Joint High Command HQ
SETTING UP THE JOINT HIGH Command Headquarters commenced on 6 March. Whilst COMOPS HQ was being wrapped up I, together with a handful of officers, commenced furnishing new offices in a newly built wing at Army HQ. Unfortunately Brigadier Peter Rich had retired and Brian Robinson was no longer with COMOPS so those of us remaining no longer enjoyed any spirit of fun and laughter. Brigadier Leon Jacobs replaced Peter Rich but I hardly ever saw him.
Air HQ was already inundated with resignations. So, knowing that the notice period would only take effect at the end of the month, I did not tender mine right away. I had in excess of 300 days’ leave due, though only 184 of these attracted leave pay, but this was more than sufficient to cover the mandatory three-months notice period meaning that I could withhold my resignation to the end of March and leave the service immediately. As it happened, I stayed on until the end of May.
The ZIPRA and ZANLA commanders moved into their offices as soon as they were ready. Progressively other offices filled and Zimbabwe’s Joint High Command HQ started to function under command of Lieutenant-General Walls who had been appointed to the position by Prime Minister Mugabe.
My job was to continue as the linkman with ZIPRA and ZANLA, initially to prepare for the integration of forces. Since most of this involved Army matters, Lieutenant-Colonel ‘Fluff’ Templer worked with me. Amongst the many issues to be thrashed out was the question of bringing in all ZIPRA and ZANLA arms and equipment from Zambia and Mozambique. Though it took some time, ZIPRA handed me their ordnance schedules and, as agreed, Fluff Templer let them have sight of the Rhodesian Army’s schedules. I did the same by showing those of the Air Force.
Rex Nhongo insisted on seeing all these schedules, even though he was not forthcoming with his own. This was largely due to the loss of Josiah Tongogara and utter confusion in Mozambique. Besides, most records were lost to ZANLA during multiple operations against the various Chimoio bases and finally as a consequence of the Monte Casino raid. Nevertheless, I refused to show ZANLA anything until they were in a position to reciprocate.
ZIPRA’s lists were neat and well presented. They revealed larger numbers of battle tanks, APCs and other fighting equipment than we had expected. I had already left the service when ZIPRA’s equipment eventually came into the country via Victoria Falls, but was told that the equipment matched the lists, whereas ZANLA, as expected, never made any submission.
ZANLA continued to claim having more equipment than ZIPRA. We knew this was pure bluff, which was later confirmed by a senior ZANLA officer. In a drunken state he let slip that there were no reserves in Mozambique and that, had the war continued, ZANLA would have collapsed around mid-1980. This was mind-boggling news making us realise that, had Op Manacle taken place, ZANLA would have been out of the game before the Lancaster House Talks were concluded. Bloody sickening! Nevertheless we were stuck with a political failure and had to make the best of the situation.
Fluff Templer and I spent many hours in discussion with the ZANLA and ZIPRA commanders and provided them with every single idea on many matters relating to the integration of forces. Along the way, agendas were raised for repeat discussions with General Walls, the Commanders of the Army and Air Force, the Commissioner of Police and Ken Flower who continued to head CIO.
Nothing that Fluff and I recommended was accepted in these long drawn-out meetings that covered the same ground but resulted in totally different agreements. I felt we were wasting our time but General Walls insisted that Fluff and I should continue because we were exposing ZIPRA and ZANLA to many issues and complications that prepared them better for the high-level meetings.
When I submitted my resignation to Air HQ, the only real resistance to my leaving service came from Air Commodore Norman Walsh and Group Captain Hugh Slatter who both tried to persuade me to stay on. At Joint High Command ZIPRA and ZANLA received the news badly. All four commanders, individually, begged me to remain because they said they knew me better than any other RSF officer and had come to trust me above all others. This was the continuing issue of preferring Air Force to other services.
My situation became especially difficult when Rex Nhongo said that he and all ZANLA and ZIPRA commanders wanted me to take overall command of all forces. He said Mugabe had supported this. I told Rex this was an absolute impossibility. Not only was I five rank-levels below the rank he was considering, I was totally unprepared in experience for such a position. His reply showed how differently he thought. “When the sergeant is better than the lieutenant-colonel, the sergeant becomes the full colonel.”
This situation was altogether unexpected and I saw great danger in it. In Rhodesian terms, I knew I was totally unprepared for such a responsible position, and even less so for what promised to become a political post. Why I even thought the matter through I couldn’t say because my heart was already set on getting out of uniform. Strangely, I was helped in making a final decision by one of ZANLA’s field commanders who warned me that Zimbabwe would soon be driven by ideologies that would fail to fill peoples’ stomachs. He was certain that the ordinary man would fail to realise any of the ‘freedom’ promises made by politicians whose future actions would all be driven by personal greed.
On Tuesday 27 May 1980, four days before my last day in office, I was leaving home for work when I spotted a stationary grey Land Rover with a long HF aerial. It was parked just beyond our garden gate on the other side of the street. Immediately I became suspicious and, as I passed by and looked towards the driver, I saw a white man of about sixty years of age flick his head away and raise a newspaper high enough to prevent my seeing his face through my rear-view mirror. Day and night for the next 730 days my movements were monitored from grey CIO Peugeot 504 sedans with long HF aerials.
Air Marshal Mick McLaren had retired four months earlier and became Director of Shell and BP Subsidiary Companies. When I retired, he offered me a position as general manager of one of these companies. Within eighteen months I was managing two more and became a member of the Board of Directors of Subsidiary Companies.
This must have been a headache for the CIO who monitored all my movements. From early morning until about midnight, one of four vehicles was always in one or other of three shaded parking spots outside my house. But what really floored me was that the other three vehicles were waiting at the three companies, all manned by elderly white men whom I deliberately ignored. My business telephones were fine but my home telephone was tapped whenever I was at home. About one second after line connection, a distinct click was followed by a dull background noise that persisted for the duration of each call.
I can only assume that my reasons for refusing to stay on with the Zimbabwe forces were treated with suspicion, something along the line “If he is not with us he must be against us!” Funnily enough I became so used to being monitored that, when surveillance was lifted on 27 May 1982, I experienced a strange sense of nakedness knowing that I was no longer important. In November and December I went overseas to explore a business opportunity. Upon my return, full surveillance of my movements was reinstated, but only for one week. This made it safe for me to move out of Zimbabwe.
In April 1983 I left the country of my birth for good. Beryl stayed on for another five months to wind up her hairdressing business and sell our home. Both our children had moved ahead of us to South Africa. Debbie was nursing at Groote Schuur Hospital and Paul was at Rhodes University in Cape Town doing Chemical Engineering.
There was much pain in leaving such a beautiful country, but we had decided that Rhodesia no longer existed. This had nothing to do with the change of the country’s name or the fact that blacks were in power. It had everything to do with a top-heavy government bent on establishing a Marxist-styled one-party dictatorship that would almost certainly destroy our country. Anyway Mugabe’s promises of a country in which all could live in harmony and peace were already showing serious cracks.
Many officers and men stayed on with the Air Force of Zi
mbabwe, all enjoying hugely accelerated promotion to fill gaps left by senior men who chose not to serve under the new political order. Those who remained were all fine men who gave their all to maintaining the Air Force they loved. But then things took a nasty turn on Sunday 25 July 1982 when South African-based saboteurs launched an attack against aircraft based at Thornhill.
What these saboteurs hoped to achieve one cannot say but the repercussions of the incident were horrifying. Determined to find someone to blame for the embarrassment of losing four brand-new Hawk Mk60 fighters, Hunters and a Lynx, Mugabe’s bullyboys turned on Air Force officers who suffered arrest, foul torture and false accusations. This hysterical action by ignorant political thugs showed that ZANU did not understand that Air Force men could never have considered destroying the very aircraft they loved so much.
I have to say that this horror made me pleased I had left the service when I did. But knowing my friends were in prison I sought to see what I could do to help. The Commander of the Air Force of Zimbabwe, Air Marshal Norman Walsh, told me to stay well clear of these matters, as they were very sensitive. He himself was under twenty-four-hour surveillance and did not require any more help than he and the imprisoned officers were receiving from lawyers Mike Hartmann, Rhett Gardener and Mike d’Enis.
More than a year passed before the officers were acquitted and released by a black judge on 31 August 1983. Outside the court they were immediately re-arrested and another long year followed before all were eventually released and deported from Zimbabwe, their service pensions having been denied them.
How those guys managed to put on a brave face on the few occasions they were seen during trial baffled me until I learned how Air Force technician-turned-chaplain, Boet van Schalkwyk, and the men’s wives had given so much support, love and spiritual guidance.
Barbara Cole’s book Sabotage and Torture tells the full sad tale of torture and trumped-up evidence against these unfortunate victims caught up in a wicked political game.
One of the few officers who remained in service with the Air Force of Zimbabwe was Ian Harvey who, with twenty-two years of service to Rhodesia, was a flight lieutenant from 1967 to 1980. Even before I moved to COMOPS, Ian had recorded 4,000 flying hours on Alouettes but then went on to exceed 6,000 hours; a world record I thought until I learned Mark Smithdorff had many more from his military service and fire-fighting operations in America.
Following another twenty years in service with Robert Mugabe’s Air Force, Ian finally retired in the rank air vicemarshal. For this he received no more than his Mercedes staff car.
From left to right: Air Lieutenant Barry Lloyd, Wing Commander John Cox, Air Lieutenant Neville Weir, Air Commodore Phil Pile, Wing Commander Peter Briscoe and Air Vice-Marshal Hugh Slatter. (Not seen here was Nigel Lewis-Walker who was being held in Gweru (Gwelo) Prison. He was the last to be freed.)
In much happier times, Ian receives congratulations from Group Captain Mick Grier on completing 4,000 hours on Alouette lll.
Epilogue
RHODESIA CAME INTO BEING IN November 1890 and ceased to exist in April 1980. In only ninety short years Rhodesians transformed raw bush into a highly developed state—the breadbasket of Central Africa. Though always a member of the British Empire, self-governing Rhodesia never came under direct British rule. This suited Britain’s many governments because, unlike many members of the Empire, Rhodesia needed no support from British taxpayers. White Rhodesians, and many black ones too, were staunch monarchists who willingly gave support of arms to King and Queen in every British war fought in South Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Far East. Rhodesia’s contributions and status were always recognised and lauded until the mid-1960s.
By this time dismemberment of the British Empire had brought about the steep decline associated with party political handling of everything British. With this also came an end to an Englishman’s word being his bond; politically that is. So too had Britain’s political might been substituted by weakkneed policies of appeasement in which Rhodesia was another stepping stone down Britain’s road to self-destruction.
Establishing Britain’s Empire did not occur without some serious flaws, even unashamed exploitation of peoples and natural resources. But not one country so affected failed to enjoy massive development and a legacy of efficient infrastructure. This is plainly visible in those British colonies that were granted independence but retained responsible government in white hands. They continue to prosper whilst those that find it necessary to use colonialism as an excuse for their own failings, particularly in Africa, have suffered serious and ongoing decline. In spite of this, successive British governments have shamefully led Britons into feeling ashamed of their colonial past.
It was the British Government that created the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland by linking two British colonies to self-governing Rhodesia. Having in this way given three unequal countries equal status, Britain’s policies of appeasement kicked in to destroy its own brainchild after only ten years; this despite the fact that union of the three states had been an unqualified success. In appeasing the wants of power-seeking black politicians, common sense and the interests of ordinary citizens were forsaken. Remember Henry Kissinger’s words, “The politics of convenience has little to do with truth or logic!”
In compensation for agreeing to the dissolution of the Federation, Britain’s Conservative Government promised independence to each of the three states but only honoured its pledges to Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. The solemn promise of independence given Southern Rhodesia was ignored because of the newfound obsession to appease Africa’s black governments, no matter their corruption and total lack of management skills. Taking full advantage of Britain’s whimpering ‘apologies for her colonial past’, black governments followed the Soviet Union’s lead by introducing racism as a whipping tool. In turn this led Britain into creating the political mess that perfectly suited communist aspirations and led Rhodesians into a thirteen-year-long civil war.
Rivalry between Britain’s two main political parties has created seesaw situations within Britain itself, but none has been so damaging as suffered by Britain’s colonies. Every state granted independence experienced the intrigues and lies that had become the post-WWII hallmark of British political expediency. It was these traits that forced Ian Smith’s Rhodesian Front party to declare UDI in 1965 after all options were rendered intolerable by both Labour and Conservative governments constantly moving the goal posts they themselves had set.
It can be argued that UDI was a mistake, but I know for certain that we would have become a communist state that much earlier had UDI not been declared. The question is: was it all worthwhile? Again I feel Ian Smith had to do what he did to gain time in hopes that the West would come to understand that Rhodesian plans to progress gently towards responsible black majority rule was a much better option than the hurried Marxist take-over we all feared and fought so hard to prevent. Argue as one might, the facts are that racism became the main political issue and Britain rejected white-led democracy in favour of black Marxism. In his bid to justify the horrific policy of apartheid, Prime Minister Vorster of South Africa used Rhodesia as his political pawn, thereby undermining all efforts to gain Western support. Even our hopes in Margaret Thatcher were dashed when we came to realise that ‘the Iron Lady with more balls than the men’ had succumbed to the policies of appeasement expounded by her gutless male colleagues.
Every living white Rhodesian was, and remains, incensed by the duplicity—particularly by Vorster—that led to Rhodesia’s unnecessary demise. Whereas the black folk did not recognise the dangers of voting ZANU into power, today they know better. But this late realisation cannot circumvent the unnecessary suffering and bloodshed they will surely face for bringing to power an unbelievably selfish, power-crazy, Marxist demagogue. Too late they have come to understand that ZANU’s promises of utopia in ‘liberated Zimbabwe’ were only for the good of Mugabe and his fat cats—certainly not for theirs. Even the
CTs who fought and died to bring about the promises made to them by Mugabe are losers.
Yet, angry and sad as I am for the destruction of my own dreams, I look back on my days in Rhodesia as God-given and wonderful. Nobody can take away memories of life in ‘God’s own country’ amongst wonderful people of all races and creeds. Most white Rhodesians, now spread across the world, share this opinion and the vast majority of black folk trapped in Zimbabwe look back longingly to the days they lived under paternal white government. Harold Macmillan’s ‘winds of change blowing across Africa’ have for these unfortunate Zimbabweans proven to be nothing short of winds of destruction.
Twenty years on at the turn of the century, I am sad to say that I realise how successive British governments have continued the downward spiral in which their winds of destruction have turned to sweep across Britain. The deliberate destruction of Britain’s TSR2 bomber development programme by order of Harold Wilson was an early case in point. This really shook Rhodesians because the Labour Government’s order included the destruction of all data, rigs, jigs and moulds. If a British prime minister was prepared to destroy Britain’s lead in world aeronautical affairs thereby creating loss of prestige, loss of jobs, loss of huge foreign earnings and forcing English engineers to move to other countries, it is hardly surprising that he was so hell-bent on meeting other socialist communism wants, including the destruction of responsible government in far-off Rhodesia. For the Conservative Government to follow suit was mind-boggling.
Winds of Destruction: The Autobiography of a Rhodesian Combat Pilot Page 96