Messages From Zimbabwe

When I wrote “Without Honour” last year, I spent many hours on the internet doing research for the historical background that I wrote at the beginning of the book. I felt that it was very important to establish historical events for readers as some of it happened so long ago that we have forgotten, and then there are readers that do not live in the regional and are unaware of some of the finer points.

Perhaps one of the biggest single events for me during the bush war, was the shooting down of first one Air Rhodesia Viscount airliner and the subsequent murder of some of the survivors by terrorists, followed by the shooting down of a second aircraft less than six months later.

There were no survivors of the second atrocity.

I am always interested in other people’s opinions and views and so, when I found this page on the internet today, I felt that it was a must that I should share with those out there that remember with sadness, anger and futility the events that saw such a waste of innocent life.

The page that I took this from was written by Rob Rickards.

from “Serving Secretly” by Ken Flower

Page 210…

“On 3 September an incident occurred which put an immediate end to the Nkomo/Smith negotiations. This ’stroke of fate’, as Smith described it, forced all the players in the Rhodesian game on to a different course.

An Air Rhodesia Viscount was shot down by Nkomo’s ZIPRA guerrillas, using a Russian SAM-7 ground-to-air missile, shortly after take-off from Kariba to Salisbury. Eighteen out of the fifty-three people on board survived the crash; ten survivors, while still dazed and shocked, were massacred by ZIPRA guerrillas before rescuers could reach the scene of the crash. Nkomo compounded the crime when, in a BBC interview, he appeared to boast about the attack. Only twenty-four hours earlier white Rhodesians had welcomed the official release of news of the Nkomo/Smith negotiations. Now they demanded an end to negotiations and military retaliation on ZIPRA forces in Zambia. Any illusions they might have retained that they were fighting a war, not terrorism, were shattered, and as they waited in vain for condemnation of ZIPRA’S action from Britain, the United States or anywhere else, they began to realise they were completely alone in their grief and anger.

I well remember Smith’s double-edged reaction to the ’stroke of fate’: firstly, great relief and a sudden release of tension for, ironically, settlement with Nkomo had by 3 September been there for the taking and Smith might have had to grasp it, to his own embarrassment and the condemnation of many of his party; and secondly, righteous shock and horror.”

Page 219…

“Within a week of my return to Salisbury from Morocco another Viscount airliner was shot down on take-off from Kariba, killing all on board. Among the dead were my son-in-law’s parents and members of five families within sight of my home. On this occasion Nkomo claimed that his troops had planned to shoot down Walls, who was in Kariba at the time. It was a palpable lie…”

Serving Secretly

-o00o-

from “Rhodesians Never Die” by Peter Godwin & Ian Hancock

Page 288…

“Two days after Smith’s speech, and eleven minutes after taking off from Kariba, bound for Salisbury with fifty-two passengers and four crew members on board, Captain John Hood of Air Rhodesia’s flight RH825 radioed a distress signal. His Viscount then disappeared near the Urungwe TTL.

Wreckage was spotted from the air the next morning, and a ground search arrived soon after. Thirty-eight bodies were found in and around the aircraft, obviously victims of the crash. Another ten were heaped together a short distance away, all of them shot dead. Three survivors were found near the scene, and another five – who had walked off looking for help – were located later. A macabre story soon emerged. A heat-seeking SAM-7 missile had hit the inner starboard engine. Captain Hood almost executed a safe crash landing in a cotton field except for the last moment when the Viscount hit a ditch and broke up. The tail section broke away and eighteen lives were saved. Half an hour after the crash, and after the five had gone for help, a group of ‘terrorists’ appeared on the crash scene and ordered the remaining survivors to assemble whereupon they opened fire with their AK-47s. Three started running and got away, and watched as the ‘terrorists’ looted the aircraft before finally leaving.

For days on end, White Rhodesia was overwhelmed by shock, grief, and anger, a reaction strengthened by the further news that Umtali’s residential suburbs were rocketed on the night of 8 September. The demand for instant retaliation extended through the Security Forces, stopping only when it reached Walls. The anger increased with the news that Nkomo had claimed credit for downing the plane – while denying that ZIPRA had killed any survivors – and had accused Air Rhodesia of ferrying troops and military equipment. A false report that he had laughed (or ‘cackled’) merely strengthened demands for revenge. So did the stories of individual and family tragedies circulated in the media, spelt out in the condolence columns, and passed around by word of mouth. Although the names were not released it was reported that two of the ten murdered survivors were children and that another six were women. Eight of the ten, therefore, were the traditional ‘innocents’.

Cheryl Tilley, the sister of the schoolboy killed by ‘terrorists’ in January, did not survive the incident, nor did her fiancé. Captain Hood and his co-pilot died on impact and became instant heroes because of their skilful and valiant attempts to save the aircraft. Hood’s own story saddened its readers. A Bulawayo boy, with 8,000 flying hours, he had two young daughters by a previous marriage. A happy photograph recorded his remarriage just three months prior to the crash. One prominent Asian family was especially devastated; eight of its members were killed. There were also the customary tales of distraught relatives waiting for news, of people who joined the flight unexpectedly, and of others who had a miraculous change of plans. By coincidence, there was a routine meeting of NATJOC set down for 4th September where Ian Smith was expected to press for tougher military action against the ‘terrorists’. Ken Flower observed that Walls kept the session within bounds but also noted that the sense of outrage ‘took some time to develop’.

Outrage was certainly evident by 6 September when parliament met to debate the estimates. By then the execution of the ten survivors was uppermost in members’ minds.

The killers became ‘vermin’, ’sub-humans’, ‘Neanderthal’, ‘animals’. Their presumed backers – most notably Owen, Carter, and Andrew Young – were, in the words of the Afrikaner farmer who represented Karoi, ‘dripping with blood -blood from the innocent and helpless’. The RF’s Chief Whip assured the government that feeling was ‘running high about this matter’ as members canvassed the potential responses: more raids into Zambia, the imposition of martial law, a general mobilization. Wing Commander Gaunt wanted a nation-wide curfew and the shooting of any curfew-breakers as ‘terrorists’. Ministers hastily assured their back-bench that there would be some form of retaliation. Irvine warned that Rhodesians ‘will not let these innocents go unavenged’ and promised the Patriotic Front ‘that those who seek to ride the wind, will reap the whirlwind’. Ian Smith promised something more definite: on 9, September he told parliament that Rhodesian patience had been tested too far and it was now time to embark upon ‘a positive and firm course’.

Calmer voices could not compete with the wrath of a society. Bishop Paul Burrough appealed to Rhodesians not to seek revenge and to remember that ‘the most grievous suffering is still among the defenceless people in the tribal trust lands’. A spokesman for the mourning Asian family pleaded for peace and said he feared retaliation. But the words urging caution, brotherly love, and reconciliation were ignored in the memorial services held around Rhodesia on the following Friday. The spirit of the Old Testament prevailed over the New. John da Costa, Dean of the Anglican All Saints Cathedral in Salisbury, observed that the 2,500 mourners who crammed into the cathedral, or listened outside, ignored one part of his sermon. Looking directly at Smith and other senior figures in the front pew, the Dean spoke of the blameworthiness of politicians who made opportunistic speeches, and of men who called themselves Christians who treated other human beings as expendable and did not show enough real love and understanding. He also wondered how clergymen (such as Muzorewa and Sithole), who were supposed to be great reconcilers, could involve themselves in divisive politics. These comments were soon forgotten. What mattered was the Dean’s tirade against those whose bestiality ’stinks in the nostrils of Heaven’ and those leaders whose ’silence’ in condemning the atrocities was ‘deafening’. Outside the cathedral two men held placards one of which told Smith what to say to Nkomo at their next meeting: ‘GO TO HELL YOU MURDERING BASTARD’.

The Dean and Bishop Burrough wanted the demonstrators to leave. Some of the crowd agreed. It was not the time or the place for political spectacle. Yet the RF back-bench, most of the electorate, the hot bloods in the Security Forces, and the demonstrators outside All Saints Cathedral all wanted that message delivered to the Patriotic Front.

Smith announced the NATJOC decisions on 11 September. He made his now-familiar denunciation of the British and American governments whom he blamed for the escalation of ‘terrorism’ and for the Elim and Viscount ‘massacres’, and he accused Julius Nyerere of being the ‘evil genius’ behind Nkomo. The Prime Minister admitted that his contacts with Kaunda and Nkomo had become unpopular but insisted that these negotiations had been in the best interests of the country and would resume if necessary. The ’stroke of fate’ – as Smith called the Viscount incident – may have horrified him; it also saved him from having to sell Nkomo to a suspicious electorate. Forced back upon his colleagues in the Transitional government, Smith made the best of the situation by calling upon the Rhodesians to exercise their virtues of ingenuity, energy, resourcefulness, and ‘well-known and well-acclaimed valour’. They should accept his measures and eschew the desperate alternatives of capitulation or making a do-or-die stand. He knew that his earlier remarks in parliament had fuelled some unrealistic expectations. The Herald, which had previously urged caution, described Smith’s speech as a ‘damp squib’, and claimed that the overwhelming public response was one of bitter disappointment. A minority opinion was that he could do little else. Relieved that Smith had not launched a programme of vengeance, NUF accused him of incompetent leadership and called for his resignation and the formation of a national government. The RAP was predictably contemptuous, and called for a ‘ruthless prosecution of the war’. Ever hopeful, the party expected a surge in support following Smith’s apparent failure to read the mood of the electorate. Once again, it was disappointed. In no time, the electorate resumed its customary position of accepting that ‘Smithy’ was doing his best.”

Page 243…

“On 12 February 1979 another civilian Viscount was brought down by a heat-seeking missile just after taking off from Kariba. All fifty-nine people on board were killed outright. Sixteen days later on 28 February – Ian Smith addressed parliament for the last time as Prime Minister.”

Rhodesians Never Die

-o00o-

from “The Great Betrayal” by Ian Douglas Smith

Page 266…

“With a traumatic week just over, with a number of innocent civilians being murdered by terrorists, all of them black people — their only crime that they were not prepared to co-operate in terrorism – came the news of the tragic disaster of the shooting down of one of our civilian Viscount aircraft on its flight from Victoria Falls via Kariba to Salisbury on late Sunday afternoon, 3 September. The terrorists had managed to procure a number of heat-seeking missiles from those sources all over the world that are looking for financial gain, even at the cost of human life and tragedy. The bringing down of the aircraft and, still worse, the cold-blooded murder by the terrorists of ten of the survivors, including women and children, caused a degree of anger among Rhodesians difficult to control. During the days that followed, resentment and the accompanying desire to exact retribution mounted and I received more than one representation seeking permission to enter the area of the tragedy and make the local people pay for their crime of harbouring and assisting the terrorists. I, too, would have derived great satisfaction in getting to grips with the gangsters associated with the crime, but sadly, this is easier said than done. We would continue to hunt down and destroy terrorism wherever it was found, but we knew on the evidence before us that many, if not the majority, of the tribal people were not voluntarily on the side of the terrorists, but had had pistols pointed at their heads. There was a strong feeling for me to broadcast to the nation, and on Sunday 10 September I announced that the government would introduce ‘a modification of martial law which will enable us to streamline procedures in order to facilitate the prosecution of our war effort while at the same time leaving intact those civil authorities which are required to play their part’. The new measures, I said, were to be applied in particular areas as and when required, and not on a nation-wide basis many, if not the majority, of the tribal people were not voluntarily on the side of the terrorists, but had had pistols pointed at their heads. So it was necessary, although difficult, to counsel cool heads and remind people that two wrongs do not make a right: the sins of the gangsters should not be visited upon their fellow-tribesmen.”

The Great Betrayal

-o00o-

from “The Story of My Life” by Joshua Nkomo

Page 165…

“But our success against the Rhodesian Air Force was far greater than they allowed to be known at the time. We could not claim the credit that we deserved, because we needed to keep secret the fact that we had been given some Soviet surface-to-air missiles, Sam-7s. We deployed them first in defence of our camps in Zambia, and caught the enemy by surprise. The first time we used them we knocked down two of their strike aircraft, the second time we got four. In all we shot down almost thirty of their planes and helicopters: the Rhodesian minister of defence was forced to resign, and they replaced the losses only by importing second-hand Hawker Hunters from Israel, with South African help. One of the Smith government’s great propaganda successes was in covering up the extent of the damage we had done them. The only times they would admit to losses of aircraft were when we brought down passenger planes, which we did on two occasions.

These tragic incidents need explaining. The Rhodesians used their civil airliners equally for carrying passengers and for carrying troops. The first time we shot one down was immediately after Smith’s troops had carried out a particularly brutal attack on the camps at Chimoio, in Mozambique, where well over a thousand of our young people died. Rhodesian television had shown pictures of Viscount aircraft in Air Rhodesia markings ferrying in their paratroopers for the attack. And a plane carrying armed soldiers is surely a legitimate target in a war.

Of course it was not our policy to shoot down civil airliners: if we had wanted to we could have done so often, but we carefully refrained from that. What happened was that we identified one of the same aircraft that had been shown on television loaded with troops. It landed at Victoria Falls, where we knew paratroops were stationed, and as it took off we shot it down with a Sam missile. (Error: the aircraft took off from Kariba – WebMaster) Forty-eight people, most of them holidaymakers, died in the crash; eight survived. Ten of those who died were said to have been shot on the ground after escaping from the wreck.

It was a tragic mistake. I felt it personally. One man was killed with his mother and father and his wife and children – the whole family wiped out. Their name was Gulab, Zimbabweans of Indian origin. Mr Gulab was a good friend of mine, who often fixed me up with airline tickets in ways that avoided alerting the police. I regret his loss very much.

The Rhodesian propaganda people at once claimed that our anti-aircraft team had killed ten survivors on the ground. This was obviously untrue, since the plane fell well away from the firing-point. Some of our ZIPRA boys did approach the crash site, and did help the eight survivors to get to safety, bringing them water and looking after them. I truly have no idea how the ten died. I do not believe they were killed by our people: I hope not.

I then made an error of a different kind. The following day the BBC telephoned me for a comment on the shooting-down. I told them as much of the truth as I knew. Then, fairly enough in the circumstances, they asked me what weapon the plane had been brought down with. Clearly I could not say it was a Sam-7: it was a secret that we had such things. To turn the question aside, I answered that we had brought it down by throwing stones, and as I said so I laughed a bit. I was not laughing at the deaths of all those civilians, but at the evasive answer. The laugh was remembered, rather than my regret at those unnecessary deaths. In retaliation for the first Viscount disaster, the Rhodesians mounted a savage raid on our Freedom Camp, just north of Lusaka. It was not a military training camp, but a genuine refugee camp for young boys. Most of the 351 who died were, just youngsters.

Later we again brought down one of Air Rhodesia’s Viscounts, with serious loss of life. This time too civilians died because the Rhodesians used the same aircraft for civilian and for military purposes. Our intelligence people in Salisbury had identified the Rhodesian army commander, General Walls, getting into a Viscount plane. The same aircraft was landing at Wankie, at Victoria Falls and at Kariba: General Walls was reported to be still on board. After takeoff from Kariba, the plane passed our Sam emplacement on the hill: the missile team identified the plane by its number fired and brought it down. Shortly afterwards another Viscount took off and flew past our missile crew, who did not fire because spies had not identified it as carrying a military target. (The aircraft took a completely different track as the crew were aware of the crash. Web-designer)

Walls had changed planes, and was aboard the second. Walls and his staff officers were clearly a legitimate target. A few years later, when I was a minister and he was commanding our post-independence army, I asked him why he had swapped planes. He just laughed. We talked about when his troops raided my home in Lusaka and killed four people in the house, while I eluded them. We had tried to kill the other, and in both attempts innocent people had been killed by mistake. It was that kind of war.

I still wonder whether Walls had switched aircraft because they had intercepted our radio talk and knew it was a likely target. We, of course, could not say publicly that Walls was our target; we could not admit either that we had a sophisticated radio link, or that we had spies in all the civil airports of Rhodesia.

One other attempt to shoot down a civil airliner was unsuccessful. The target was PW Botha, the South African defence minister, who was flying in to Victoria Falls. That very day some South African soldiers who were operating in the area were killed by our men on Rhodesian territory.

Botha was a legitimate target – but the missile malfunctioned, and missed his aircraft. He left in a hurry, without performing his task of inaugurating a swimming-pool for the troops.

The worst thing about the war was the callousness it bred. It is true, and I regret it, that atrocities were committed by people on our side, by ZIPRA fighters as well as by ZANLA men. Some of those killed were isolated white farmers and their families who happened to be in the way. Some were African chiefs who may have collaborated with the Smith regime, but who had little alternative if their own families and their people were to survive. It was not our policy to kill such people. But armed men, alone or in small groups, may come to disregard the importance of human life. It was necessary to fight a guerrilla war, and in such a war terrible things are bound to happen.”

The Story of My Life

-o00o-

I don’t suppose there is much to be gained in reliving these horrific events – apart from the fact that many of the people that carried out these atrocities are today either in positions of some authority or are living in abject poverty in Zimbabwe.

Poetic justice or not, I post this so that we can understand a little more of the mind set, a little more of the thought process that drove the different sides to fight so ferociously for so many years…

Take care.

‘debvhu