show of force before
negotiating with Muzorewa and Sithole would work. And this time Pretoria nodded
its assent. (On most occasions, until the last few months of the war, the
Rhodesians did not consult Pretoria officially in case it disapproved.
Salisbury wanted to avoid having to disregard South African advice, though the
SADF liaison officers in Salisbury co-ordinated any military support required.)
On 23 November the Rhodesians launched their biggest
operation to date. The Rhodesian army, with a crucial SAS core, hit the ZANLA
HQ near Chimoio, about 90 km inside Mozambique (roughly opposite Umtali). Three
days later a second assault wave overcame Tembue in Tete province (220 km from
the Rhodesian border). The double assault, codenamed Operation Dingo, were
classic examples of vertical envelopments. At Chimoio 97 SAS and 48 RLI
parachutists landed on two sides of the base, while 40 heliborne RLI troops
were dropped on the third side. The fourth side of the trap was, in theory, to
be sealed by fire from K-cars, after the initial bombing strikes. Chimoio was
estimated to hold at least 9,000 ZANLA and Tembue 4,000. Practically the entire
air force (42 helicopters, eight Hunters, six Vampires, three Canberras, six
Dakotas and 12 Lynx aircraft) was deployed for air strikes and to transport 185
Rhodesian troops. It was almost impossible to air-transport more than 200
troops at one time. Normally, a 3:1 superiority is required for attacking an
entrenched enemy; the Rhodesian attackers were massively outnumbered. The
element of surprise and air power were supposed to fill the gap. During the
first phase of Operation Dingo, ComOps claimed that the Rhodesians had killed
more than 1,200 guerrillas. According to ZANU sources, the guerrilla figures
were much higher; probably nearer 2,000, many of them women and children. The
Chimoio complex contained schools and hospitals, as well as military training
sections. On 25 November a ground and air attack hit Tembue. A Hunter dropped
flechette antipersonnel darts for the first time in the war. It hit the parade
ground, but a hangover had prevented the ZANLA commander summoning his men that
day. A personal inspection of the killing ground by the RAF’s Peter
Petter-Bowyer had left him in no doubt of his invention’s potential. ComOps had
vetoed their use at Chimoio because an international outcry would have followed
the inevitable visit by the UN High Commission for Refugees. In total, ComOps
estimated that Operation Dingo had cost ZANLA in excess of 3,000 trained men
and approximately 5,000 wounded (and many subsequent desertions). The
Rhodesians had suffered two dead, six wounded and one Vampire was downed. On
26/27 November, in Operation Virile, a Selous Scout column with close air
support destroyed five key road bridges between Dombe (near Chimoio) and
Espungabera to deny ZANLA vehicular access to the Rhodesian border.
The slaughter at Chimoio in particular was to have a big
impact on the collective psyche of the ZANU leadership. The mass graves were
continually conjured up in political speeches and poetry, particularly after
Mugabe’s accession to power. After a week’s protest, however, the most
important leader still in Rhodesia, Muzorewa, decided to return to his
negotiations with Ian Smith. Eventually, in March 1978, Smith reached an accord
with Muzorewa, Sithole and a pliant Shona chief, Senator Jeremiah Chirau. These
four men, nicknamed the ‘gang of four’, hoped to bring about a kind of majority
rule which would end the war and pre-empt a military victory by the forces of
the Patriotic Front. It was essentially a formula for white survival: ‘Give
them the parliament and we keep the banks.’
The Patriotic Front rejected the March Agreement as a sham,
another UDI. Nkomo called the three internal black leaders ‘small nuts in a big
machine’. Nevertheless, Nkomo still kept back the bulk of his army. During 1978
he never deployed in Rhodesia more than 2,000 guerrillas; 8,000 to 10,000
remained in bases in Zambia. ZANU in Mozambique had repaired much of the damage
caused by interparty dissension. 1978 was declared the ‘Year of the People’ in
which ZANU intended to achieve a mass political mobilization of the peasantry
before 1979, the ‘Year of the People’s Storm’, the final onslaught on the
Rhodesian government. ZANLA troops entered Rhodesia in groups 100-strong; by
June 1978 at least 13,000 ZANLA troops were deployed in the country. They were
assisted by locally trained recruits and thousands of mujibas.
In Salisbury, Muzorewa and Sithole, now members of the
four-man Executive Council (Exco) which in theory controlled the transitional
government established in March 1978, promised that the war would wind down.
They argued that, as majority rule was in sight, the guerrillas would have no
reason to fight on. Both men claimed to represent large groups of ZANLA
guerrillas, but Smith was soon to find out that the two nationalists had
deceived both him and themselves. During the rest of 1978 only a few hundred
genuine guerrillas responded to the government’s amnesty offer.
The internal solution was not working. The war escalated.
The main reason why the guerrillas refused to heed Salisbury’s call was the
fact that behind Sithole’s and Muzorewa’s rhetoric all real power was still
firmly in the hands of the whites. The obvious example was the running of the
COIN war. On the same day that the Bishop, Sithole and Chirau were sworn into
government, Smith quietly created his own unofficial war council, which had six
members: Walls, as head of ComOps, the army and air force chiefs, the
Commissioner of Police, the director-general of the CIO and sometimes civilian
ministers. The streamlined war council had been set up in September 1976 to
co-ordinate the ministerial control of the war; in March 1977 the formation of
ComOps had improved some elements of the central command. Smith’s personal
council primarily aimed at excluding the black co-minister of defence. Black
ministers were considered unreliable and prone to security leaks. (The first
black minister of defence, John Kadzviti, a Sithole man and a former guerrilla,
shortly after his appointment fled the country to escape a murder charge
brought by the BSAP.) Smith was officially excluded from the conduct of the
war. In fact, however, he worked closely with the service chiefs.
The new administration tried to improve its image. Most of
the political detainees were released, executions of political prisoners were
suspended and the ban on the political wings of both ZAPU and Mugabe’s ZANU was
(temporarily) removed. In spite of the military repercussions, many of the PVs
were closed, especially in the Mtoko, Mrewa and Mudzi areas. (Some were in
regions where the government tacitly admitted it had lost effective control.)
This was done to satisfy the UANC’s clamour to end the PV programme, which it
knew was unpopular with the tribespeople. The main weakness, however, was the
tardy removal of racial discrimination. (Four months after the March Agreement,
a committee was set up to ‘explore’ means of removing discrimination.) Smith
seemed to regard the tempo of removal of racial inequalities as an exchange for
winding down the war. The black leaders had not kept their side of the
agreement, Smith argued. In turn the black leaders argued that white
intransigence over the race laws had undermined their efforts to persuade the
guerrillas to come home. Lacking real power, the three black internal members
of the Exco did look like puppets.
Many white soldiers regarded the settlement as an
opportunity to Africanize the war under effective white leadership. With blacks
in a semblance of power, a tougher policy against the frontline states might be
more acceptable to the world. White conscripts continued to agitate for blacks
to be conscripted as well. Muzorewa opposed this move (except for blacks
already affected–apprentices and doctors). But in September Exco announced that
blacks would be conscripted in spite of the massive problems of training this
posed for the army. Skilled men were needed in the field; few could be spared
as instructors. The light had just dawned upon Muzorewa and Sithole: both
leaders belatedly realized that they should flood the army with as many trained
political followers as possible. Black Rhodesians, who comprised 80 per cent of
the armed forces in 1978, could well hold the balance in future events. It
would be just as well to have some soldiers already committed to their
respective parties.
Meanwhile, the security forces were determined to show that
a black-white coalition in Salisbury did not imply a softly-softly approach to
the war. Sometimes excesses resulted. At a village in the Gutu district in May,
security forces fired upon a night-time pungwe organised by ZANLA troops. At
least 50 black civilians were killed and 24 were wounded for the loss of one
guerrilla. Despite protests from Muzorewa, such incidents of indiscriminate
firing continued. Casualties caused by the guerrillas also mounted. By mid-June
fatalities within the country were 100 a week, against three a week in the
first five years of the war. Guerrilla attacks became more determined and
cruel. On 23 June 12 missionaries, eight adults and four children, were raped,
hacked and bludgeoned to death at the Elim Pentecostal Mission in the Vumba
mountains near Umtali. (ZANLA denied responsibility, and blamed the Selous
Scouts. After the war, regular ZANLA troops were proved to be guilty of the
abomination.) In July the first major gun battle took place within the
Salisbury city limits. Police units killed three guerrillas in the Mufakosi and
Highfields townships, wounded two and captured five others. It was claimed that
the guerrillas were part of a suicide squad planning to assassinate members of
Exco. The spiralling conflict continued to hit the white core: emigration was
edging up to 1,500 a month and taxes were increased. On 20 July the government
announced a compulsory national defence levy of 12.5 per cent extra income tax
to help to cover a record budget deficit.
Salisbury was also perturbed by international events. In
July 1978 the US Senate voted against lifting sanctions. Despite continuing
South African backing, Rhodesia under a black-white coalition appeared to be
the same pariah it was under unadulterated RF rule. And the Russians were
meddling in southern Africa again. The Soviets and the Cubans were accused of
encouraging an invasion from Angola of the Shaba province of Zaire. The bestial
slaughter of whites in Kolwezi sent shivers down Rhodesian spines, as they
prepared to hand over to blacks. Black rule might come in parliament, but the
whites were determined to control law and order and the security forces.
Rhodesian intelligence sources began to fear that the Cubans would step up
their support of ZIPRA, which could be given the means to launch a conventional
sortie into Matabeleland. Vassily Solodovnikov, the Russian ambassador in
Lusaka, was portrayed by the CIO as the eminence grise behind an invasion
threat. BOSS had got wind of the plans and so had the CIO. The CIO head, Ken
Flower, a genial, unflappable man, rushed off to London. The traditional
intelligence links between the rebel state and Britain (as well as the USA)
had, like oil, proved too slippery and vital to succumb to the moral dictates
of sanctions. London tried to calm the Rhodesians; the British were more afraid
of Smith renouncing UDI and handing back to them a Rhodesia which was portrayed
by the world’s media as completely war-torn. This thought terrified London more
than any conceivable Red plot. The British fears were groundless because Smith
would never have willingly renounced UDI. He had a pathological distrust of the
British. (Although the CIO did have some grounds for alarm, as there was
evidence of a conventional build-up, the Russians were playing a waiting game
and were planning a long-term strategy. The year 1978 was vetoed. When the
Cubans suggested a conventional sortie in mid-1979, ZIPRA rejected the plan
even though ZANLA also had made extensive preparations for a conventional
incursion. The Russians expected the war to last much longer and were gearing
up for a big move in July 1980 or July 1981, depending on military
developments.)
In April 1978 the first (and only) foreign war correspondent
was killed. It was a sad irony, but it happened to be Lord Richard Cecil, a
descendant of Lord Salisbury, the British prime minister who had lent his name
to the Rhodesian capital. Cecil, a former Guards officer who had a
distinguished record in Northern Ireland, was shot while making a film of the
war. Because of his unusually good contacts with the Rhodesian army, he had
caused some resentment among other journalists. He also carried a gun, which
contradicted the professional ethics of journalists, who claim neutrality. Some
journalists did nevertheless carry firearms for self-protection. The insurgents
rarely asked for press cards before opening fire.
By mid-1978 Smith knew that his internal experiment was not
working. The transitional government was being torn apart by party bickering
among the blacks; even some of his own trusted supporters had been involved in
a scandal over the theft of defence funds. The war was worsening and no one,
not even South Africa, wanted to recognize the beleaguered state. Could Nkomo
be brought into the internal settlement? Could ZIPRA and the security forces
together wipe out ZANLA? Certainly Zambia and Angola, and perhaps other African
states, would recognize a Nkomo-led Zimbabwe.
On 14 August Smith flew to State House, Lusaka, in a Lonrho
company jet. Nkomo and Smith talked again, and later Brigadier Joseph Garba, a
former Nigerian minister for external affairs, tried to involve Mugabe. The
ZANU leader refused. But the secret Nkomo-Smith talks did not blossom into a
military alliance, for on 3 September 1978 ZIPRA guerrillas shot down an
unarmed Air Rhodesia Viscount with a SAM-7 missile. Of the 53 people on board,
18 survived the crash, but 10 of them, including six women, were massacred by
ZIPRA guerrillas. Nkomo said that ZIPRA had shot down the plane, but had not
murdered the survivors. During a BBC interview the ZAPU leader incensed
Rhodesians by chuckling over the Viscount incident. One RF MP, Rob Gaunt,
captured the mood of the whites when he said: ‘I believe we have done our
utmost in this country to be reasonable and the time, I fear, is now upon us
when all Africa is going to see their first race of really angry white men.’
Smith called Nkomo a ‘monster’; clearly a ZAPU-RF deal was now out of the
question. In a subdued speech (Walls had persuaded him to tone it down) Smith
declared martial law in certain areas of the country. Although ZAPU and ZANU
were later re-banned, Special Branch allowed senior ZAPU personnel, such as
Josiah Chinamano, to leave the country before arresting the lower echelon party
members. Perhaps when the storm had died down, Nkomo and Smith could try again.
The whites called for a massive retaliation against Zambia.
Initially, however, the Rhodesians hit Mozambique. In late September Rhodesian
forces launched a four-day airborne attack against ZANLA bases around Chimoio.
The area had been extensively attacked in the previous November in Operation
Dingo. It had been rebuilt, but dispersed over a much wider area. The Canberras
went in low with their Alpha anti-personnel bombs, followed by the Hunters with
Golf cluster bombs which were designed to explode above ground. The Rhodesian
troops, including South African Recce Commandos in ‘D’ squadron of the SAS,
spent three days clearing ZANLA from the trenches. Nine FRELIMO T-54s were
driven off when they came to the rescue, and four Soviet armoured cars were
destroyed. The Rhodesians lost no aircraft, but many were hit by ground fire.
The Rhodesians suffered one trooper killed in ‘friendly fire’ during an air
strike; a South African Recce serving with the SAS was also killed in a
separate incident. Salisbury claimed that large quantities of ammunition had
been destroyed and several hundred guerrillas killed. Zambia seemed to have had
a reprieve. In early October Kaunda had opened the Zambian border, which had
been closed since 1973. The British-owned Benguela railway through Angola was
useless because of action by South African-backed UNITA rebels and the TAZARA
line through Tanzania was clogged by mismanagement. Kaunda had no choice but to
use Rhodesia to get his copper out and food and fertiliser in.
Then Rhodesian security forces swept into Zambia. Previously
Salisbury had launched raids only in the border areas of Zambia. On 18/19
October 1978 Chikumbi, 19 km north of Lusaka, was bombed. Mkushi camp,
north-east of the capital, was also bombed and occupied by heliborne troops for
two days. Via Green Leader, the leader pilot of the Canberra bombing force,
Rhodesians controlled Zambian air space during the Chikumbi raid, and in effect
prevented any hostile Zambian air activity for 48 hours. Using a Zambian
airstrip (Rufunsa, near the Rhodesian border) as a forward staging base, Rhodesian
aircraft created panic in the camps they hit.
During the Green Leader raid the security forces suffered
minimal casualties. The Rhodesians claimed more than 1,500 ZIPRA killed as well
as a small number of Cuban instructors. In fact, the bulk of Nkomo’s
10,000-strong army in Zambia was unscathed, although hundreds of refugees
living in and near the camps were killed. From the gunners’ sights it was
impossible to distinguish innocent refugees from young ZIPRA recruits.
The three-day assault demonstrated the efficacy of Rhodesian
firepower and the superior security force training and leadership. Perhaps
better weapons could help to fill the gap? Nkomo rushed off to Moscow to ask
for further military aid and Kaunda asked Britain to improve on the air defence
weapons it had already sent. Besides new equipment such as AA guns, the British
Aircraft Corporation sent instructors and a maintenance team to refit the
Rapier SAM system which had fallen into disrepair.
The raids into Mozambique and Zambia had boosted white
morale, but they had done little to deter the rainy season offensives of both
ZANLA and ZIPRA. On 23 October General Walls admitted: ‘We have not only had a
hard job containing them [the guerrillas] but in some areas we have slipped
back a bit.’ By December 1978, three-quarters of the country was under martial
law. ComOps discussed a ‘vital ground’ strategy of trying to hold on to key
areas of white settlements and farmlands, while effectively giving up on the
TTLs. The generals, not a squabbling Exco, held uncertain sway. Courts martial
had been set up which could impose the death penalty for acts of terrorism
without the right of appeal to higher courts (though sentences were subject to
a reviewing authority). The government claimed that more than 22 ‘frozen zones’
(encompassing seven per cent of Rhodesia) were being policed by security force
auxiliaries, the guerrillas who had come ‘on-sides’ and accepted the internal
settlement. In fact, only a small proportion were converted guerrillas; the
vast majority had either been unemployed or were UANC or ZANU (Sithole)
supporters who had been trained in Uganda, Libya and the Sudan. By late 1978
the UANC and ZANU (Sithole) had about 1,000 armed guerrillas each. By late 1979
Pfumu reVanhu, as they had become known, had swollen to nearly 20,000. Most
were loyal to Muzorewa. In spite of the brief training and supervision provided
by Rhodesian whites, the auxiliaries turned on each other as much as they
fought the PF. Often looting rather than battle was their main preoccupation. A
measure of their military capability was that Selous Scouts often dressed up as
auxiliaries to entice the guerrillas into attacking a supposedly ‘soft’ target.
The RF was creating the perfect conditions for its greatest fear–uncontrollable
civil war. Five armies were active in Rhodesia by December 1978: ZANLA, ZIPRA,
the security forces and the armed followers of Sithole and Muzorewa.
From Salisbury things looked decidedly ugly. The internal
elections had been postponed from December 1978 to April 1979 because of the
security situation. The internal ‘solution’ had impressed relatively few
guerrillas; even UANC supporters were disgruntled. Moreover, few of the 25,000
Africans affected by the October call-up seemed ready to take up arms against
their brothers in the PF. With whites emigrating and blacks reluctant to be
conscripted, who would protect the Salisbury government in the future? The war
was edging closer to the city suburbs. On 11 November, while Smith was
celebrating the anniversary of UDI, guerrillas launched an attack on the
exclusive Umwinsidale suburb of Salisbury. On 11 December guerrillas fired
rockets and tracers at the central oil storage depot in the heart of
Salisbury’s industrial sites. Only five guards armed merely with truncheons had
been protecting the vital depot. ZANLA forces (although ZIPRA claimed the
honours) created a fire which lasted six days and destroyed 25 million gallons
of fuel.
The Rhodesian government entered 1979 in dire straits. This
was to prove the crucial year. ZIPRA forces were committed in greater numbers;
Rhodesia was now safer for them than Zambia. ZANLA, which stopped active
recruiting because numbers were too large to train, had infiltrated beyond the
Bulawayo-Plumtree rail line. The cities were being surrounded and ZANLA
believed they would fall like ‘ripe plums’ as Mao had foretold. Despite the
frictions, in some areas ZANLA and ZIPRA were co-ordinating their strikes.
ZANLA was preparing to establish formal liberated zones and to defend them with
a locally trained people’s militia. The groundwork for the initial, crude
structure of administration was being laid.
