By Dr Tafataona Mahoso

DURING the Heroes and Defence Forces holidays 2015, ZBC showed a documentary called ZANLA Comes To Town.
This features the war veterans and collaborators responsible for the bombing and destruction of strategic fuel tanks in the industrial sites of Salisbury (Harare) on December 11 1978.
The retelling of the profound story was long overdue because a number of false or distorted versions were already doing the rounds and benefitting from the climate of divisive opposition politics aimed at illegal regime change.
First, the direct participation of the ZANLA combatants who carried out the bombing themselves gives the story authenticity which cannot come from hearsay.
This direct participation also helps in giving recognition to the freedom fighters in their lifetime.
Beyond these objectives, the documentary helps to evoke and rebuild the military, political, diplomatic and propaganda context in which the bombing of the fuel depot took place.
Because the Rhodesian regime was supposed to be under financial, industrial, military and diplomatic sanctions mandated by the UN Security Council, any fuel smuggled into the country represented a breach of all the sanctions because it fuelled the economy, the police, air force, army and intelligence forces. Any major reduction in the supply of fuel, even at civilian depots, would naturally reduce fuel available to the military as well.
Underground tactics similar to those used by ZANLA to penetrate Salisbury right into the industrial area were also used by supporters of the liberation movements in the Southern African region who wanted to prove that the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) by the Smith regime would not have taken place and the regime could not have thrived for so long without secret financial, industrial, military and intelligence support from agencies and institutions of the major European and North American powers. One of the underground investigative teams was based in South Africa and called OKHELA.
As a result of data from underground research by OKHELA and other supporters of African liberation, two reports were published; The Oil Conspiracy by the Centre for Social Action of the United Church of Christ in New York City on June 21 1976; and Submission to the British Government Inquiry on Allegations of Sanctions-Busting By Shell Oil and British Petroleum by the Haslemere Group and the Anti-Apartheid Movement on April 29 1977.
Put together with research carried out by the liberation movements themselves, these reports showed that Mobil Oil, Shell Oil, British Petroleum, Caltex and Sasol were all involved in violating UN mandatory sanctions to assist the Rhodesians and to make huge profits doing so.
This understanding was articulated best nine years later by the President of white South Africa, P. W. Botha in 1985, when he said:
“It is comforting to know that behind the scenes, Europe, America, Canada, Australia, and all others, are behind us in spite of what they say.
“For diplomatic relations, we all know what language should be used and where.
“To prove my point, comrades, does anyone of you know a white country without an investment or interest in South Africa?
“Who buys our gold?
“Who buys our diamonds?
“Who trades with us?
“Who is helping us develop our nuclear weapon?
“The very truth is that we are their people and they are our people.
“The strength of our (apartheid) economy is backed by America, Britain, and Germany.”
Botha’s understanding of their protective relationship with Western imperialism was put in a more flattering light by Professor Elliot P. Skinner of Columbia University in New York who was also a former US Ambassador.
Writing in The Christian Science Monitor, January 22 1979 and The New York Times, February 1 and January 12 1979, Skinner put the US understanding as follows:
“Our tragedy is that, whether we like it or not, the United States has inherited the role of metropole (that is, mother country) of all whites in Southern Arica.
“This is not a role we welcomed, but it is one we cannot avoid.
“We are the ones who have led the discussions about the future of (whites in) these countries (that is, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Angola, Mozambique and South Africa).”
This was to say that when ZANLA destroyed the Salisbury fuel depot, it did not only burn petrol supplied by the empire against the wishes of the world’s majority; it also threatened the survival of a species well-protected by the super-power of the US empire!
There were several reasons for those assurances: The laws domesticating the UN sanctions in each country had intended loopholes whereby the parent company might not be held liable for the actions of its subsidiary, say, in Rhodesia or South Africa; or the local regime in South Africa or Rhodesia made its own laws compelling the subsidiary to cooperate in sanctions-busting measures, such as creating false paper-trails which provided alibis for the subsidiary and its parent corporation; or the British or US governments would encourage think-tanks and activist NGOs to campaign against the UN sanctions as unjustified, against Western free enterprise and not even in the interest of the Africans themselves.
The gist of all this detail is this:
By destroying the Salisbury fuel depot, ZANLA achieved what the UN-mandated sanctions had failed to achieve.
Bring down the UDI regime or force it to negotiate with the liberation movements.
That is what was meant by the slogan: ‘We are our own liberators’.
This historical context also helps to explain the difference between the Western illegal sanctions imposed against Zimbabwe to try to stop its land revolution in 2001, on one hand, and the UN-mandated sanctions imposed on Rhodesia in 1966.
Where the Western powers paid lip-service to the 1966 UN-mandated sanctions, in 2001 they had a real capitalist and racial motive to defend white settler property against dispossessed African peasants.
The Western oil companies did not just assure the Smith regime that they would find ways of continuing oil supplies against the pending sanctions: they actually helped the regime to plan and stock oil reserves.
They deliberately diverted to Rhodesia oil belonging to Zambia and Malawi with the knowledge of the Western powers.
This is known from court cases mounted by Lonrho which owned and managed the pipeline from Mozambique to Feruka in Zimbabwe.
The pipeline was supposed to supply both Rhodesia and Zambia with oil before it was closed.
Mobil, Shell, British Petroleum and Caltex were the respondents in the Lonrho case.
Their respective governments knew about the scandal.