You cannot win a war like this purely through military means. The military is merely there to maintain law and order and to provide a conducive atmosphere for political development.
—Lieutenant General Peter Walls, Commander, Rhodesian Armed Forces1
The guerrillas only require the mass of the population to be passive. We, to win, require the mass of the population to be actively in support of us and not passive. We are at a severe disadvantage here.
—1969 speech by Allan Savory, “rebel” Rhodesian Member of Parliament2
World opinion, international economics and Great Britain’s international economic interests dictated what would prevail. Neither paternalism nor loyalty to kith and kin would come first to the UK in the future. Rhodesia ignored and avoided these warnings … this was no more than deceitful politics and the deliberate avoidance and denial of reality … we were deliberately, stubbornly and culturally unprepared to combat an insurgency within our nation.
—Brigadier John Essex-Clark, ex-Rhodesian Staff Corps3
I wanted to step up the use of the bayonet. That’s the most effective propaganda—the bayonet. You can’t divorce propaganda from action; you can’t promote something in a vacuum. You see, hearts and minds are conditioned very much by what happens militarily.
—P. K. Van der Byl, Rhodesian Minister of Information4
The political and military history of the Rhodesian Bush War, 1966–80 has been the focus of a plethora of literature over the past three and a half decades. While the majority of these, often eminent studies have focused on the tactical and operational aspects of this conflict,5 few have attempted to analyze it as part of a broader and more complex, integrated internal and external political and military perspective.6 This chapter will attempt to redress this perceived imbalance in the Rhodesian Bush War historiography. By selectively examining key political and military policies, events, and phases of the conflict, it will demonstrate how the persistent political myopia of the ruling Rhodesia Front government, the “COIN executor,” not only fatally undermined, indeed, betrayed their own white constituents—not least the military establishment that bore the brunt of this truly tragic and costly bush war—but, above all, how it persistently neglected the “hearts and minds” of a majority, disenfranchised African population that was reluctantly, relentlessly, and brutally exposed to the realities of an overtly racial war. Of all the postwar irregular campaigns, this war, it will be further argued, represented one of the most spectacular examples of a grossly imbalanced “one-sided” COIN campaign, whereby military imperatives were consistently allowed to override the political, economic, and social needs of the local population.
The analytical template or raison d’être for this study both reflects and draws upon the broad findings of several key and pioneering post-World War II academic studies, notably those authored by Thompson, Kitson, Galula, and Nagl.7 All have repeatedly stressed the need to minimize the role of security forces and the paramount and vital importance of winning over the “hearts and minds” of indigenous peoples. Their evolving principles have included the clear political aim of establishing and maintaining a free, independent, and united country with political and economic viability, respect for the rule of law, and the prevention of excesses by either side: an integrated civil and military intelligence and military and police strategy aimed primarily at defeating political subversion as the cause of insurgency rather than the insurgents themselves, to include development and reconstruction and, finally, maintaining the security of bases essential for any long, drawn-out campaign. Rhodesian government policy will also be selectively and retrospectively measured against the 10 current principles of COIN adopted by the British Army in 2009, which were themselves principally derived from these theorists. They are: primacy of political purpose, unity of effort, understanding the human terrain, integrate intelligence, secure the population, neutralize the insurgent, gain and maintain popular support, operate in accordance with the law, learn and adapt, and prepare for the long term.8
From the very outset of European occupation in 1890 and especially after the granting of quasi-political autonomy to a Rhodesian government after 1923, successive white Rhodesian governments, to varying degrees of culpability, had chosen to ignore political reality in regard to promoting the political, economic, and social rights and development of the majority African population. Africans were largely excluded from the franchise and two crucial Privy Council decisions and Land Acts implemented in 1918 and 1930, had confirmed the expropriation of the most fertile agricultural and productive mineral areas by white farmers and mining conglomerates. This was carried out in the face of a growing African proto-nationalist movement boosted by the experience of two World Wars and the demands of returning African servicemen.9 The rapid expansion of an African-educated elite after 1945 had also stimulated nationalist aspirations, not least those of future ZANU [Zimbabwean African National Union] leader and president of an independent Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, who had benefited from both the support of local Rhodesian mission schools and the higher education opportunities provided by, for instance, Fort Hare University, South Africa and as well as other liberal British/European universities, notably the London School of Economics.
The violence perpetrated against whites during the Mau Mau disturbances of 1952–60 in colonial Kenya and the Congo crisis of 1960–61, rather than being interpreted as a catalyst for radical internal political change, served only to further entrench white opinion in Rhodesia. Demonstrations by the supporters of three emerging African nationalist leaders, Ndabaningi Sithole and Robert Mugabe leading ZANU, and Joshua Nkomo leading the Zimbabwean African Peoples Union (ZAPU), provided ammunition for a growing right wing backlash from Rhodesian political groups that saw the granting of universal suffrage that incorporated full African enfranchisement as a recipe for anarchy and disaster.
The political turning point for the future of Rhodesia was signified by the election of the new, rabidly right wing Rhodesia Front (RF) party to power in December 1962. This new government dominated by hard-line white supremacists such as P. K. Van der Byl and Desmond Lardner-Burke and led by farmer and ex-RAF pilot Ian Douglas Smith, made a future armed conflict with emerging African nationalist parties inevitable by pursuing a deeply flawed primary political aim of racial domination that flew in the face of universal human rights and democratic norms established by the United Nations in the wake of the World War II. As J. K. Cilliers confirmed, its agenda was deeply flawed from the start: “Since its inception the party had been committed to the entrenchment and maintenance of white supremacy without the involvement of a distant colonial mother.”10
Indeed, the earlier failed attempts by Britain, her erstwhile “distant colonial mother” to set up a Federation of Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland in 1953 as a means of facilitating eventual majority black rule in the region, had been a primary catalyst to the emergence of the white separatist Rhodesia Front Party. By 1964, the advent to power of a deeply unsympathetic British Labour government, intent on imposing black majority rule and already enjoying close links with Rhodesian African Nationalist leaders, combined with the growing internal African nationalist pressure, proved to be the tipping point for secession. On November 11, 1965, Ian Smith’s Rhodesia Front government declared its unilateral independence from Britain, a process known as UDI (Unilateral Declaration of Independence). Representatives of a white minority population of barely 300,000 had decisively signified its determination to dominate a black majority population numbering over 6 million. Like many others at home and abroad, the British MP, Evelyn King, was not slow to ridicule the long-term political and military folly of this extraordinary coup by the Smith regime: “It seems ludicrous, but, with an effective [white] population smaller than Bournemouth you run a country over twice the size of Britain, man an army, an air force and, now, defy Britain, the Commonwealth and the rest of the world.”11 Former Rhodesian prime minister, Lord Malvern, was more scathing: “Surely they (the RF) have the wit to learn—if they can learn anything—that what a revolting minority can do, a revolting a revolting majority can do better.”12
Certainly from the perspective of the banned African opposition, notably ZANU, principally led by the detained Reverend Sithole and Secretary-General Robert Mugabe, and ZAPU, led by the similarly detained Joshua Nkomo, UDI was effectively a declaration of racial war. Already, after constant repression of its activities, ZANU had sent, in September 1963, the first five members of its newly established military wing, ZANLA (Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army), overseas for military training. Its future military effectiveness was, however, already compromised by growing rivalry with ZAPU’s military wing, ZIPRA (Zimbabwe’s People’s Revolutionary Army). By 1962, ZAPU, also in response to continued repression, had earlier also proclaimed its “call to arms” and commenced military training. As Flavia Paradza, a schoolteacher from Chibi affirmed: “We had tried to negotiate for a settlement. That had failed, so we then had to resort to an armed struggle.”13
The Rhodesian conflict can be conveniently divided into three broad but distinct political and military phases. During the first distinct phase of what might be termed a “hollow victory” lasting from 1966 to 1971, the Rhodesian regime, while achieving remarkable military successes with respect to its COIN campaign, patently neglected—despite dire warnings from within—to either consolidate, build on, or even exploit this firm security foundation; in short, it consistently failed to make any significant or meaningful political concessions to the indigenous population. During the second phase of the crisis lasting from around 1972 to 1977, the Rhodesian “political chickens” came home to roost as their key allies deserted them, the insurgents adopted a far more effective political and military strategy, and the Rhodesian authorities, only reluctantly offering limited strategic-political concessions such as at the Geneva and Victoria Falls talks—and only prompted principally under massive South African and American pressure—were decisively and irrevocably pushed on to the defensive. The final phase of the crisis in 1978–80 witnessed the collapse of the Smith/Muzorewa interim administration, politically doomed by its own wholly inadequate and exclusive franchise/election arrangements that excluded their “enemy constituency.” It exposed and confirmed the overall and profound political failure of the Rhodesian COIN campaign, so graphically signified by the virtual collapse of the Rhodesian war economy and a massive social meltdown that culminated in a large-scale white exodus.
Most academic sources agree that the date April 28, 1966—significantly still celebrated in present day Zimbabwe as “the Second Chimurenga” or “Liberation Struggle Day”—represented the formal start of hostilities of the Rhodesian Bush war. Near Sinoia, after murdering a white farming couple, three teams of ZANLA insurgents were decisively defeated by Rhodesian security forces. Thirteen of the fourteen insurgents were either killed or captured. Over the next five years, the Rhodesian forces would score success after success over the inexperienced and ill-trained ZANLA and ZIPRA insurgents.
With war effectively declared the political survival of the Smith regime ultimately depended not only on the long-term strength and capability of its internal military and economic establishments but also on the effectiveness of the international and particularly British, South African, and American responses.
From the perspective of its military capability, the Rhodesian government forces were not only clearly outnumbered but also severely overstretched. In the words of the Rhodesian military historian, Dr R. J. Wood: “It meant that less than 1,000 regular troops were [initially] available to defend Rhodesia’s 390,757 square kilometers or 150,871 square miles, roughly 1.6 times the size of the United Kingdom and slightly larger than the state of Montana.”14 The Rhodesian air and land forces had also suffered from the impact of the earlier dissolution of the Central African Federation—Britain’s scheme in the 1950s to unite and democratize its three colonies of Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland—with the significant loss of aircraft, pilots, and skilled and experienced manpower from the CAF armed forces. Nevertheless, this frontline force, of which the Rhodesia Light Infantry were the bedrock, was supplemented by support units of up to 4,000 strong comprising such units as the white-officered Rhodesian African Rifles and a squadron of the Rhodesian Special Air Service (SAS), modeled on its British counterpart. Experience and astonishing adaptability compensated for lack of numbers in this early stage of the conflict. Many were veterans of the Malayan, Kenyan, and Aden campaigns and their experience undoubtedly played a key role in the early victories over ZANLA and ZIPRA insurgents. In support, there were also eight battalions of territorials and reservists of the Royal Rhodesia Regiment. The Royal Rhodesian Air Force (RRAF) was also not to be underestimated, fielding seven squadrons, flown and serviced by 2,000 regulars. Additionally, Rhodesia benefited from the support of a police force of 7,000 regular black and white British South Africa Police (BSAP) including a paramilitary support unit and by a volunteer Police Reserve of 30,000 men and women of all races. Initially, these forces proved to be an easy match for the comparatively small, ill-trained, and inexperienced insurgent units, often only a few dozen strong, which penetrated Rhodesia’s borders during the first five years of the bush war. Up to 30 major attacks were destroyed or thwarted during this period. It was a key factor in encouraging and determining the intransigence of the Smith regime and its pursuit of a profoundly imbalanced, one-sided counterinsurgency in which minimal effort was made to win the support of its majority African population.
Moreover, Rhodesia could initially rely on close security and military support from two political allies, colonial Portugal and apartheid South Africa. After uncovering evidence of the close military cooperation of the African National Congress (ANC) with ZANLA and ZIPRA, South Africa readily supplied significant ground and air support forces while Portugal could provide border security from its adjacent colony, Mozambique. Politically and economically, Rhodesia’s survival prospects also appeared promising in this early phase of the conflict. Mining, tobacco, and maize production was sustained at peacetime levels, helped again by a very favorable geopolitical situation in which its two key allies, apartheid South Africa and Portugal, sustained and protected local and international market access via the South African/Rhodesian border town of Beitbridge, and Mozambique transit routes. The Smith regime was soon rapidly lulled into a sense of false security. Smith and his supporters were also able to skillfully highlight the Communist threat to Africa to beneficial effect, winning the support of conservative states and lobby groups abroad.
It was a delusion unfortunately reinforced by the profound failures or weaknesses of the international response to the Rhodesian crisis. The United States was too bogged down in the Vietnam quagmire to seriously engage and the United Nations was largely emasculated by divisive Cold War politics with the USSR already overtly supporting ZIPRA and China backing ZANLA. But it was, in particular, the decision of Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s Labour government not to use force to suppress the Rhodesia rebellion that proved critical. Aware of Portuguese and South African support, the logistics problems, and the kith and kin issue—by which senior British Army commanders had already warned him of the unwillingness of some senior units to fight against white Rhodesian troops (with whom some even had family connections)—Wilson perhaps naively opted for the less politically divisive and cheaper option of economic sanctions. But Britain’s chronic economic weakness probably proved to be the decisive factor. In the words of R. Goode, a political analyst:
Formidable logistical problems, the kith and kin factor and negative advice from military commanders helped shape the decision but, underlying all else, was the economic and parliamentary crisis which gripped Britain at the time. For a brief moment, Wilson seemed to believe indirect measures would achieve the objectives. Sanctions would galvanise an effective opposition to the rebel regime in Rhodesia and Britain would be able to work with a reconstituted moderate government.15
It was a decision of great naivety, as economic sanctions quickly proved to be a miserable failure. Despite, for instance, the British Royal Navy’s much publicized sanctions-busting “Beira patrol,” the blockade of the Mozambique port of Beira, both South Africa, principally via the land route of the Beitbridge, and Portugal, via numerous coastal ports, provided ready access for the import of Rhodesia’s all-important oil supplies. British vacillation had other unforeseen implications. The abject failure of the British government to directly intervene and crush this “white rebellion,” finally convinced the disillusioned nationalist leadership of the necessity of unilateral action and of the imperative need to use armed force to achieve their dream of liberation.
British policy was rapidly reduced to several political initiatives starting with Wilson’s ill-fated bilateral talks conducted with Smith aboard the Royal Navy ships, “Fearless” and “Tiger” in the late 1960s. Smith, buoyed up by recent military successes and the clear failure of international sanctions, adopted a hard-line posture that showed no interest in even considering the adoption of any of Wilson’s six principles and thereby balancing what was already a purely coercive-based counterinsurgency campaign. In the words of the Rhodesian intelligence chief, Ken Flower, chief of Rhodesia’s Central Intelligence Organisation, the Rhodesia Front was “riding on the crest of a wave, having won the economic war and apparently won the guerrilla war.”16 These principles, which originated mainly from Wilson and his cabinet and which were later fully endorsed by the United Nations were: first, unimpeded progress to majority rule; second, guarantees against retrogressive amendments to the constitution; third, an immediate improvement in the political status of the black population; fourth, progress toward ending racial discrimination; fifth, constitutional proposals that are acceptable to the people of Rhodesia as a whole; and, finally, no oppression of the majority by the minority or the minority by the majority. The impasse over the Rhodesian nonacceptance of any of these principles largely reflected the problem of the highly personalized nature of the Rhodesian political leadership with a short-sighted naturally stubborn Smith far too dominant and far too closely aligned to the most extreme members of his cabinet. In the words of Ken Flower:
the talks foundered not only on the collective rigidity of the Rhodesian regime’s ideological position but equally on the inherent strengths and weaknesses of Ian Smith’s character … he appeared strongest when saying no … he would delay decisions until there was absolutely no alternative but to make up his mind … his concept of negotiations was not-to-negotiate but to leave it entirely to the other side to make concessions.17
The inability of the Smith regime to seriously consider mild progressive reform for its indigenous African population, even in the form of adherence to point 4 of Wilson’s principles was an ominous portent of the future and for the conduct of what would become a one-sided COIN campaign that ignored any significant concessions to African welfare and security. Nevertheless, within the Rhodesian establishment itself there were several leading voices of dissent even at this early stage of the war. Flower himself submitted a paper to Smith in 1968 arguing for African political advancement as an overconfident Smith drafted a “retrogressive” constitution in preparation for his infamous 1969 declaration of a Rhodesian republic, in which white rule would be further entrenched:
The subject with which we are concerned is the developing trend towards separation of the races in Rhodesia and all that this implies; the exploitation of differences rather than similarities; the growth of fear—the Africans’ fear of apartheid and the Europeans’ fear of the black masses through loss of contact … these trends will destroy the Africans’ confidence in Europeans … leading to a security situation where Black and White become opposed in physical conflict … I cannot say how long the erosion would take, nor how serious it would be—much will depend on the final political solution but I must sound a note of warning here and now that cracks are beginning to appear in the edifice and that if we lose the confidence, trust and mutual support of the African there can be only one result: sooner or later the building will collapse.18
Several other leading Rhodesian political and military figures also voiced their criticism of the regime’s further swing to the right under the new republican constitution and its continual all-out reliance upon one-sided counterinsurgency tactics during this early period of “hollow victory.” In 1969, after retiring from his position as army commander, Major General “Sam” Putterill attacked the government for producing a constitution that would deny the Africans any political future and force them into militant action. Smith, demonstrating again his distance from both local and international political realities, swiftly denounced his comments as “despicable” and further castigating him for his “extremist leftist views.” At public meetings his assertion that the war could not be won by force alone and that “the ingredient that is missing is a positive dynamic program designed to win the loyalty of all people” was howled down by RF thugs. When he further criticized the Smith regime for failing to take advantage of the current Rhodesian military dominance by “building up African support through an imaginative policy,” he was again denounced as a “communist” and “traitor” to Rhodesia.19
On the internal political front, Rhodesian MP Allan Savory actually resigned from the Rhodesia Front in 1969 to speak publicly on the theme that the war was political, and therefore required political, not military solutions. Causing a stir by deploying, for the first time in the Rhodesian Parliament, the term “guerrilla” instead of “terrorist,” Savory went on to suggest that guerrilla leaders should be invited to a constitutional conference. A furious Smith predictably attacked the suggestion as “the most irresponsible and evil (statement) I have ever heard.”20 Ken Flowers succinctly summed up the dilemma facing Rhodesian reformers at this time: “Men such as Putterill and Savory, who publicly declared their opposition to the political trend and its impact upon the war, and those of us in official circles who privately expressed our views in favour of liberalisation were faced time and time again with total intransigence on the part of the RF and their followers.”21
During this early apparently “victorious” phase of the war, such critical voices were easily quashed by the extremely confident leaders of the new Rhodesian republic. As Wood confirms:
They were … good years for Rhodesians. They were winning all the battles and countering the sanctions. They were assisted in their efforts by ZANU’s and ZAPU’s proclaimed adherence to Marxism; this gave credibility to the Rhodesian government’s anti-Communist stance, which struck a chord in the United States and elsewhere, particularly among the conservative Arab states and Iran.22
At the start of 1972, the Smith regime was still riding on the crest of a wave. The British-led and sponsored Pearce Commission found that the 1971 settlement proposals between Smith and Alec Douglas-Home, the British foreign secretary, which left white political power still largely entrenched, was unacceptable to the African majority. This left Smith unperturbed. As intelligence chief Ken Flowers observed:
The verdict of the Pearce commission, made public in May that year, had caused him neither disappointment nor defeat. Government propaganda had long since prevailed over fact and no one in authority was prepared to encourage disillusionment or mention the possibility of defeat in a game which had taken a new and dangerous turn. Most of the electorate by this time were unable to discriminate between fact and fancy, or were so confused as to have lost all powers of discrimination, and their leader appeared as one who had assumed a cloak of infallibility.23
The delusion had even more heavily infiltrated the Rhodesian military establishment with incoming commanders, while professionally equal to their retiring or serving colleagues, tending to be politically overcommitted to the RF.
By the end of 1972, however, there were clear signs that the Rhodesian war effort was starting to falter, as larger numbers of better trained ZANLA and ZIPRA insurgents began to enter the country and their leaders devised new “revolutionary” strategies—in the case of ZANLA firmly embedded in Maoist principles—designed to exploit the political vacuum left by an increasingly isolationist Rhodesian regime that was still predominantly and fatally dependent upon a purely military solution to the war. The ZANLA leadership led the way. As Noel Mukona recalled:
In 1969 it was decided to operate silently … We worked underground, training, stocking equipment and regrouping inside the country. Special Branch could not find out what was going on and that we were preparing for a continuation of the struggle. Much contact was sustained with the local population to review the terrain … In July 1972 ZANU called together all its forces and met in the bush in Mozambique and reviewed the situation. We were satisfied that the preparations were enough and that enough arms and food had been stashed in the bush and that we could restart the onslaught.24
Moreover by the early to mid-1970s under this new strategy, both ZANLA and ZIPRA had made great strides in winning domestic legitimacy in the more politically neutral tribal trusts lands. ZANU political operatives successfully infiltrated these areas, skillfully invoking Chaminuka, the spirit of the Shona national prophet of the 1896 resistance era. He was allegedly reached through a medium claiming to be the reincarnation of Nehanda, a powerful priest of the period. ZANLA guerrillas, by cultivating this alliance of traditional and new authority, and sharing similar goals, sought the “retrieval of lost lands and lost autonomy.” By further observing the ancestral prohibitions, the guerrillas “ were transferred from ‘strangers’ into ‘royals’ from members of lineages resident in other parts of Rhodesia into descendants of the local Mhondoro with rights to land.”25 By these means, “the authority of the ancestors was tapped to provide legitimacy to armed resistance and violent insurrection and the pact between guerrillas and peasants began invariably and unthinkingly to refer to the guerrillas as vasikana and vakomana, our ‘daughters’ and our ‘sons’.”26 Similarly, but less comprehensively and successfully, ZIPRA, with its high proportion of more urban-based Ndebele support networks, was able to exploit the memory of the last Ndebele independent ruler, Lobengula, as a potent alternative symbol of resistance. As Norman Makahole, a bus conductor in Plumtree recalled:
I really believed the guerrillas were on a task that was left by our forefathers here, because they wanted equality in the races, not that one should take a minor role, inferior to the other. So I saw these girls and boys to be finishing the work that was started by our ancestors.27
This is not to contend that such transfers of loyalties to either Mugabe or Nkomo were by any means peaceful. Terror, assassination, and intimidation were widely used against both alleged collaborators (notably traditional chiefs and headmen) and waverers, and matched that perpetrated by elements of the Rhodesian security forces; it was to become a truly “dirty war on both sides.” As Tembo student Chimedza recalled, night meetings or pungwes with the “boys from the bush” could be intimidating, with force often applied:
Some people were refusing to go to the pungwe. Because they were afraid of meeting the soldiers, for of course they would be shot. But you could not miss a pungwe. The comrades would send someone to fetch you. I was helping the comrade and sometimes I had to force people to go … we held sticks for them.28
Moreover, the responses of different areas, if only driven by reaction to such tactics, were complex and widely varied as Norma Kriger’s groundbreaking study of the Mutoko district, Zimbabwe’s Guerrilla War, reveals with significant divisions of allegiance occurring within the Zimbabwean peasantry both during and after the war.29 In fact, the Smith regime may have missed a great opportunity to politically capitalize on the allegiance of the predominantly peasant-based African “middle ground” during these earlier stages of the war when it was in a more militarily and economically dominant position and “when the guerrillas had to contend with a still powerful settler state” … which would explain the early “guerrillas” reliance on cultural nationalist appeals and their scant utilitarian appeals. “Some,” Kriger postulates, “might argue that the guerrillas’ failure to establish liberated areas and offer utilitarian incentives [e.g. development projects] disqualifies it [as Mugabe often claimed] from being included as a revolution.”30
Regardless of these arguably missed opportunities, the military implications of this new insurgent strategy, relying far more heavily on local intelligence and studiously avoiding the earlier larger-scale head-on and disastrous confrontations with the Rhodesian security forces, were soon apparent. In the early hours of December 21, 1972, after a prolonged lull in the fighting, Flower’s prediction of “a new and dangerous turn” in the bush war became horribly apparent when ZANLA insurgents both successfully attacked a white homestead in the Centenary district and ambushed reinforcements, causing significant casualties. It confirmed Smith’s statement earlier that month when, in a highly significant radio broadcast delivered on December 4, he forecast the beginnings of a military crisis: “The situation is far more serious than it appears on the surface, and if the man in the street could have access to the security information which I and my colleagues in government have, then I think he would be a lot more worried than he is today.”31
It had been a rare reality check for the Smith regime and if there was ever a time for a limited move toward some political liberalization by the Smith regime to win over this vital African middle ground or even some embryonic attempt to redress the balance of an overall rigid policy of “one-sided COIN,” this was certainly one of several opportunities missed. Instead, barely more than a month later, Smith made a second national broadcast in which, while attempting to calm his white constituency, he displayed his usual combination of ignorance and obduracy. On January 18, 1973, while again recognizing and confirming the gravity of the new military threat, he belittled its deep political significance:
There have been some unusual developments over the past few weeks and as facts and trends are now emerging, I would like to put you in the picture as far as I can without breaching our security requirements. The terrorist incursion in the north-east of our country has developed in a manner that we had not previously experienced and as a result we have to face up to a number of serious problems … for some months now these terrorists have been operating in this area, quietly and methodically undermining the local population. They have done this in a number of ways. Firstly, through intimidation at the point of the gun; secondly they found a few witch doctors of doubtful character and of little substance, and succeed in bribing them to their side. These were then used to good effect in misleading local tribesmen into accepting that the terrorists were worthy of their support. I am sure that I do not have to inform you how easy it is to mislead these simple, gullible people who still believe in witchcraft and the throwing of bones …32
As Martin and Johnson, leading British and Canadian journalist-historians observe, by this statement Smith “displayed the very simplicity and gullibility he charged Africans with … By calling them witchdoctors, Smith displayed the ignorance common to so many whites in Africa who are incapable of differentiating between the various facets of indigenous society. Nor did he apparently understand the inspirational legacy of mediums like Nehanda and Chaminuka whose names, at the time he was speaking, had been given by the guerrillas to two new sectors of war in the northeast.”33 As J. K. Cilliers, a Rhodesian counterinsurgency expert also wryly observed, in what was to become a classic understatement, “when the campaign began in 1973 it seemed that the Rhodesian government was not yet convinced of the political character of the threat facing it.”34
Over the next four years, from 1973 to 1977, to deal with this new military crisis, Smith adopted an ostensibly more balanced COIN strategy. His “carrot and stick” approach balancing tougher coercive measures—notably new draconian laws and (from 1974) relentless cross-border strikes against guerrilla bases and training camps located in the Front Line States (neighboring African states supporting the Rhodesian insurgent groups) of Mozambique, Zambia, and Botswana—with embryonic talks with designated moderate African leaders, notably Bishop Muzorewa’s ANC party, remained severely imbalanced. In reality, the internal and internationally focused political talks conducted during this “crisis phase” were an almost total sham. In the words of Martin and Johnson:
It was the same old obdurate Smith harking back to yesteryear and trying to dictate the acceptability of what had already been rejected as totally unacceptable by the Africans, which in turn meant that Britain had no justification for pursuing the matter … His tactics were to seek alternative groups to the fighters to negotiate with and, over the years, Muzorewa and the Chiefs, Nkomo, Sithole, Chikerema, and others were lured into this trap, with the result that their political reputations suffered. By playing on nationalist ambitions and rivalries, Smith was able to keep them divided and continue to rule while undermining the efforts of the guerrillas by raising false hopes of a settlement.35
Internally, the Smiths regime’s response to the new insurgent offensive was an almost unrelenting combination of repression and coercion. Of these, the most controversial was the “protected villages” (PV) policy, a crude attempt to emulate the Malaysian model successfully deployed by Britain as an integral part of its COIN policies against Communist insurgents during the earlier Emergency of 1948–60. It was a direct consequence of the new insurgent offensive. As Dirk du Ploy, district commissioner at Chipinga confirmed, “The effect of the war was to bring our work in the rural areas to a near standstill—no, I’d have to admit it, our administration to a halt.” The terrorists just took over the TTL’s (Tribal Trust Lands). Then the government, in its wisdom, instituted the “protected villages program.”36 Under this policy, thousands of African villagers in the TTLs were often forcibly removed from their traditional homes into government-designated areas, which the insurgent leadership predictably termed “concentration camps.” Between 1973 and 1978, around 750,000 people were moved in this way. With neither the political will nor the financial resources to act as incentives to the dislocated and dispossessed villagers cajoled into this scheme—unlike Malaya where a far better-resourced Britain was able to offer both large-scale economic development projects and future political independence to the indigenous population—it was a veritable propaganda gift to the insurgent movements. As Ian Beckett confirmed: “Given the punitive nature of resettlement, it is, perhaps, little wonder that the winning of hearts and minds left much to be desired.”37 Moreover, this policy, designed to separate the insurgents from the people, was often ineffective, since weakly guarded PVs were often vacated at night or even penetrated by insurgents for political meetings. As David Chikwana, a resident of Chiweshe protected village bitterly recalled: “They put us behind the wire, they said to protect us. But they were not protecting us; they were treating us like animals. That’s why we wanted to meet with the boys. They said they were our liberators.”38
Paralleling these measures was a whole raft of repressive legislation, notably the infamous 1975 Indemnity and Compensation Act (made retroactive to December 1, 1972), whereby police were given wider powers of interrogation of suspected “terrorists” and to, for example, restrict the amount of crops and cattle held by villagers to prevent them supplying insurgents and to impound property—measures often accompanied by great brutality. The Act was roundly condemned by legal authorities outside and even inside Rhodesia, especially as it provided for immunity for security forces if acts had been done in “good faith.” After recording numerous acts of brutality in its 1976 published report, one of the leading critics, the Rhodesian Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (RCCJP), emerged as a particularly scathing critic. The Rhodesian government, it asserted, has:
also shown by this legislation that it is prepared to condone and cover up acts of torture and brutality perpetrated by its Security Forces in pursuit of its war aims … Thus, if a policeman savagely tortures a civilian whom he genuinely believes to have security information and he does this in order to try to extract this information, he would be acting in good faith to suppress terrorism, even though he was acting unlawfully and even though it turned out that the prisoner did not possess any information.39
As insurgent attacks mounted, the Salisbury prison hangman was kept busy with executions of captured or alleged “terrorists” soaring during this crisis period. The Rhodesian regime’s political position was further undermined by the callous responses delivered by some of its leading spokesman in response to the growing African death toll. At a Geneva press conference in late 1976, pressed by a Rhodesian journalist as to why the government had ceased releasing the names of guerrillas who had been hanged, Foreign Minister van der Byl responded in his usual haughty drawl: “Well it’s academic isn’t it? They are usually dead afterwards.”40 Again, as Rhodesian minister of information, when earlier discussing the problem of infringement of curfews and “no-go” areas, he stated that “as far as I am concerned the more curfew-breakers that are shot the better.”41 Such disdainful attitudes to African welfare, prevalent even in these later stages of the Bush War, apart from presenting a propaganda gift to the insurgents served only to both illustrate and underpin the grossly distorted and distinctly one-sided COIN campaign waged by the Rhodesian regime.
It was a ruthless policy that clearly lacked any real understanding of the “human terrain” and flagrantly violated the principle of “operating in accordance with the law,” as current British COIN doctrine dictates. Moreover, such underresourced policies were unlikely to either secure the population or “win popular support.” As two leading authors further observed in reference to the 1975 Act: “Few countries throughout history can have passed a more dangerous and damning piece of legislation. The Act was a license to kill, maim and torture with a guarantee that almost anything was legal.”42
Internal critics of such repressive policies, such as the CCJP continued, however, to be ignored, publicly insulted, or suppressed. Fourteen African MPs who questioned the renewal of the State of Emergency in mid-1973, arguing that, alternatively, the political causes of the war must be removed, were simply accused of supporting terrorism by Desmond Lardner-Burke, the then minister of justice, law, and order. Even the mounting criticism of such one-sided COIN policies by the Rhodesian regime’s top soldier, Lieutenant General Peter Walls, a veteran of the Malaysian COIN campaign, bore no fruit. As The Times duly observed, “Walls was politically ahead of his time. He never conceded that the war could end the country’s political problems, and constantly reminded Smith and the white Rhodesian public that they would have to reach a settlement with the black nationalist movements.”43 As he reminded one RBC (Rhodesian Broadcasting Corporation) interviewer much later in the war:
I think that I have said many times that there is a political aspect to defeating terrorism which is even more important than the military aspect. They go together of course, as does the economic aspect, together with the others … Terrorism can only come out of the woodwork if there is a political cause for it to support. If we have the political evolution … terrorism must fade away.44
In fact there was only one serious but ill-fated ground-level attempt to win African hearts and minds at this critical stage of the campaign and it significantly emerged not from the top Rhodesian political and military circles but from a junior commander. It summed up the existence of a profound lacuna in Rhodesian government thinking in regard to this vital COIN policy area. Developed originally by Lieutenant Ian Sheppard in 1973, the so-called “Sheppard Group,” in the words of Mills and Wilson, “aimed to sell the PVs to the Africans through a variety of projects such as an African Development Bank, the inoculation of cattle and the granting of land titles to resettled Africans.”45 However, in a graphic illustration of the Smith regime’s moral and political bankruptcy, the majority of the 38 projects proposed, “met insurmountable opposition from the ministries of Internal Affairs and Information and the group collapsed in November 1974.”46
On the military front to cope with the growing insurgency threat, the next few years after 1972 saw a rapid reorganization and expansion of the Rhodesian security forces. Early on, the Rhodesian military had developed the highly effective “Fire Force” tactic whereby partly to offset manpower shortages, units of up to 30 infantry or eight four-man “sticks” were rapidly deployed by land or air—frequently by French-designed Alouette helicopter “gunships” or by parachute via Dakota aircraft—to encircle or cut off and destroy insurgent incursions. So successful were these often “surprise” tactics that according to Mills and Wilson, by mid-1979 they had accounted for 75 percent of all guerrilla casualties inside Rhodesia.47 This was replicated in the area of the Special Forces with the Rhodesian Special Air Force expanded from a mere 30 personnel in 1975 to 270 fully qualified regulars by the war’s end in 1980 and the significant expansion of the mounted “Grey Scouts.”
Equally significant was the emergence in late 1973 of the highly effective if controversial unit, the Selous Scouts. Its formation was the direct result both of a growing strategic crisis as Portuguese control of the shared border with Mozambique visibly weakened, and of the impact of the insurgents’ new, more covert tactics after 1972, which had deprived the Rhodesian security forces of much of their ground-level intelligence. An extract from a fraught conversation between founding commander, Lieutenant Colonel Reid Daley and his “recruiter,” Lieutenant General Walls, commander of the Rhodesian armed forces, is indicative of the scale of the security crisis confronting the Rhodesian government after 1972. In Walls’s words:
things are not going well for us in the operational area … and the way the Portuguese are handling things in Mozambique is likely to make it even worse for us. It is vital we gather effective intelligence on the terrorists which will enable us to kill them … Special Branch are simply not capable of giving us this intelligence on their own. It is no use, at this hotted-up stage of the war knowing where the terrorists were yesterday, or where they might be tomorrow … time is not on our side. We have the means to kill them, the Security Forces, but not the means to find them. I sincerely believe you can do that. The formation of this unit should have been done long ago … I repeat, time is not on our side … yesterday is too late.48
A most important development was the use from 1974 of these new expanded forces to neutralize the enemy “at home” by launching devastating cross-border raids mainly against the ZANLA and ZIPRA insurgent bases and training camps located in the principal “host” Front Line states of Mozambique, Zambia, and Botswana. Of these, the most spectacular were the three raids conducted against the ZANLA training bases in Mozambique at Nyadzona and Chimoio and against Nkomo’s headquarters in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. In June 1976, at Nyadzona in the Manica province a daring raid by 84 Selous Scouts dressed as FRELIMO soldiers, caused havoc with an estimated 300 ZANLA and Mozambican/FRELIMO soldiers killed. A subsequent Mozambique Board of Enquiry estimated more than 1,000 fatalities.49 During the November 1977 Chimoio and Tembue raids by a composite SAS and RLI force numbering less than 200 personnel, not only were an estimated 2,000–3,000 ZANLA training recruits killed but also many local Mozambican civilians. The earlier Mapai raid of May–June 1977 had already finally destroyed what remained of the Mozambique railway system in the Gaza Province. An equally daring raid into Zambia in 1979, conducted mainly by Rhodesian SAS commandos and primarily aimed at killing the ZAPU/ZIPRA leader, Joshua Nkomo, resulted in both Zambian army and civilian deaths in Lusaka and culminated in the sinking of the ferry Kasangula, which vessel provided a major trade link between Zambia and Botswana. Other attacks were even launched in 1979 against Angola.
Despite their military value in prolonging the Rhodesian regime and perhaps persuading the Front Line states, appalled by the devastating damage to their own infrastructure, to be more amenable to negotiation, their results also had severe moral and political implications and consequences for the Rhodesian authorities. First, despite the denials of the Rhodesian military and political authorities, large numbers of civilians (especially women and children) were inevitably killed and injured during such ferocious raids. As one demobilized RLI Trooper later recalled, “sweeps of villages inevitably resulted in the tragic deaths of women and children and the sight of dead piccanins [a black African child] still haunts me.”50 An American Vietnam War veteran, one of scores of mainly British and American mercenaries who signed up to fight for the Rhodesian authorities, was more blunt: “Now we knew you couldn’t get results by grabbing a piccanin and beating him senseless, yet we did it more than a few times. Still, if we’d have been more selective with that kind of strong-arm approach, we wouldn’t have been half as effective.”51 An intelligence officer, Bob North, recalled the often nefarious role of the Selous Scouts:
I worked with the Selous Scouts. I know what they’re capable of. A lot of things I didn’t agree with, but we were thinking of the results. The end justifies the means—or did it? … but at the time it seemed like a good idea. I don’t say the Scouts didn’t commit atrocities—in fact it would make strategic sense, or intelligence sense, that they did.52
This not only fed local insurgent propaganda but attracted international condemnation. Second, the clear violations of the sovereignty of international borders attracted the wrath of both the United Nations and even South Africa, the latter furious at the damage caused to its détente policies in the region. In this sense, the raids, despite short-term military/security gains, may be considered to have been counterproductive in the longer term and ultimately to have contributed to Rhodesia’s deeper political isolation. As Cilliers succinctly observed: “Rhodesian Security Forces had not yet realised that a good kill ratio and tactical ability were not the only determinants for success.”53
Widespread use of tracker units, of PSYOPS (Psychological Operations) and “pseudo operations,” whereby “turned” insurgents were used to infiltrate their own respective organizations and gain information or encourage disunity were also implemented. Equipment was also radically redesigned to deal with the insurgent landmine threat and ingeniously designed vehicles—notably the high-sided “Pookie mine detection vehicle” and other variations such as the “Rhino” and “Hippo”—were also used to good effect. Nevertheless, even within this generally successful military machine, political restraints could undermine their effectiveness and at times the Rhodesian government was again “hoist by its own petard.” Thus, as Wood points out in relation to PSYOPS:
The Rhodesians understood the importance of psychological warfare, but were always hampered by never achieving more than the African passive acceptance of the status quo. It meant that the Rhodesians could not evolve a counterinsurgency strategy, forcing them to concentrate on containment … Psychological warfare … that vital ingredient of successful counterinsurgency campaigns, remained impossible until the support of the people had been won by political reform.54
Without the support of the people, the “intelligence war,” particularly after the new post-1972 insurgent offensive, was seriously undermined. The Rhodesian authorities were unable to combat or counter the extensive network of mujibas (teenage boy “spies”) who observed every movement of the security forces. Defense correspondent, Johan Meiring recalled: “Was their intelligence system good? Amazingly so … It was those houts—mostly teenagers—who were ostensibly herding cattle or whatever. Those houts, they knew exactly what was going on, exactly where the army was going and why … yeh they evolved a very good intelligence system with those mujibas.”55 Mercenary and Vietnam veteran, Chuck Hanson, concurred, rating the insurgents’ intelligence as:
excellent. The best. Even better than Vietnam. They lived with the people, they were the people. That’s the ultimate factor in a war like this, having the indigenous people with you. They kept the gooks (insurgents) informed with local, hard combat intelligence, not all the highfalutin stuff we put out—the sitreps [situation reports] we relayed, and all that. That’s not intelligence, though we had plenty of that. They had the picannin. Who’d run and tell them “The soldiers are coming”. That’s combat intelligence. The gooks had plenty of it and we didn’t.56
Even extremist minister of information, P. K. Van Der Byl, agreed: “Their intelligence? Meaning the Patriotic Front terrorists? Very Good. Very Good. First Class. They knew what was going on.”57 Rural youth coordinator, Brother Mukonore reflected on the profound intelligence imbalance: “They didn’t know the blacks, to put it bluntly … I could understand the whites, why they were bitter, because they were given only one side of the coin. They didn’t know what was actually happening in the bush and underground—that the ordinary civilians, including their own cooks and workers—were part and parcel of the liberation struggle.”58 Political, even economic, reform to win back the support of the people, particularly these often unemployed “angry young men” who served so successfully as mujibas was never forthcoming. Similarly, the government’s rigid racial policies were a critical factor in undermining any immediate solution to its military manpower shortage. As Norma Kriger has observed: “The power of the white minority state is partly reflected in its ability to expand its military and paramilitary forces by drawing chiefly on new African recruits to fight against African guerrilla armies.”59 However, this remained a key problem area for Rhodesia’s long-term COIN strategy since, although many appreciated the military necessity for large-scale African recruitment into the armed forces, the government’s own racial prejudices posed a major obstacle. In the words of Mills and Wilson:
The vast reserve of black manpower was not effectively used until late in the war, recruitment being limited by both money and, especially, politics—the government being unwilling to have more blacks than whites in the military. Only by 1979 had two further battalions of the black-dominated Rhodesian African Rifles been created, bringing the total to three.60
The deep, racially based fear of arming Africans can be traced back deep into Rhodesian history.61 Indeed, the last minute, desperate attempts by the Muzorewa government in the closing months of the war to establish the ill-trained and ill-disciplined African auxiliary militias (SFAs), constituting virtual private armies, was no substitute for the well-armed but outnumbered African regulars in the long-established white-officered Rhodesian African Rifles.
Despite its enviable operational reputation, in terms of the organization of command and control, there was much left to be desired within the Rhodesian military establishment. In the early years, the structure was essentially ad hoc: bedeviled and undermined by factional rivalries especially in the sensitive areas of intelligence gathering and operational control. Before the 1972 crisis, intelligence and operational control was almost exclusively retained in the hands of the British South Africa Police (BSAP), with the Rhodesian army rarely used. Joint Operation Centers (JOCs) were only established in temporary brigade areas when army support was required, which included military police representatives as well as civil commissioners from the Department of Internal Affairs. After the realization of the severity of the insurgent threat in 1972, the local JOCs were more closely linked through provincial JOCs to a Joint Planning Staff (JPS) and upward via a deputy minister in Smith’s Office to the Security Council of the Rhodesian Cabinet. In September 1976, a War Council replaced the Security Council and in March 1977, a Combined Operations Headquarters (Comops) replaced the JPS. Yet, as Ian Beckett succinctly observes:
In theory the creation of Comops should have enabled the Security Forces to develop a well co-ordinated strategy for the prosecution of the war. In reality, the command and control system failed at a number of levels. For one thing there was an increasing friction between Army and Police as the escalation of the war led to the replacement of BSAP personnel by the military in positions of responsibility on JOC’s. In 1973 the JOC in the northeast was converted into a permanent operational brigade area—‘Hurricane’ … followed by … ‘Thrasher’ and ‘Repulse’ in 1976, ‘Tangent’, ‘Grapple’ and ‘Splinter’ in 1977 and ‘SALOPS’ in 1978. With the exception of the latter, which remained largely an administrative creation under BSAP control, the other JOC’s were now chaired almost as a matter of course by the Army.
Beckett further notes:
The Army was also increasingly critical of other civilian government agencies, notably Internal Affairs, which it held responsible for failing to perceive the nature of the growing ZANLA threat in the north-east prior to its eruption in 1972. Comops offered the possibility of reconciling differences but it never had effective control over civil affairs and ministries like Internal Affairs and Law and Order which had a considerable contribution to make to the war effort. Moreover, Comops became entangled in the day-to-day conduct of the war rather than in planning long-term strategy. Its commander, General Peter Walls, also assumed command of all offensive and special forces as well as responsibility for all external operations. This left Lt. General John Hickman, commanding only black troops and white territorials, while his staff were deprived of any real function at all.62
Lieutenant Colonel Reid Daley confirmed the resulting dysfunctional impact at ground level:
from a soldier’s viewpoint, there was no laid-down military strategy applicable to every operational area. Brigadiers were given their operational areas to command and thereafter each one did his own thing … as did the police … as did the Special Branch … as did the Internal Affairs … they all blamed the politicians for the disastrously developing state of affairs and, needless to say the politicians blamed everyone else.63
In effect, the Rhodesian political and military authorities only belatedly, using modern British COIN parlance, “integrated intelligence,” applied the principle of “unity of effort” or adopted a “comprehensive approach” in their counterinsurgency campaign and was, arguably, never fully achieved. Over the next three years, moreover, there had been a dramatic reversal in Rhodesia’s previously strong geostrategic position that would ultimately force the Smith regime to belatedly engage in serious political discussions on a strategic level. In April 1974, the Portuguese revolution and subsequent rapid retreat from its African colonies of Angola, Guinea, and Mozambique left Rhodesia markedly more vulnerable and its northeastern borders dangerously exposed. Overnight, Rhodesia’s 1,000 kilometer border with Mozambique was left wide open. Her sanctions-busting outlets inland and via Beira were now irrevocably closed. As Cilliers observed, there were other wider strategic implications: “Not only did the independence of Mozambique have a profound effect on the war on Rhodesia but also the independence of Angola which prepared to play a large role in the training of ZIPRA forces.”64
The critical blow to Rhodesia’s survival, however, had come from South Africa, its key ally to the south in terms of both military and economic support. With the Portuguese collapse, the Vorster-led South African government had itself been forced to radically reassess its policy toward a growing ring of hostile black states. In 1976, Smith was bluntly told to accept the principle of black majority rule. He bitterly recalled:
We were placed in a situation where we virtually had no option. This was because of the actions of the South African Prime Minister, John Vorster. As far as countries like Britain were concerned we could defy them as we had done over the years. We could not do that to the one country which controlled our lifeline. So, very reluctantly, we were forced to accept it.65
Rhodesia had been sold out to facilitate a new détente. As Smith asserted, “Vorster was of the opinion that he could work with the black leaders to the north of us and help to solve the Rhodesian problem. He told me this: ‘In return the black countries were going to accept South Africa and their philosophy. So, to a certain extent, we were to be used as a sacrificial lamb in helping to solve South Africa’s problems.’”66 As Rhodesian intelligence officer, Bob North reaffirmed:
we couldn’t have survived without them. We had the SAP … up here for most of the war. They were training in counter-insurgency. They were learning from us. But I think they learned more from the politics than they have from the bloody war. And we paid for it, we paid for their support. South Africa put the squeeze on at times, refused to allow weapons through—and no ammunition. We were getting pretty low at one stage. And they cut us off…67
Smith now faced immense political, financial, and military pressure from the South African government to negotiate. Financial aid and loans were frozen, elements of the several thousand South African police were withdrawn in August 1975 and remaining South African pilots and technicians followed in August 1976. Both overtly and covertly, this crushing “local” regional pressure was reinforced by an American Carter-led Democrat Presidency, freed from the political diversion of the Vietnam war, heavily committed to upholding human rights and particularly anxious to contain the spread of communism in Africa by effecting a rapid settlement of the Rhodesian crisis. Via mechanisms such as the earlier talks held by Henry Kissinger, former secretary of state and those conducted by Cyrus Vance, current U.S. secretary of state and David Owen, British foreign secretary, a swift accommodation with moderate black nationalist politicians and Front Line state leaders was urgently sought, and, from 1974, Smith was accordingly coerced into political concessions at several successive summit meetings. In 1974, under the threat of withdrawal of South African Air Force and police support, he had already released leading political detainees, including Joshua Nkomo and, most significantly, Robert Mugabe who took over ZANU leadership from Sithole, who had been deeply discredited by his earlier talks with Smith.
Both at the international Geneva and the Victoria Falls Meetings of 1976–77, however, he stonewalled and repeatedly rejected any proposals for imminent black majority rule via free elections that would include “terrorist” parties, particularly the reviled “communist” ZANU/ZANLA.68 In this, he was inadvertently aided by diversions caused by growing and often violent clashes occurring within the ZANU/ZANLA leadership and the continuing, often bitter, friction also occurring between the rival ZANLA and ZIPRA armies that had been supposedly united from 1976 under the banner of the “Patriotic Front.”69 At times, he even played a skilful game of divide et impera by conducting both overt and clandestine negotiations not only with the favored Muzorewa’s more moderate ANC but even with Nkomo’s perceived more negotiable ZAPU/ZIPRA group.
But all this was achieved at the expense of a rapidly deteriorating internal security situation. While Smith fiddled, his beloved Rhodesia burned. With the continued dearth of any significant internal political, social, or even economic initiatives to win over the African population and a consequent loss of the internal propaganda war with ZANU and ZANLA, the security situation deteriorated further. As South African military support receded after 1975, Rhodesia faced fresh onslaughts from ZIPRA and ZANLA (the latter led by Robert Mugabe after 1974). Both insurgent groups had deeply benefited from increased Chinese, Cuban, North Korean, and Soviet military and training support, with new bases opened up alongside FRELIMO in newly independent Mozambique. The cumulative effect of these military pressures was revealed in Rhodesian government statistics. In 1977, a total of 1,759 insurgents and 197 members of the security forces were killed inside Rhodesia a well as 1,055 civilians of which 56 were white. By the summer of 1977, Rhodesian civilian and military casualties were running at the rate of 100 a week compared with the average of three a week in the first five years of hostilities.70
By December 1977, under such unrelenting internal and external political pressures, Smith bowed to the inevitable and proceeded to authorize national elections as part of an “internal settlement,” followed by a cease-fire, which he vainly hoped would still maintain whites in power.
As if to underline the precarious security situation, the elections were held in the midst of a yet another major insurgency offensive launched between April 17 and 21, 1979 that required the deployment of a stupendous number of 60,000 regular and reserve security personnel for protection duties: arguably the last gasp of “white power.” Nevertheless, 18 out of 932 polling stations were directly attacked by insurgent groups; many more were deeply threatened. Several pro-government chiefs and headmen were brutally murdered in the fraught run-up to the election and there were several attempts to assassinate the leading politician, Chief Chirau. Four African parties ran for election, Bishop Abel Muzorewa’s UANC (United African National Council), Sithole’s wing of ZANU, Chief Chirau’s ZUPO (Zimbabwe’s United People’s Organisation), and Ndiweni’s UNFP (United National Federal Party). Bishop Abel Muzorewa, leader of the moderate UANC (United African National Council) emerged victorious with 64 percent of the votes cast and 51 of the 72 African seats in the new Rhodesian Parliament. The Rhodesia Front easily won the 20 white seats required to keep a controlling influence over the new Zimbabwe-Rhodesian government. Although approximately 1,750,000 out of a possible 2,750,000 votes were cast, the predictable exclusion of the Patriotic Front and the terms of the new constitution designed to give the white minority a substantial controlling influence stopped short of the famous “six principles” and of the British pledge of majority rule. Consequently, the new self-proclaimed government of “Zimbabwe-Rhodesia” received no British or international recognition and sanctions remained firmly in place. Muzorewa’s promise to de-escalate the war and arrange an internal amnesty fell on largely deaf ears, with only a few guerrillas appearing to hand over their arms.
As the guerrilla war intensified and, as his personal memoirs dramatically reveal, by August 1978 even the hitherto indomitable Smith had realized the game was up on virtually all fronts and including the already overstretched interim government:
The internal security situation was grim and was brought home to me twice on Thursday 3 August. A delegation of farmers from the north-eastern area came to see me, as they were concerned over a new trend. Because the terrorists had consistently failed in their efforts to dislodge the farmers, they had now resorted to intimidating the labour, even to the extent of killing some … the farmers believed that some security assistance was necessary. That afternoon there was a meeting with the Nat JOC, and they impressed on me their concern over the lack of success with the ceasefire campaign. They said that the black political parties in the transitional government appeared to lack motivation and were clearly not putting in enough effort. This was adding fuel to a general despondency and a continuing drop in morale among the white community, and associated with this, our emigration figures were running high. I was alarmed to hear that as a result we had reached a situation where we were losing one territorial company of our fighting men per month. This was an intolerable situation. With our small white population we simply did not have the manpower to sustain this loss, with the result that our performance in the security field would decline, and this would obviously play into the hands of the terrorists.71
Martin Meredith provides even more startling evidence of the crisis of white morale. In December 1978, alone nearly 3,000 whites left the country bringing the total number for the year 1978 to more than 18,000. Over a three-year period, 1976–78, the exodus amounted to nearly 50,000 whites or around one-fifth of the white population. Even allowing for the number immigrants, the loss in three years was nearly 32,000 over this critical three-year period.72 It could even be argued that Smith’s blatantly “one-sided” COIN policy at tactical/ground level had, by neglecting to win the African (predominantly rural) middle ground, and consequently, allowing deep and violent penetration of Rhodesia’s borders and farming heartland, ironically cost him the hearts and minds of his vital white constituency on whom his own political survival ultimately depended.
The economic impact of the war was equally devastating. Mining receipts had drastically fallen because of the collapse in market prices. Tobacco and maize (corn) production was significantly diminished, particularly in the increasingly deserted northeastern war zones, while Rhodesia’s other industries were costing more in foreign exchange than they earned. Consumer spending was being progressively eroded by the steady exodus of whites. By 1978, an estimated 600 to 1,000 whites a month were “taking the gap” (deserting the country including, as a horrified Smith now recognized, a disproportionately high number of white males of military age). In 1977, Rhodesia’s GNP had already fallen in real terms by 7 percent, 4 percent more than the year before. The Rhodesian economy also needed to create 110,000 more jobs a year simply to absorb black unemployment, a problem only partially redressed, with great irony, by their recruitment into the guerrilla forces.
As Christopher Coker has observed, the real impact of the war could be measured by the 1978–79 Rhodesian budget that provided for a net increase in defense appropriation of only 2 percent, 1 percent less than 1977 if taken as a proportion of total public expenditure. In effect, the Rhodesian government appeared “to have deliberately budgeted for the war’s de-escalation, a gesture less of confidence … than of a belief that the economy could no longer keep pace with the war’s escalation.” In Coker’s words: “the cost of the guerrilla war was becoming insupportable both in human and economic terms.”73
Three horrific events probably accelerated the “white flight” in 1978–79. In June 1978, 12 missionaries, 8 adults, and 4 children were variously raped, hacked, and bludgeoned to death at the Elim Pentecostal Mission near the major white settlement at Umtali, allegedly by ZANLA operatives. The event sent a shiver of fear through “white Rhodesia.” Equally devastating for white morale was the shooting down of two Rhodesian Viscount airliners in October 1978 and February 1979, respectively, by ZIPRA insurgents armed with Soviet SAM ground-to-air missiles. The few survivors of the second crash were brutally massacred before help could arrive. A total of 102 passengers and crew perished. Further, in July 1978, the first major gun battles took place within the city limits of Salisbury, the nation’s capital. There could be no more convincing evidence of the breakdown of internal security and the greatly enhanced ability of the guerrillas to strike at will at the very heart of the hated “white citadels.” The successful insurgent strike at Rhodesia’s precious oil storage and refineries complex on the outskirts of the capital, Salisbury, in 1979 provided further conclusive evidence of a rapid security meltdown.
Bob North, a member of the Rhodesian Intelligence Corps, observed:
The oil depot fire was a major victory on the part of the guerrillas. Absolutely incredible from a psychological point of view. People were picking up and packing that week. You see, the government tried to play down the negative stuff but sometimes it was too obvious to hide. In fact, towards the last year, the last eighteen months, people on the ground—such as ourselves in the intelligence networks, and even the regular troops—realised that we were containing, not winning. There were lots of factors involved—you’ve got a wife at home, an emotional break-up, and the divorce rate in this country during the war was incredible. Now that also added to the poor morale of the troops. So the aggression wound down. People who in the past had been all too willing to go into the bush would find a tame doctor to get them struck off for a couple of months. They wouldn’t fight. That was when the emigration picked up. And that was when the government’s strategy changed.74
Desperate measures were now resorted to, notably the call-up extended to white males between the ages of 50 and 59. The late Reverend John Beck recalled the massive tensions caused by these cataclysmic events as he, as one of the “white volkstrum” was summarily conscripted to man roadblocks around Salisbury with only a pistol issued with which to defend himself. He recalled a situation of “rising white tension and a rapidly growing loss of confidence in the government’s ability to protect.”75
In the more rural areas, the poorest quality of white manpower was often conscripted with minimal training. A junior administrator in the Department of Home Affairs hastily drafted into the military during the closing months of the war, recalled: “We were exhausted, overstretched and eventually unconvinced by the cause. Some people were never convinced and didn’t even know of the outlet of conscientious objection.” His “stick,” hastily trained by the RLI [Rhodesian Light Infantry], “had three men I wouldn’t trust with my enemy’s sister … Home Affairs had the reputation of picking up the dregs of conscripts.”76
On the overall political failure of Rhodesia’s COIN campaign, he bitterly asserted:
The political combination of South African withdrawal, Portuguese collapse and the vanguard of [government] political correctness in (claiming) “natives are benign not restless” were all such hopelessly outmoded and patronising views of ZANU and ZAPU that they (the Patriotic Front) easily out-manoeuvred the brokers of peace as easily as the antagonists. The tide of world opinion tsunamied over the croaking indignations of Ian Smith and even over the drawbridge of moderate voices.77
The 1978 initiative had come far too late for deeply radicalized insurgent groups already sensing military victory, confident of international legitimacy and who had, moreover, already again been ruthlessly excluded from the internal political process. Smith was clearly no De Klerk and Mugabe was no Mandela; too much “blood and treasure” had been expended and black and white Rhodesians were now to experience several more months of unnecessary suffering before the already doomed Smith-Muzorewa government failed and a final externally driven political solution was reached. As the ZANLA leader, Mugabe, himself so clearly recognized, in 1979, as Rhodesia lay militarily and economically prostrate, the climax of his Maoist strategy had finally arrived: “Our liberation struggle had progressed to where we believed we had more than 2/3 of the country … we had the rural areas in our grip … the end of 1979, with the coming of the rains was going to see the development of the urban guerrilla struggle … we felt that we needed yet another thrust in order to bring the fight home to where the whites had their citadels.”78
Ironically, it was primarily the “mother country,” Britain, and the rest of its “family,” the Commonwealth, so cynically spurned by Ian Smith in 1965 that came to his rescue. They saved Rhodesia from imminent Armageddon by, first, at the 1979 Lusaka summit, “converting” newly appointed Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to accept the legitimacy of the insurgents’ cause—despite her deep disapproval of their methods—and, second, physically supervising a cease-fire and arranging the Lancaster House summit in London.79 The conference represented a final resolution of the Rhodesian problem that, this time, crucially included representatives not only of the Smith-Muzorewa administration but of both the Front Line states and, most importantly of all, the two key insurgent parties. The war had cost Rhodesia around 30,000 dead including almost 1,000 members of the security forces and 8,250 insurgents. Just over 400 white civilians had perished but the paltry official figure of 691 African civilian dead was almost certainly a gross underestimate.80
In conclusion, the Rhodesian Bush War of 1966–80 provides one of the most striking examples since the end of the World War II of a deeply flawed, imbalanced, and ultimately failed “one-sided” COIN strategy. Internally, the Rhodesian white supremacist regime, led by Prime Minister Ian Smith, already wedded to an illegitimate, uncompromising ideology, took extreme strategic risks in its COIN campaign. They relentlessly pursued an almost totally military solution while eschewing any proposal or opportunity to win over moderate African opinion by a sustained or even embryonic program of social, political, and economic reform. The regime’s culpability stood even higher bearing in mind the fact that it not only ignored the advice of some of its most senior civilian and military advisers (including two of its top commanders), but instead conducted a carefully orchestrated propaganda and disinformation campaign which, after 1972, progressively denied even its own white constituents the realities of what was effectively a losing war.
Externally, the Rhodesian regime relied far too heavily and, ultimately fatally, on its two main allies, Portugal and South Africa, for its political and economic survival. Indeed, it was only the sudden collapse of Portuguese colonial rule in Mozambique that effectively emasculated its most vulnerable northeastern border, and the steady withdrawal of South African military and economic support—not any substantial internal political concessions—that forced it into a reformist agenda. Even after these devastating strategic setbacks, Smith engaged in classic stalling tactics, both benefiting from and exploiting insurgent and Front Line state disunity until a runaway Rhodesian defense budget and imminent economic catastrophe, coupled with a massive white exodus, provided him with his political Waterloo in 1978. It was only the efficiency of its tiny but powerful and highly adaptive war machine that, particularly through devastating cross-border raids, enabled the politically flawed Smith-Muzorewa interim government to survive a further desperate few months. Ultimately, even this admittedly highly effective Rhodesian war machine (whose reputation is still flaunted and much admired by Rhodesian apologists) faced imminent Armageddon in the face of a continuing massive white exodus after 1978 and a dramatic rise in insurgent numbers.
In its protracted 15-year counterinsurgency campaign, the Rhodesian regime, as we have seen, either ignored or violated virtually every key principle of existing and subsequent COIN theory. Even in terms of apparent successes, such as cross-border raids, and in “neutralizing the enemy”—which, mirroring Vietnam, in Rhodesian terms relied predominantly upon crude body counts—the result was eventually counterproductive as its increasingly indiscriminate methods both violated international sovereignty and constituted clear breaches of the rule of law, more specifically, the Law of Armed Conflict. The violation of human rights was, of course, not the sole prerogative of the Rhodesian regime; its principal insurgent enemies, ZANLA and ZIPRA, were also frequently guilty of murder, torture, and intimidation. The difference lay not in their methods but in the profound contrast in the nature of their political purpose; the insurgent cause had full international legitimacy, the white supremacist Rhodesian government patently did not. Only on the military front of its COIN campaign did the Rhodesian regime truly “learn and adapt,” as modern British COIN doctrine advises, but the absence of any meaningful political initiative, combined with a rapidly collapsing resource base, meant there could be no prospect of satisfying the last principle, “preparing for the long term.” Smith’s dream of 1,000 years of uninterrupted white rule had lasted barely 15 years. In the succinct words of Eddison Zvogbo, the deputy secretary of ZANU’s Publicity and Information Department:
The Smith regime lost this war largely because they did not have a political argument. Militarily, they were far superior to us, but they just did not conjure up effective political arguments. They had none. We said this was a white minority racist regime and there was no way they could demonstrate it was otherwise. We demonstrated that armed struggle was the only solution, and we knew how to transmit that message.81
As the former British Chief of the Defence Staff, General Richards, recently asserted with specific reference to British COIN operations over the past quarter century, “military might cannot alone win wars,” and that, “the need to have a complimentary diplomatic and cultural dimension to any action was the most important lesson.”82 This constitutes a basic lesson of COIN strategy that the British have learned from their recent campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, but which the Rhodesian regime both ignored and never really tried to learn until, inevitably, the prospect of a racial apocalypse finally dawned.
1. B. Cole, The Elite: Rhodesian Special Air Force (Transkei: Three Knights Publishing, 1984), 62.
2. K. Flower, Serving Secretly: Rhodesia’s CIO on Record (Alberton, South Africa: Galago, 1987), 113.
3. A. Binda, The Rhodesia Regiment: From Boer War to Bush War 1899–1980 (Alberton, South Africa, Galago, 2012), 163–4.
4. J. Frederikse, None but Ourselves (London: Heinemann, 1982). Such sentiments were paralleled in his other infamous observation on black advancement: “It will be over my dead body before any kaffir would be invited into this Cabinet room.” Flower, Serving Secretly, 127.
5. For typical examples see, C. Cocks, Fireforce: One man’s War in the Rhodesian Light Infantry (Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, 2007); T. Bax, Three Sips of Gin: Dominating the Battle Space with Rhodesia’s Elite Selous Scouts (Solihull, UK: Helion Books, 2013); A. Binda, The Rhodesia Regiment: From Boer War to Bush War, 1899–1980 (Alberton, South Africa: Galago, 2012); Lieutenant Colonel R. Reid-Daly and P. Stiff, Selous Scouts: Top Secret War (Alberton, South Africa: Galago, 1982). For a good, detailed, and overarching military study, see, P. Moorcraft and P. McLaughlin, The Rhodesian War: A Military History (Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword, 1988).
6. Notable exceptions are Ian Beckett, “The Rhodesian Army,” in Ian F.W. Beckett and John Pimlott, eds., Armed Forces and Modern Counter-Insurgency (London and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1985); J. K. Cilliers, Counter-Insurgency in Rhodesia (London: Croom Helm, 1985); R. J. T. Wood, “Countering the Chimurenga: The Rhodesian Counterinsurgency Campaign, 1962–80,” in Carter Malkasian and Daniel Marston, eds., Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare (Oxford: Osprey, 2008), pp. 185–222; G. Mills and G. Wilson, “Who Dares Loses: Assessing Rhodesia’s Counter-Insurgency Experience,” RUSI Journal 152, no. 6 (December 2007), 22–31. Even with the availability of secondary sources, there has been a problem with documentation due to the deliberate destruction of government and military records in Salisbury on the eve of independence.
7. See, Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency (London: Chatto and Windus, 1966); Frank Kitson, Bunch of Five (Faber and Faber, London, 1977); David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006); John Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
8. See, UK Ministry of Defence, Army Field Manual, Vol. 1. Part 10: Countering Insurgency (London, October 2009).
9. See, for instance, Edmund Yorke, Forgotten Colonial Crisis: Britain and Northern Rhodesia at War, 1914–18 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), especially Chapter 8 for an example of the political impact of the World War I upon returning/demobilized Rhodesian African servicemen.
10. Cilliers, COIN in Rhodesia, 3.
11. Flower, Serving Secretly, 89.
12. Ibid., 79.
13. Frederikse, None but Ourselves, 43.
14. R. J. T. Wood, Zambezi Valley Insurgency: Early Rhodesian Bush War Operations (Solihull, UK: Helion, 2012), 3.
15. R. C. Good, The International Politics of the Rhodesian Rebellion (London: Faber and Faber, 1973), 65.
16. Flower, Serving Secretly, 111.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid., 112.
19. Ibid., 112–3.
20. Ibid., 113.
21. Ibid.
22. Wood, “Countering the Chimurenga,” 113.
23. Flower, Serving Secretly, 120.
24. Cilliers, Counterinsurgency, 16.
25. D. Lan, Guns and Rain: Guerrillas and Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe (London: James Currey, 1985), 164; and Edmund Yorke, “African Exile Armies: ZANLA, ZIPRA, and the Politics of Disunity,” in Matthew Bennett and Paul Latawski, eds., Exile Armies (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 103.
26. Lan, Guns and Rain, 164.
27. Frederikse, None but Ourselves, 41.
28. Ibid., 61.
29. Kriger, Zimbabwe’s Guerrilla War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 242.
30. Kriger, Zimbabwe’s Guerrilla War, 242.
31. Flower, Serving Secretly, 135; Mills and Wilson, “Who Dares Loses,” 23.
32. D. Martin and Johnson, The Struggle for Zimbabwe (London: Faber and Faber, 1981), 74.
33. Martin and Johnson, The Struggle for Zimbabwe, 75.
34. Cilliers, COIN in Rhodesia, 16.
35. Martin and Johnson, The Struggle for Zimbabwe, 98–99.
36. Frederikse, None but Ourselves, 84.
37. Beckett, “Rhodesian Army,” 181.
38. Frederikse, None but Ourselves, 87.
39. Rhodesian Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, Civil War in Rhodesia (Salisbury, Rhodesia: RCCJP, 1976), 83 and 84–85.
40. Martin and Johnson, Struggle for Zimbabwe, 104.
41. Ibid., 108.
42. Ibid., 104.
43. The Times (London), July 30, 2010.
44. RBC Interview, February 15, 1979; Frederikse, None but Ourselves, 162.
45. Beckett, “Rhodesian Army,” 181–2; Mills and Wilson, “Who Dares Loses,” 31.
46. Mills and Wilson, “Who Dares Loses,” 31; and Beckett, “Rhodesian Army,” 181–2.
47. Mills and Wilson, “Who Dares Loses,” 28. See also principally Cocks, Fire Force and Flower, Serving Secretly, passim, for details of these operations.
48. Reid-Daly, Secret War, 45.
49. See Moorcraft and McLaughlin, The Rhodesian War, 44–45; Yorke, “African Exile Armies,” 108–9 for more details of this and other raids.
50. Author interview, Salisbury, Rhodesia, April 1980. As Beckett confirms: “There was never any real attempt at political indoctrination or instruction with the Rhodesian Armed Forces, and to the end of the war the guerrilla insurgency tended to be regarded as a military rather than a political problem to which military solutions alone should be applied.” Beckett, Rhodesian Army, 177.
51. Frederikse, None but Ourselves, 211.
52. Ibid.
53. Cilliers, Counter-insurgency in Rhodesia, 26. It was a trap that nearly befell the British in Afghanistan (2001–14) during the early years of their COIN campaign there. See, especially, E. J. Yorke, Playing the Great Game: Britain, War and Politics in Afghanistan since 1839 (London: Robert Hale, 2012), Chapter 8, 359–91.
54. Wood, “Countering the Chimurenga,” 194, 196. See also Reid-Daly, who recalled: “Belatedly, a pysac team, a psychological warfare team, came into being, but it was hamstrung by an official policy totally out of step with the true state of things, and it achieved very little…it was…another facet of a fundamental problem those of us in the field had to face throughout the war…too little and much too late.” Reid-Daly, Top Secret War, 281.
55. Frederikse, None but Ourselves, 69.
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid., 74.
58. Ibid., 79.
59. Kriger, Zimbabwe’s Guerrilla War, 242.
60. Mills and Wilson, Who Dares Loses, 5.
61. See for instance, Yorke, Forgotten Colonial Crisis, especially Chapter 3.
62. Beckett, “Rhodesian Army,” 171–2.
63. Reid-Daly, Serving Secretly, 281.
64. Cilliers, COIN in Rhodesia, 20.
65. Interview, Ian Smith, in Michael Charlton, The Last Colony in Africa: Diplomacy and the Independence of Rhodesia (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 2.
66. Charlton, Last Colony, 2.
67. Frederikse, None but Ourselves, p.155.
68. See, especially, Martin and Johnson, Struggle for Zimbabwe, especially Chapters 11–14 and L. H. Gann and T. H. Henrikson, The Struggle for Zimbabwe: Battle in the Bush (New York: Praeger, 1981), passim, for details of these international conferences and meetings on the Rhodesian problem. As ZAPU leader Joshua Nkomo recalled at the 1975 Salisbury conference, even desperate calls for Smith to seek the opinion of his own war-weary white electorate on the issue of majority rule were bluntly rejected: “he [Smith] would not even let them vote…on the single and fundamental issue of majority rule…he was racist to the bone.” Joshua Nkomo, The Story of My Life (Methuen, London, 1984), 157–8.
69. See especially, E. J. Yorke, “African Exile Armies,” 104–14 for a detailed discussion of this issue.
70. C. Coker, “Decolonisation in the Seventies: Rhodesia and the Dialectic of National Liberation,” Round Table 69 (1979), 128.
71. Ian Smith, Bitter Harvest: The Great Betrayal (London: Blake Publishing, 2002), 260.
72. M. Meredith, The Past Is Another Country: Rhodesia, 1890–1979 (London: André Deutsch, 1979), 353.
73. Coker, “Decolonisation,” 128.
74. Frederikse, None but Ourselves, 166.
75. Author interview, Salisbury, Rhodesia, May 1980.
76. Author interview, June 4, 2014.
77. Ibid.
78. Interview with Charlton Mugabe, Last Colony, 52–53.
79. See E. J. Yorke, “‘A Family Affair’: The Lancaster House Summit,” in D. H. Dunn, eds., Diplomacy at the Highest Level: The Evolution of International Summitry (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), 200–19, for a detailed study of this process and the conduct of the Lancaster House Summit.
80. Beckett, “Rhodesian Army,” 186.
81. Frederikse, None but Ourselves, 62.
82. The Times (London), May 28, 2014.