LAST week we saw that Ian Douglas Smith the former Rhodesian Prime Minister having used sickening forms of political chicanery came to power in the early 1960s in the old Rhodesia.
This week we are looking at some highlights of Ian Smith’s terrible massacres, atrocities, gross human rights violations and economic sabotage during the decisive phase of the liberation war in the early 1970s.
On December 21 1972, the decisive phase of the Zimbabwe Liberation War commenced when a whiteman’s farm in the present Muzarabani District, Mashonaland Central Province, was attacked by ZANLA freedom fighters. The attack was followed by landmine explosions that killed Rhodesian soldiers. When Ian Smith learnt of the above development, he started running all over, panic striken like a rat.
Listen to what he said soon after the above attack by ZANLA had happened. “There have been some unusual developments over the past few weeks and as facts and the 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”.
And how did Ian Smith plan to fight the liberation war against freedom fighters?
First and foremost he decided the best course of action was to alienate the freedom fighters from the masses by commiting massacres on the civilian population. Earlier on before Ian Smith made the above speech, he had sent his Rhodesian soldiers into Mozambique to commit massacres by murdering civilians who were supporting ZANLA freedom fighters. Phyllis and Johnson tell us the harrowing story below.
In a report called ‘The slaughter of Mukumbura’, two Spanish priests reported the following massacre between 1971 and 1972.
“The report said that late in August 1971 Rhodesian troops one September entered the village of Deveteve.
“The Rhodesian soldiers killed David the son of George. The soldiers took him to a nearby hillock and left him there after cutting off his hands and feet.
“On September 5 a squad of Rhodesian soldiers arrived at Singa village in Mukumbura district, arrested Chief Singa and his three eldest sons and sent him to find the rest of the family who were in hiding.
“They were shot by another Rhodesian squad as they returned after dark.
“The following died instantly: the Chief Singa, his son Adamo (10 years old), his daughter Ronica recently married and pregnant, his three daughters-in-law, Matiguri, Rotina and Ester.
“Also two babies who were being carried on their mothers’ backs. Nine more people were killed three of them boys of twelve who were killed. A dozen others were flown to Rhodesia for interrogation.”
Now, that Ian Smith had tasted blood, commission of massacres and human rights abuses became second nature to him.
And soon, the ‘hurricane’ arrived in the form of indiscriminate destruction of people’s homes, crops, cattle and other forms of property followed by the imprisonment of all civilians in concentration camps called ‘Keeps’.
Ian Smith had taken a leaf from his British forebearers who had used the same system in dealing with Boer civilians during the Anglo-Boer war of 1899-1902.
The thinking behind the setting up of the ‘Keeps’ just like the Boer concentration camps was: “If you reduce the civilian population which is supporting the freedom fighters to wretched paupers accompanied by a high mortality among them you will win the war. Yes, as simple as that.”
And so began one of the most appalling human rights abuses in Zimbabwe’s history. Fields with crops and homes were burnt, hundreds upon hundreds of people were driven into ‘Keeps’ and were crowded there like cattle.
Fever, starvation, rape, beatings, mass murders became the order of the day. Now and again as a form of punishment people were buried alive in front of onlookers in Keeps. The ‘Keep’ turned out to be the twin brother of Gehena itself.
Ian Smith learnt pretty quickly that his army was hopelessly outnumbered by the freedom fighters and their civilian supporters and that it would be annihilated.
Smith decided to create murder squads to kill civilians with impunity. He called these murder squads ‘Special Forces’. One of the members of these murder squads, one Peter Baxter supports the above view when he says:
“The Rhodesian security forces relied heavily on a collection of unique and rather unconventional special force units,” (read murder squads).
And one of the worst of these murder squads was the Selous Scouts.
To ensure that the murder squads such as the Selous Scouts killed humans without feeling any guilt, he opened a training camp on the shores of Lake Kariba, where young men were turned into beasts.
For instance, while at that camp they were made to live like wild animals being given rotten or raw meat of baboons, civet cats, snakes to eat. The camp was called Wafa Wafa.
It was therefore not surprising that Selous Scouts in 1976 went into Mozambique at Nyadzonia refugee camp and called out young boys and girls onto an open ground and went on to shoot them with straight faces, from point blank range using machine guns and grenades resulting in a massacre of horrendous proportions. It was also not surprising for the same Selous Scouts to line up ordinary defenseless villagers in Gutu district at one Kamungoma’s Farm and shoot them in their hundreds in cold blood.
Ian Smith also committed mass murders by using biological warfare. He poisoned drinking points in villages and refugee camps with lethal germs leading to hundreds of people dying.
We can’t end the Ian Smith horror story during the liberation war without talking about economic sabotage he committed against our neighbours such as Mozambique and Zambia. For example Rhodesian forces one night blew up an enormous fuel storage facility at Beira leading to fuel shortages in Mozambique for months. Still in Mozambique Ian Smith ordered that ordinary bridges be destroyed.
For instance on the night of November 26 1977, Rhodesians went and destroyed five bridges on the road between Espungaberra and Chimoio. More and bigger bridges were destroyed in the Mozambique Gaza Province in 1979. The same story took place in Zambia.
To narrate Ian Smith’s horror story in Zimbabwe during the liberation war needs a massive book. The only question that young Zimbabweans should ask is this; are the MDC formations who are crying for the diabolic racist Ian Smith to be resurrected from the dead, not dead themselves?