South Africa also feared the worst. During the white
referendum of January 1979 that preceded the April poll, Smith admitted that if
things went wrong South Africa had made ‘a very generous agreement’ to help
Rhodesian war widows and the war-wounded. (A year before South Africa had
secretly offered Rhodesian special forces, and their families, the option to
move south to join the SADF.) Pretoria was also preparing to construct refugee
camps in the northern Transvaal. And, like the British, South Africa had
considered contingency plans for the military evacuation of Rhodesians if a
wholesale carnage among whites was to take place. Against such a scenario of
fear, the whites still said ‘yes’ (85 per cent of the 71 per cent poll) to
Smith’s plan to elect the first black prime minister of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. How
could Salisbury expect the PF guerrillas to believe that white rule was really
over and to hand in their arms, if the unborn republic was to have such an ugly
compromise name so redolent of white chicanery?
In the same month as the referendum, blacks had massively
boycotted conscription. On 10 January, only 300 out of the scheduled 1,544
blacks turned up at Llewellyn Barracks in Bulawayo. Also, 415 of the expected
1,500 whites failed to show up. Two days later whites aged 50 to 59 were told
they would have to serve for 42 days a year. Even ‘dad’s army’ would have to be
deployed for the coming general election.
On 12 February 1979, ZIPRA shot down another civilian
Viscount aircraft. Air Rhodesia Flight 827 from Kariba to Salisbury was hit by
a SAM-7. Fifty-four passengers and five crew members were killed as the plane
came down only 50 km from the spot where the first SAM victim had crashed.
Nkomo claimed that the intended target had been General Walls, who was aboard a
plane which took off just after the ill-fated Viscount. The alleged attempt to
kill Walls was probably a post-hoc rationalization: ZIPRA had intended to shoot
down a plane just before the referendum. The emotional white backlash might
have produced a ‘no’ to Smith’s plans; and this would have disrupted the
internal settlement to the benefit of the PF.
A feeling of sullen, resigned anger pervaded the white
community, which retreated further into its laager. The roads were unsafe even
for convoys; now the sky was dangerous too. Air Rhodesia flights were reduced
and old Dakotas with heat-dispersion units around the engine exhausts were
introduced on passenger runs. South African Airways cut back its flights and
stopped its Jumbo jets from landing at Salisbury airport.
On 26 February the Rhodesian Air Force launched a
retaliatory raid deep into Angola, the first major raid on that country.
Canberra jets struck at a ZIPRA base at Luso, situated on the Benguela railway
and 1,000 km from the Rhodesian border. Thanks to excellent intelligence work,
the Rhodesian pilots avoided the British-maintained air defence of Zambia and
the Russian-manned radar tracking system in Angola. In this audacious raid 160
guerrillas were killed and 530 injured. The Soviet MiG-17s at the Russo-Cuban
air base at Henrique de Carvalho (320 km to the north) did not have time to
retaliate. The guiding hand of South Africa was evident, however. The SADF was
unhappy about the SWAPO threat to South West Africa and the UN’s indifference
to guerrilla incursions from adjacent Angola. Rhodesia could act as a cat’s paw
for the SADF, and SAAF Mirages could provide some emergency protection for the
Canberras if things went wrong in Angola, despite their limited combat radius
(a factor which also inhibited the Russian MiGs). All seven Rhodesian and South
African Canberras returned safely. Ironically, on the same day as the raid
ZIPRA did shoot down a Macchi jet fighter north-west of Lusaka, but this plane
belonged to the Zambian Air Force. ZIPRA troops were jittery, as the Rhodesian
Air Force had made two big raids into Zambia in the week before the Luso
sortie. Rhodesians were in a tough mood in February; as one ComOps spokesman
discussed the cross-border strategy he said: ‘If necessary, we’ll blast them
back into the Stone Age.’
Special forces had already attacked Zambian oil depots, with
little success. On 23 March 1979, however, the SAS, with South African Recce
commando support, hit the Munhava oil depot in Beira. RENAMO was given the
credit, a frequently used device for Mozambican coastal raids. But the raiders
arrived in Mark-4 Zodiacs, courtesy of ships from the South African Navy. (The
navy also regularly supplied and transported RENAMO leaders by submarine.) The
oil depot went up in flames and the desperate Mozambicans turned to the
specialist unit of fire-fighters in Alberton, near Johannesburg. The South
Africans helped in the arson plot and then basked in the applause for their
good neighbourliness.
The Rhodesian strategy had always relied upon sound morale
and leadership. But by 1979 the prospect of black rule, even by the internal
leaders, had sapped white resilience. Grit had been transformed into mechanical
resignation. Worse was the infighting within the RF and the UANC. The senior
officers of the army were at loggerheads over military developments. An
incident in January 1979 exacerbated their strategic (and personal) schisms. On
29 January a bugging device was discovered in Lieutenant Colonel Ron
Reid-Daly’s office. As Reid-Daly was then head of the elite Selous Scouts, this
had serious security implications (though no one was actually monitoring his
calls, because the Director of Military Intelligence, Lieutenant Colonel John
Redfern, said he had actually ‘forgotten’ about it, after the Selous Scout
monitoring plan was devised in August 1978). All Selous Scouts and SAS
operations were immediately suspended. Two days later Reid-Daly launched a
personal attack on the army commander, Lieutenant General John Hickman. The
occasion was a crowded RLI mess during the drunken celebrations of the
regiment’s birthday at Cranborne Barracks. An angry Reid-Daly used more than
soldier’s language to describe his commander. Later described as being
‘overwrought and emotional’, Reid-Daly turned to Hickman, the guest of honour
and began: ‘I want to say to you Army Commander for bugging my telephone, thank
you very much.’ Raucous cheers followed. Everyone assumed Reid-Daly was joking.
Reid-Daly repeated his words, and the company went silent. Reid-Daly concluded:
‘If I ever see you again, it will be too soon.’ The two antagonists immediately
squared up for a fight, but senior officers managed to separate them. Reid-Daly
was court martialled for insubordination and given a minor punishment. He then
resigned. But the Reid-Daly/Hickman row had dredged up many murky facts about
the army. There followed a welter of accusations and counter-accusations of
gun-running and poaching. (Most prominent was the accusation that the Selous
Scouts were using the no-go areas, from which other army units were excluded,
to poach big game rather than hunt guerrillas. In some ‘frozen’ no-go areas on
the Mozambique border guerrilla bands would seek refuge in Selous
Scouts-patrolled areas and use them as a haven from patrols by other security
forces.)
After another embarrassing incident involving too much
alcohol, a lady and underwear for military dress code, General Hickman was
summoned to the ministry of defence at 7.45 am on the following Monday morning.
The co-minister of defence, Hilary Squires, had a file on his desk which
contained the full details. The minister, who had a puritanical streak at the
best of times, sacked Hickman on the spot. At 7.50 the general was out of a
job. (Hickman, who had won the MC in Malaya, later sued, and won, a case for
wrongful dismissal. Even though he had won his case on a technicality, he was
paid a year’s salary minus the pension he had received.) After Hickman’s
departure, the ministry of defence needed a ‘Mr. Clean’. The two choices as
Hickman’s successor were either Major General Derry McIntyre or Sandy Maclean.
McIntyre, although popular with his men, also had a reputation as a playboy, a
man who was described as ‘a cross between a cavalier and a hooligan’. Maclean
had a stable family background and, on the technicality that he was 12 days’
senior, was appointed the new army commander.
Hickman’s decision to contest his dismissal publicized the
problems in the army. Then Reid-Daly sued Hickman (and the minister of defence
and combined operations, Muzorewa, the directors of army military intelligence
and counterintelligence, the director of military police, and other senior
officers). As the court case dragged on to an inconclusive end, the normally
publicity-conscious Hickman dropped out of sight. The death from wounds of his
19-year-old son also severely affected him. A bitter Reid-Daly went to South
Africa, where he dabbled in a number of security firms and then, after helping
to write his own account of the war, became briefly the head of the Transkei’s
army.
In spite of the scandals surrounding two of Rhodesia’s
best-known soldiers, Lieutenant General Maclean tried to give the impression
that it was business as usual, for the army had to organize a massive security
screen for the April 1979 one-man, one-vote, election. More than 70,000 men
were involved in the country’s biggest mobilization. The security forces were
determined to prevent any PF disruption of the polls, but sometimes the
preventive counter-measures were heavy-handed. The security forces also took
the offensive across Rhodesia’s borders. On 13 April the SAS led an
Entebbe-style lt on the ZIPRA military command HQ in Lusaka (the Selous Scouts
had done the initial reconnaissance in the city). The raiders tried to smash
through the main gates in a Land Rover, but the padlock held the first time and
the vehicle had to be used a second time to batter through them. By this time
the ZIPRA guards were alerted and the SAS were pinned down by an RPD light
machine gun. The delay would have given time for Nkomo, who was thought to be
in the building, to escape. ComOps said that it wanted to destroy the ZIPRA
nerve centre, but an SAS source later admitted that the aim was to kill Nkomo.
Nkomo claimed that he had been at home and that he had escaped through a
lavatory window but this was untrue. So complete was the destruction of the
building that the ZIPRA leader could not have escaped. He must have been
elsewhere, allegedly tipped off by a British mole in CIO. Rhodesian troops also
sank the Kazangula ferry which was carrying ZIPRA military supplies from Zambia
into Botswana daily. At the same time commandos spirited away ZAPU men from
Francistown in Botswana and took them back to Salisbury. Not a single Rhodesian
soldier was killed in the dramatic attacks which were executed with total
efficiency and accuracy.
But ComOps regarded the April election as its crowning
success. Never had a ruling minority done so much to hand over (apparent) power
to a dominated majority. As one critical history, Rhodesians Never Die,
observed about the two elections which marked the end of white rule: ‘Rhodesia
buried itself with considerable integrity and maximum bureaucratic effort.’
Some Rhodesians, and most of the hundreds of pressmen in the country, expected
the April internal elections to be wrecked by PF attacks. Instead, the security
forces inflicted a high kill rate on the ZANLA forces which had concentrated in
the Chinamora, Mhondoro and other TTLs in the Salisbury area. Security forces
were deployed near all the static and mobile polling booths; for the first time
the auxiliaries were mobilized in a major supporting role in the rural areas.
Eighteen of the 932 polling stations were attacked, but none were closed. In a
64 per cent poll (if the population estimates were correct) 1,869,077 voters
took part. Even some guerrillas voted. In some areas ZANLA actively encouraged
the peasants to vote, although in most cases the PF tried to discourage any
involvement in the election. The diminutive bishop, Abel Muzorewa, won 51 of
the 72 black seats and so became the first African premier of the country. The
election was a success comparable to that in 1966 in war-torn South Vietnam. It
proved that the PF was nowhere near ‘imminent victory’ and that the security
forces were still powerful enough to mount a huge logistic exercise. If, as the
PF claimed, the turnout was the result of intimidation, it showed who
effectively controlled the population at that time.
Rhodesians believed implicitly in Margaret Thatcher’s
promise, when leader of the opposition, that she would recognize the April poll
if the Tory group of observers said the election was fair. The group, headed by
Lord Boyd, did indeed submit a favourable report, but the new British prime
minister reneged on her commitment. She was swayed by a Foreign Office
confidential paper outlining the possible repercussions of recognizing
Salisbury, plus personal pressure from Lord Carrington, her foreign secretary.
This was a catastrophic setback for Muzorewa. Many Africans rightly interpreted
it as lack of faith. If a Conservative British administration would not go
along with the internal settlement, who would? And the plain answer was–nobody.
The internal settlement’s goal had been to bring peace, recognition and the
removal of sanctions. The only tangible result was an escalation of the war.
When the bishop became prime minister on 1 June 1979 he assumed the additional
portfolios of defence and combined operations. By then ZANLA forces numbered
more than 20,000 in the country. Could Muzorewa survive ZANLA’s ‘Year of the
People’s Storm’?
The PF felt that military victory would come within one or
two years at the latest. But what if Western nations recognized Muzorewa and
channelled into Salisbury a vast array of military assistance? That would set
back the war by years. By mid-1979 ZANLA had amassed a large reserve of
conventional weaponry, although the variety of calibres and spares was proving
a major problem. (This had been a continuous difficulty; the logistic chain to
the forward-based guerrillas in Rhodesia, besides being poorly organized,
suffered from the heterogeneous nature of the supplies.) ComOps was aware of
the arsenal at Mapai, not far from the ZANLA base which the Rhodesians had hit
on a number of occasions. The weapons seemed to be set aside for a special
purpose which eluded Rhodesian intelligence. The arsenal had been intended at
one time, May 1979, to support Operation Cuba. This was a Cuban scheme to set
up a provisional government within a liberated area of Rhodesia. Many Eastern
bloc and Third World countries would have recognized it and thus have
pre-empted Western recognition of the Muzorewa administration. Mapai could have
supplied such a venture in the Chiredzi area, apparently ZANLA’s choice. ZIPRA
did not want anything to do with the plan and the Cubans withdrew their
support. The open terrain in the Chiredzi area and its proximity to South
Africa would have made a joint ZIPRA/ZANLA/FPLM/Cuban army an ideal target for
a Rhodesian and South African conventional counter-attack. The other area
mentioned in Operation Cuba, the north-east, would have been far more viable.
As it happened, the Cuban fear was unwarranted; not even
South Africa risked recognizing Muzorewa. But Pretoria did pour equipment,
pilots and ground troops into the very area set aside for Operation Cuba. And
with the promises of bonuses and security of pensions, many whites in the civil
service, security forces and police were persuaded to stay for another two
years. Yet after the brief euphoria of the April election, the whites grew
disenchanted with Muzorewa’s ham-fisted management of the new coalition
government. Even his own UANC split with the departure of James Chikerema’s
Zimbabwe Democratic Party. Then the bishop talked of encouraging skilled whites
to return, but demanded a levy of Rh$20,000. In a bizarre attempt to court
American opinion, he offered to welcome 1,000 Vietnamese ‘boat people’ to his
country, which had an African unemployment rate of 50 per cent. His biggest
failure was his ‘campaign for peace’. Muzorewa launched his amnesty programme
at the same time as he authorized the RLI to wipe out groups of mutinous
auxiliaries. Sithole’s men were particularly unruly in the Gokwe area. In this
area and others a total of 183 auxiliaries were killed. One group was gunned
down by troops hiding in the backs of troop carriers; another was lured into a
schoolhouse for a supposed meeting to thrash out discipline problems and was
obliterated in a strike by Hunters. Undoubtedly the government needed to
control the more lawless bands of Pfumo reVanhu, but to kill so many of what
the PF considered to be the bishop’s own force–just before the amnesty
launch–was catastrophic timing. Few PF guerrillas were impressed.
The Amnesty Directorate had been set up on 7 June 1979. It
was headed by Malcolm Thompson, the man who had masterminded the administration
of the April election. Thompson came from Northern Ireland, a territory not
exactly distinguished then for a tradition of fair elections or successful
ceasefires. The amnesty call included the exhortation to phone a series of
numbers across the country. Most of the numbers were UANC offices. A group of
journalists tried to phone these offices in the early evening; most of the
numbers were unobtainable because the offices were unmanned. The security force
aspects of the amnesty were much more professionally executed. Besides the
radio and TV campaigns, trilingual leaflets were scattered across the country.
The air force helped with ‘skyshouts’. Aircraft would suddenly swoop down on a
guerrilla camp. As the guerrillas ran to escape the expected bomb run they were
deafened by the blast from enormous tannoys which delivered a dramatic and
simple message: ‘You are about to be killed by the security forces. Give up and
live.’ Despite many possible personal doubts about the internal settlement,
guerrillas were severely punished by political commissars for listening to
amnesty broadcasts. They could be executed for reading an amnesty leaflet.
The internal leaders had promised peace after the March
Agreement, in 1978. Then they said the war would end after the one-man,
one-vote polls; then after the installation of a black premier…Eventually few
whites believed anything Muzorewa or Sithole said. Many emerged from their
cocoons of total reliance on ‘good old Smithy’. After the April election the
disenchantment in the army, particularly among the reservists, was widespread.
The bickering among the internal nationalists, which threatened to destroy all
the hard work the part-time soldiers and policemen had done, undermined their
loyalty. A number of white police reservists refused to guard Muzorewa’s house
the week after the April poll. They pointed out that the prelate had many
bodyguards while their own families went unprotected. No disciplinary action
was taken against the policemen. The real bone of contention was still white
conscription. Why should the bishop call up 59-year-old whites possibly hostile
to the UANC when he refused to conscript his youthful black followers? Only a
handful of blacks had been called up. The whites began to feel that their taxes
and skills were running the country and yet they were being compelled to fight
for a black administration which could soon steal their rights and property.
Another issue was the loyalty of the so-called ‘new Rhodesians’, the roughly
1,400 foreign mercenaries and volunteers in the regular forces. On the night of
Muzorewa’s election victory, Captain Bill Atkins, an American Vietnam veteran
who had been in the Rhodesian army for two years, said:
A good proportion of the foreign professionals [in the army]
will stay–we’re not mercenaries. If we find that we’re working with a guy we
disagree with, we will leave. We’re not here for the money. If they [the new
Muzorewa administration] back away from the war, as the Americans did in
Vietnam, then we’ll leave.
But no amount of reluctant military support from South
Africa, white Rhodesians or foreign levies could replace some kind of
international diplomatic support for Muzorewa. The PF rejected the new leader
as a stooge. As one ZANU official put it: ‘At least the leader of a so-called
Bantustan in South Africa can fire his own police chief.’ But Muzorewa could
not. Behind the facade, the whites were in control. Even Ian Smith was still
there in the Cabinet as a minister without portfolio. But the PF regarded him
as the minister with all portfolios. And the new Tory prime minister, Margaret
Thatcher, was still reluctant to recognize Muzorewa. At the Commonwealth
Conference in Lusaka in August, Mrs Thatcher secured the agreement of her
fellow premiers: an all-party conference would try for one last time to cut the
Gordian knot of the Rhodesian impasse. Muzorewa was bitter and Salisbury’s
Herald newspaper thundered: ‘Is Mrs Thatcher really a Labour Prime Minister in
drag?’
The Lancaster House conference opened on 10 September and
staggered on until just before Christmas. Both sides struggled to inflict
military reverses on their opponents, both to influence the course of the
three-month conference and to be in a commanding military position if diplomacy
should once again fail. As during the Geneva conference, the guerrillas talked
and fought, but this time there were four times as many guerrillas in the
country as in 1976. Within 48 hours of Muzorewa’s accession to power he had
authorized raids into his neighbours’ countries. Later, on 26 June, the
Rhodesians hit the Chikumbi base, north of Lusaka. Simultaneously five Cheetah
choppers dropped assault troops into the Lusaka suburb of Roma where they
stormed into the ZAPU intelligence HQ. It contained ZIPRA’s Department of
National Security and Order, which was commanded by Dumiso Dabengwa, whom
Rhodesian intelligence dubbed the ‘Black Russian’ because he was reputed to be
a KGB colonel. With the SAS was a senior ZIPRA captive, Elliott Sibanda. His
job was to use a loud hailer to get his former colleagues to surrender and then
identify whoever responded. During the fighting 30 ZAPU cadres and one SAS
captain were killed. Five hundred pounds of sensitive documents were seized
(including documents which, according to Muzorewa’s minister of law and order,
Francis Zindoga, proved that intelligence information had been passed to ZAPU
by white liberals). What had happened to the 150 tons of British air defence
equipment which had been sent to Zambia in October 1978 and the Rapier missiles
which the BAC team had repaired? Was it plain incompetence, or were the
Zambians afraid of protecting PF targets in case Salisbury decided to hit
directly at Zambian military installations?
On 5 September, five days before the Lancaster House
marathon began, Rhodesian forces hit ZANLA bases in the area around Aldeia de
Barragem, 150 km north-west of Maputo. This was part of a new strategy: instead
of just targeting PF military bases, Salisbury escalated its strikes to include
the economic infrastructures of both Zambia and Mozambique. The attacks on
economic targets, especially dropping bridges, were a small part of the ComOps
‘final solution’ plan. The highly secret proposals estimated that both
Mozambique’s and Zambia’s economic structures could be destroyed within six
weeks. The techniques to be used would have gravely escalated the war and
almost certainly brought in the major powers. ComOps demanded a clear political
green light for total war on Zimbabwe-Rhodesia’s neighbours. If Muzorewa had
been recognized after a possible breakdown of the Lancaster House talks, then
the plan might have been put into action. Instead, only small parts of the
scheme were used. It was then poorly organized. Major setbacks resulted and
Walls was privately criticized by senior commanders for undue interference,
particularly regarding the choice of targets. Some of the final raids were not
planned by Walls or the CIO chief, who often had the final say, because both
men were in London for most of the Lancaster House talks. Several raids had to
be publicly supported by them even though they had been carried out against
their better judgment.
In September the Rhodesians tried to destroy much of the
transport sy stem in Mozambique’s Gaza province, and beyond. More bridges were
destroyed by SAS and South African Recce Commandos. Then Salisbury stopped the
rail supplies of maize to Zambia through Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. In October and
November vital Zambian road and rail arteries were hit. The aim was two-fold:
to stop the infiltration of PF guerrillas and supplies, and to induce the
frontline states to pressurize the PF into accepting a more conciliatory line
towards the Salisbury delegation in London. But such a strategy was not without
its costs. ZIPRA had improved with the aid of Cuban, East German and Russian
instructors. And FRELIMO had added a stiffening to ZANLA forces. In Zambia the
regular army was too small and ineffective to give much conventional support to
ZIPRA in its defence against Rhodesian raids, but in Mozambique the position
was quite different. The ZANLA bases there were well defended.
The Rhodesian raids were now no walkover. In the three-day
Operation Uric (Operation Bootlace for the South Africans) in the first week of
September the Rhodesians were determined to stop the flow of both ZANLA and
regular FPLM soldiers infiltrating across what the Rhodesians nicknamed the
‘Russian Front’. The target was Mapai, the FRELIMO 2nd Brigade HQ and a control
centre for ZANLA, a very heavily defended forward base 50 km from the border.
Conventional military thinking dictated that in, addition to air support, two
infantry battalions supported by artillery and tanks would have been required.
As ever, the Rhodesians would make do with far less, relying on the shock of
air power, surprise and courage. The aerial order of battle included: 8
Hunters, 12 Dakotas (half SAAF), 6 Canberras (of which 4 were South African),
10 Lynxes and 28 helicopters, including the newly acquired, but worn-out,
Cheetahs (Hueys) along with a majority provided by the SAAF: Pumas, Super
Frelons and Alouettes. A Mirage and Buccaneer strike force was on cockpit
readiness in South Africa, and a battalion of paratroopers, with Puma
helicopter transport, was on standby at a base near the Mozambique border. The
command Dakota, the Warthog, was equipped with an advanced sensor system
capable of locating and monitoring the guidance systems of ground-to-air
missile installations and identifying surveillance radar systems. The crew
included an intelligence officer and four signallers for communications with
friendly forces. The plane was piloted by John Fairy, a scion of the famous
British air pioneers. The SAAF had its own AWACS aircraft, a converted DC-4,
nicknamed Spook. This was the largest single commitment of the SADF in the war.
The Canberras normally carried the cylindrical
Rhodesian-designed Alpha bombs. But these had to be released in level flight,
when flying at an air speed of 350 knots and at 300 metres above the ground.
When they struck they bounced four metres into the air and exploded, sending
out a deadly hail of ball bearings. The flak at Mapai was so heavy they would
have been blown out of the sky if they tried a low-level attack. So the SAAF
supplied conventional bombs which were dropped at 20,000 feet. A heliborne
force of 192 troops went in after the bombers. In all the raiders numbered 360
men in the field, from the SAS, Recce Commandos, RLI and the Engineers. They
met very fierce opposition. The fire from the 122mm rockets, mortars,
recoilless rifles and machine guns from the entrenched ZANLA/FPLM enemy was
intense, the heaviest the Rhodesians had ever encountered. All they had,
besides air power, were 82mm and 60mm mortars, RPG-7s, light machine guns and
their personal weapons. Soon the battle developed into a grim face-to-face
encounter in trenches. The defenders stood and fought, and showed no intention
of running from the air power, as they had so many times previously. General
Walls, in the Warthog above the battle, wanted a victory not a defeat to accompany
the politicking at Lancaster House. Nor did the South Africans want to commit
their reserves and so not only risk defeat, but also reveal the extent of their
cross-border war with Mozambique.
Two helicopters were shot down. The first was a Cheetah, hit
by an RPG-7. The technician was killed, but the badly wounded pilot was
extricated by a quick-thinking SAS sergeant. The second, an SAAF Puma, was
downed by another RPG-7; the three air crew and 11 Rhodesian soldiers were
killed. One of the dead was Corporal LeRoy Duberley, the full back of the
Rhodesian national rugby team. The remains of the wrecked Puma were later
golf-bombed in a vain effort to destroy the South African markings. Seventeen
soldiers were killed in Operation Uric. Walls called a stop to the operation.
This was the worst single military disaster of the war. And, for the first
time, the Rhodesians were unable to recover the bodies of their fallen
comrades. As a book on the Rhodesian SAS later noted: ‘For the first time in
the history of the war, the Rhodesians had been stopped dead in their tracks.’ The
RLI and the SAS were forced to make an uncharacteristic and hasty retreat.
The Rhodesians had underestimated their enemy. They were
outgunned. Their air support had proved unable to winkle out well-entrenched
troops and they were even more vulnerable when the aircraft–even when the whole
air force was on call–returned to base to refuel and rearm. Combined Operations
had decided to use more firepower. Surveillance from the air was stepped up by
deploying the Warthog. The South African air force became heavily involved in
these last months, both in the fighting and as standby reserves, as in the case
of Operation Uric in September 1979. Super Frelons and Puma helicopters were
difficult to pass off as Rhodesian equipment, but the Canberras and Alouettes
also on loan were practically indistinguishable from their Rhodesian
counterparts, except when they were shot down. The combined Rhodesian-South
African efforts were approaching all-out war in the region. In late September,
the Rhodesians hit the reconstituted ZANLA base known as New Chimoio. They also
hoped to kill Rex Nhongo, the ZANLA commander, who narrowly escaped the first
air strikes. ComOps claimed that this operation (Miracle) was a success, but
the air force lost an Alouette, a Hunter and a Canberra. At the end of the
climactic raid on New Chimoio, one Selous Scout admitted: ‘We knew then that we
could never beat them. They had so much equipment and there were so many of
them. They would just keep coming with more and more.’ The Rhodesians also
attempted to stall the conventional ZIPRA threat to Kariba. RLI and SAS troops
found themselves outgunned during this operation (Tepid). ZIPRA forces stood
their ground, although they did eventually make an orderly withdrawal. On 22
November Walls ordered ComOps to stop all external raids.
The political warfare at the conference table was almost as
bitter as on the real battlefields in southern Africa. The PF haggled over
every step of the negotiations. Muzorewa had conceded easily. But Ian Smith had
to be brought into line by the toughness of Lord Carrington, the conference
chairman, as well as by a series of lectures from Ken Flower, General Walls and
D C Smith, the RF deputy leader. David C Smith had played a pivotal role.
Bishop Muzorewa had not wanted to include Ian Smith in his delegation to
London, but David Smith had talked the bishop into it and said that he himself
would not go if the RF leader were excluded. But Ian Smith’s presence was
counterproductive for the Salisbury team. The RF chief did his best to
undermine the bishop’s leadership. Gradually the PF was pushed into a
diplomatic corner. The British had bugged all the hotel suites, especially the
PF’s, and knew exactly how far to push the guerrilla leaders. The Rhodesians
realized that their hotel was bugged and sometimes used an irritating device
which made squawking noises to hide conversations. More often they talked about
confidential matters out-of-doors. Lord Carrington told the PF he would go
ahead and recognize Muzorewa if the conference broke down. None of the
frontline states wanted the war to continue and they exerted a continuous
leverage on the hardline PF coalition. Josiah Tongogara, who had more influence
over ZANLA than did Mugabe, believed that a political compromise was possible.
Nyerere also urged moderation and he persuaded Britain that more than
‘metaphysical’ force was needed to set up a ceasefire monitoring group. Samora
Machel was also a vital ally of Carrington’s. In spite of Mugabe’s threats to
go back to the bush, Machel privately told him that he wanted peace, and
without Mozambique as a sanctuary ZANLA would collapse. Machel told Mugabe: ‘We
FRELIMO secured independence by military victory against colonists. But your settlers
have not been defeated, so you must negotiate.’ Angola, Nigeria and Zambia, for
different reasons, wanted a speedy end to the conflict. There had been too much
suffering for far too long.
If the guerrillas had not been put in an arm-lock by their backers,
especially in Mozambique, and had walked out of the conference, Lord Carrington
had warned that he would go for the ‘second-class solution’: recognition of
Muzorewa. Paradoxically, the very success of the military raids, especially on
the economic infrastructure (including the SAS-Recce Commando raid on Beira
harbour on 18 September), was probably politically counter-productive. The
raids raised the morale of the white hardliners in Salisbury, but it ensured
that the frontline states kept the PF sitting around the table. A tactful lull
in the externals might well have prompted Mugabe to go for the unconditional
surrender option, and walk out, and thus force Carrington to hand the baton to
Muzorewa.
On 12 December Carrington took a gamble and sent Lord Soames
as the new British governor of Rhodesia. Britain was officially in full
control, for the first time in the colony’s 90-year history. It was a highly
risky venture–‘a leap in the dark’ in Soames’s own words. Final agreement on
the complete process of drafting a new constitution, a return to British rule,
a ceasefire and a new election had not been reached. But the rebellion was
over. As soon as Lord Soames stepped down on Rhodesian soil, the revolt against
the British Crown was quashed and sanctions were removed. But the civil war
went on.
Walls had long predicted privately that the war would end in
a military stalemate, and so it was. On 21 December 1979, after an epic of
stubborn last-stands, all parties to the conference signed the final agreement.
Ironically, it was exactly seven years to the day since the real war had begun
with the attack on Altena farm in the Centenary district. Robert Mugabe was
resentful. He said later: ‘As I signed the document, I was not a happy man at
all. I felt we had been cheated to some extent, that we had agreed to a deal
which would… rob us of the victory we had hoped we would achieve in the field.’
On 28 December the ceasefire creaked uncertainly into life.
By 4 January 1980 more than 18,000 guerrillas had heeded the ceasefire and had
entered the agreed rendezvous and assembly points inside Zimbabwe-Rhodesia.
Just as the ceasefire began, one of the main architects of compromise, Josiah
Tongogara, was reported killed in a motor accident in Mozambique. As the most
prominent soldier on the ZANLA side, his voice of moderation–especially
regarding relations with ZIPRA–would be sorely missed. Because ‘motor
accidents’ had been staged throughout the Rhodesian saga as a means of removing
opponents, ZANU went out of its way to try to prove the incident an accident;
even to the extent of sending a white employee of a Salisbury funeral service
to Maputo to embalm the body. But a strong suspicion of murder lingered at the
time. Nevertheless, no firm evidence of this has surfaced, though ZIPRA was
convinced that an East German specialist in ‘road accidents’ had arranged
Tongogara’s demise. Later, even in ZANLA, it was accepted that he had been
murdered. Senior ZANU men had agreed to his removal because of several general
factors, including his desire to work closely with ZIPRA and his emphasis on
encouraging whites to remain in the country. But the specific reason may have
been his alternative plan, discussed privately during the Lancaster House
talks, if the conference had failed. He argued that the three main armies
(ZIPRA, ZANLA, the Rhodesian security forces) could guarantee a peaceful,
five-year transition to civilian rule. A council of four parties (the RF, UANC,
ZANU and ZAPU) would provide the administration, with a council of the military
leaders acting as a watchdog. During this period the armies would be
integrated. Then, after five years, or sooner if the integration was completed,
elections would be held. Sir Humphrey Gibbs was suggested as a compromise
candidate for the transitional presidency. ZIPRA apparently went along with the
plan, but the constitutional conference reached agreement before Walls could be
consulted by Tongogara. With hindsight such a plan appears bizarre, but it
certainly paralleled Tongogara’s public demands for conciliation.
Certainly some reconciliation would be needed to rebuild the
devastated country. The long war had exacted a sad toll. More than 30,000
people had been killed (though some historians have offered a lower figure).
Operation Turkey had destroyed a vast acreage of peasant crops to prevent food
reaching the guerrillas. The International Red Cross estimated that 20 per cent
of the seven million black population was suffering from malnutrition. More
than 850,000 people were homeless. The maimed, blinded and crippled totalled at
least 10,000. The Salvation Army reckoned that of the 100 mission hospitals and
clinics which served the rural population, 51 were closed, three had been burnt
to the ground, and most of the others were badly damaged and looted. More than
100,000 men in the towns were unemployed. At least 250,000 refugees waited to
be repatriated from camps in the frontline states. About 483,000 children had
been displaced from their schools; some had gone without schooling for five
years. Half the country’s schools had been closed or destroyed. Finding a real
peace was only half the problem; a massive reconstruction programme would have
to follow.
Many outside observers and most whites in Rhodesia expected
the fragile truce to erupt once more into full-scale war which a British
governor with only 1,300 Commonwealth troops would have to contain. Ninety-five
per cent of the country was under martial law when Soames arrived. Extra regular
troops had entered the conflict. FPLM soldiers from Mozambique were fighting
alongside ZANLA. On the other side, the South African army’s commitment had
grown. By November 1979, South Africans were operating in strength in the
south-east, particularly in the Sengwe TTL and along the border. They were
supplied by air from Messina and their HQ was at Malapati. They were using
artillery bombardment to create guerrilla movement, a technique the Rhodesians
could not afford with 25-pounder shells costing $150 each. By December the SADF
was operating north of Chiredzi. The aim was to put one battalion, each with a
company-sized Fire Force, into each major operational area, making the total
commitment five battalions. The news of South African involvement was deliberately
leaked to boost sagging white morale.
If the ceasefire collapsed, more foreign regulars would be
sent to fight in the civil war, a war that could have engulfed southern Africa.
A grave responsibility rested on the man at the epicentre of the storm: Lord
Soames, who had no previous experience of African affairs. As the London
Observer warned: ‘A bomb disposal expert would be the best British Governor to
send to Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. The country lies ticking, a black and white booby
trap with many detonators. ’Would the ceasefire hold?’
